In January 1962, Britain went twist crazy, with Chubby Checker’s The Twist and Let’s Twist Again in the Top 20 at the same time. Here, Vintage Rock takes a stroll through the history of rock’n’roll dancing.
Words by Douglas McPherson
Rock’n’roll has always been dance music, as epitomised by Danny & The Juniors’ 1958 chart-topper At The Hop. The title refers to the ‘sock hops’ held in American high school gyms in the 50s, when teenagers would leave their shoes on the sidelines and dance in their socks, both for the lack of friction and so as not to damage the polished wooden floor. The lyric catalogues some of the ‘dance sensations’ that were “sweepin’ the nation” at the time. As vocalist Danny Rapp tells us, “When the record starts spinnin’, you chalypso and you chicken at the hop.”
But wait. What were the Chalypso and the Chicken? We’ve all heard of the Bop and the Stroll – both mentioned elsewhere in At The Hop – and, of course, the Jive. But they were far from the only dances enjoyed by rock’n’rollers in the 50s. Rock’n’roll dancing, like the music, evolved from a myriad of styles and cultures. There were many regional variations that exposure via TV and film – and in hit records – sometimes turned into national and international fads.
Everybody Loves To Cha Cha Cha
The Chalypso, for example, was a huge dance craze in ’57, popularised by the studio dancers on the era’s top TV music show, American Bandstand. It was a relaxed couple dance with backwards and forwards shuffle steps based on the Cha-cha-cha, a Cuban dance style devised in the early 50s. It also incorporated elements of Caribbean-style Calypso dancing, which had been in vogue since the Andrew Sisters’ seven-million seller Rum And Coca-Cola in 1945 and reached a peak of popularity with Harry Belafonte’s Day-O in ’56.
The Chicken, meanwhile, was a popular R&B dance that involved kicking up your feet and flapping your arms in the manner of a chicken. It was revived by Rufus Thomas’ hit Do The Funky Chicken, in 1969.
Dance crazes usually have a whiff of teenage rebellion, as Bill Haley reminded the older generation in his 1956 hit Teenager’s Mother: “The same thing that’s worrying you is the same thing you used to do yourself”.
In the late 1700s, Europe went wild for a triple-time couple dance called the Waltz. The swirling, uninhibited dance was considered “indecent and riotous” by some, and got more so as subsequent generations added their own variations.
In 1910, the Grizzly Bear was a wild, loping couple dance in which partners periodically split to waddle around each other, waggling their hips and waving their ‘paws’ like dancing bears on their hind legs.
The First Waltz
In an early example of hit songs about dance crazes, Irving Berlin wrote The Dance Of The Grizzly Bear and bands would leave pauses in the music for the dancers to yell, “It’s a bear”.
Soon after came the Turkey Trot and the Bunny Hug – both condemned as “degenerate huggly-wiggly dances” by those too old to enjoy them. The Bunny Hug saw couples embracing with their necks and shoulders while keeping their hips apart, and was referenced half a century later in Hank Mizell’s Jungle Rock: “The fox grabbed the rabbit and they did the bunny hug”.
The 1910s 4/4 time Foxtrot had nothing to do with foxes – it was named after vaudeville star Harry Fox. Bill Haley’s (We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock was marketed as a Foxtrot before rock’n’roll dancing got a name of its own. It wasn’t a complete misnomer, however, because many 50s teens would have done a swinging version of the Foxtrot to rock’n’roll, holding their partners in the waltz position with one pair of hands clasped at shoulder height and the other on their partner’s waist.
In the 1920s, women cast off their corsets, raised their hems and kicked up their heels to dance the Charleston, as Haley again addressed uptight parents in Teenager’s Mother: “Did you forget so soon how much you loved to do the Charleston?” But while the Charleston may have been considered a quaint piece of history by the cool kids, its arm-swinging, leg-kicking movements provided the blueprint for that fast rockabilly jig, the Bop, first performed by Californian teens to Gene Vincent records such as Blue Jean Bop and Dance To The Bop.
Jive Talkin’
Rock’n’roll’s most famous dance, the petticoat-swirling Jive, was not so different from its immediate predecessor, the Jitterbug, danced to big band swing numbers such as Glenn Miller’s In The Mood and brought to Britain by American GIs during the Second World War.
Today, the Jive and the Jitterbug are grouped as swing dancing, an energetic style that began with the Lindy Hop, named after Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic, in 1927. The Lindy began in Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom in the late 20s, where well-heeled white New Yorkers reportedly used to flock to watch the African American patrons dancing. The regulars played to the audience by introducing ever more spectacular lifts and over-the-back throws.
Herbert ‘Whitey’ White, a dancing waiter at the Savoy, organised the best dancers into a performance troupe, Whitey’s Lindy Hoppers, who showcased their acrobatic style in the 1937 Marx Brothers movie A Day At The Races and, most famously, the 1941 jazz flick Hellzapoppin’.
Rock Around The Clock
When Hollywood discovered rock’n’roll and made the Haley vehicles Rock Around The Clock and Don’t Knock The Rock, the dancers recreated the aerial moves from Hellzapoppin’ and mixed them with the fancy footwork demonstrated by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Hollywood’s Golden Age musicals.
The numbers shaped the style of today’s competitive rock’n’roll dancing – although it’s unlikely many real teenagers in the 50s were quite so acrobatic.
In Britain, the Jive and Bop are popularly associated with Teddy boys. The Edwardian suit-clad Teds predated rock’n’roll, however. The first Teddy boy dance craze in the early 50s was the Creep, a foxtrot variation danced slowly to an instrumental big band number of that name by Ken Mackintosh and His Orchestra. The dance was so prevalent that an early name for Teds was ‘creepers’, which also became the name of their crepe-soled dancing shoes.
Mixing And Matching
The meaning of some dance names has changed over time. The Stroll is today a line dance performed mainly by women. The original 50s stroll was a mixed-group dance in which a line of boys faced a line of girls. While the dancers stepped and swayed from side to side, to slow-burning records such as Link Wray’s Rumble, the boy and girl at the end of the lines joined hands and danced down the alley between them. When they reached the end, the lines moved sideways and the next couple repeated the exercise – as can be seen in 1973 film American Graffiti.
The bop, today, is often a solo male dance, or danced by a group of men in a circle. In the 50s, it was a couple dance, but using the same footwork, with little contact between the partners.
Other 50s fads include the Madison, a line dance similar to today’s Stroll, with parallel rows of mixed male and female dancers facing in the same direction. It was invented in 1957 but immortalised by a pair of 1960 recordings, The Madison by Al Brown’s Tunetoppers and It’s Madison Time by the Ray Bryant Combo. Both lyrics consisted of a string of dance steps called over some relaxed jazz swing: “Give me two up, two back, now hit the Big M. Erase it”. ‘Erase it’ is an instruction to perform the last step in reverse. The dance featured in the 1988 film and Broadway show Hairspray.
Another popular line dance, with roots stretching back to the 20s, was the Hully Gully, with steps described in The Olympics’ doo-wop hit of the same name, in 1959.
Doing It By Hand
For those with two left feet, the Hand Jive was a godsend, since you could do it while sitting down. The pat-a-cake-style sequence of knee slaps, hand claps and hand crossing was invented at The Cat’s Whisker, a basement skiffle bar in London, where there was no room to get up and dance.
It was first referenced on the slinky 1958 jazz record Hand Jive by the Betty Smith Group, in which the English saxophonist sang, “If there’s no room for you to dance, there’s another way to find romance”. Smith went on to tour America with Bill Haley, but it was Johnny Otis’ hit Willie And The Hand Jive, with its insistent Bo Diddley rhythm, that took hand jiving to the wider public.
Otis got the idea from his manager Hal Ziegler, who saw audiences hand jiving at concerts in England. But although Otis had dancers demonstrate the moves at his concerts, that didn’t stop the song attracting a whiff of scandal. The combination of the words ‘Willie’ and ‘hand’ led some to believe it was about masturbation. During the 70s rock’n’roll revival, the Hand Jive was repopularised when Sha Na Na performed Born To Hand Jive in 1978 movie Grease.
Another dance for those who didn’t want to move too much was the Slop, in which the man kept his hands in his pockets and hitched up his trousers as if showing off his socks, while stepping from foot to foot.
The Twist Takes Over
Chubby Checker didn’t invent the Twist. The moves came from a 20s dance called the Mess Around. He didn’t even write The Twist, which was first recorded by its writer Hank Ballard in 1959 before Checker’s 1960 cover revolutionised the dancing world. The great thing about the dance was that you didn’t have to work up the courage to ask someone to join you. You could do it on your own or in a group of friends, and it was simple enough that it caught on with adults and children.
The Twist was so popular in the early 60s that it inspired a slew of twisting songs, including The Peppermint Twist by Joey Dee And The Starliters, and Sam Cooke’s Twistin’ The Night Away.
By January 1962, Britain had gone so far around the twist that a reissue of The Twist was in the Top 20 at the same time as Let’s Twist Again. Other dances evolved, including the Mashed Potato, immortalised in Dee Dee Sharp’s Mashed Potato Time, and sent up in Bobby Pickett’s Halloween hit Monster Mash.
Sixty years on, the Jive, Bop and Stroll are pillars of the rockin’ scene. Wouldn’t it be fun if more forgotten 50s dances were revived? Does anyone know how to do The Strand?
The Last Dance: 5 Dance Craze Hits
The Stroll – The Diamonds (1957)
“Come let’s stroll, stroll across the floor,” invited David Somerville, the leader of Toronto quartet The Diamonds. And if his seductive baritone wasn’t hypnotic enough, the sleazy saxophone rasping over a slow bump’n’grind rhythm was positively mesmerising on this hit soundtrack to a popular dance.
Bristol Stomp – The Dovells (1961)
“The kids in Bristol are sharp as a pistol, when they do the Bristol Stomp,” according to Philly doo-wop group The Dovells. The million-selling record referred to a local, Bristol, Philadelphia, take on the Stomp, a foot-stamping dance that had some venues fearing for the structural integrity of their buildings!
It’s Pony Time – Chubby Checker (1961)
Having got the world twisting, it was perhaps inevitable that Checker would try to start another dance craze – and he did! The Pony involved trotting on the spot like a horse. It was commemorated by Nick Lowe (“She used to do the Pony, she used to do the Stroll…”) in his 1985 hit I Knew The Bride (When She Used To Rock’n’Roll).
The Wah-Watusi – The Orlons (1962)
“When you do the twist, you’ll never get yourself kissed,” sang Philly vocal group The Orlons. As for the Watusi, however, “It’s the dance made for romance”. Less energetic than the Twist, the Watusi became a huge craze, especially with the surfin’ crowd.
The Loco-Motion – Little Eva (1962)
Some songs, and dances, never go away. A hit for Grand Funk Railroad in the 70s and Kylie Minogue in the 80s, the first and of course best version was waxed by Little Eva, the babysitter of its writers Carole King and Gerry Goffin. Despite the “Everybody’s doing…” line, the record came before the dance.
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