The History of the Shim Sham Originating from a style of dance termed the ‘Goodus’ in the late 1920s, the Shim Sham Shimmy was first performed on stage in Harlem in the early 1930s as a closing routine that would get all of the singers, dancers and performers on stage together with the audience joining in. It wasn’t until some lindy hoppers at the Savoy Ballroom did the Shim Sham as a group line dance (without the taps) that the dance style really took to fame. In the mid-1980s, the Shim Sham wa