Question 1

What does “the Executioner” mean?

Accepted Answer

the man who runs you off the Apollo stage once the crowd has decided

Question 2

Where does “the Executioner” come from?

Accepted Answer

Harlem, the Apollo Theater on West 125th Street, where Amateur Night began in 1934. The role dates to the 1930s and the first man to hold it was the stagehand known as Porto Rico, who ran acts off with a cap pistol and a siren. Ted Fox, whose Showtime at the Apollo is the standing history of the theater, calls him the audience's hit man. The tap dancer Howard Sims took the role over from him, and C.P. Lacey — a seven-time Amateur Night winner as a James Brown impersonator — filled in when Sims left to film Tap in 1989 and stayed nearly three decades. Two corrections belong in the record. The role is the Executioner; Sandman is one man's stage name that got attached to the job by association. And Sandman has nothing to do with sweeping or with putting anyone to sleep: Howard Sims was called Sandman because he sprinkled sand in a wooden box of his own making to amplify his steps.