The song is from 1958, but I suspect the fashions date the footage as 1960's era. Maybe deborah can help here.
A question for you serious music people: What exactly was it that changed in rock and roll which led to the decline in dancing? It's not the time signature, but it must be rhythmic in nature. Listen to the drumming: it has more swing than swagger. The latter led to the stand-in-place, look-at-me solipsism which characterized rock music post 1950's.
23 comments:
Boy. You're right about the film footage. That's not 1958.
Great question about the dancing. That plagued jazz as it went from swing to bop, cool and free jazz. The ladies want to dance and when you lose the ladies, you lose something important.
Yeah, it's the rhythm.
That's why I go for that
Rock and roll music
Any ole way you choose it
It's got a backbeat
You can't lose it
Any ole time you use it
It's gotta be
Rock and roll music
If you wanna dance with me
If you wanna dance with me
--Chuck Berry, "Rock and Roll Music"
I'm not a big fan of disco, but the brilliance of disco was that it brought back a solid beat you could dance to.
All of a sudden people were dancing again and they were happy.
@creeley23: Back beat is important to rock, but I don't think that it's the danceable aspect I'm trying to call out here. I think it's something akin to mood in grammar but of course I can't put my finger on it.
I recall from my drumming days (high school) that it was something you did with your right hand on the cymbal. Instead of a straight 8th or quarter note pattern, it was more discontinuous yet repetitive.
That's a go go place, so call it around '64.
The hairdo is also early 60s.
Definitely Sixties footage, and weirdly cut in with the song. Great vid.
Good question about the dancing. Looking at Billboard 1972 the ones I consider danceable are mostly slow dances. A lot of the songs are narratives.
Maybe we need more accordians.
"From you serious music people." Elitism.
I read that dance band music, swing and jazz, were put to death by a new cabaret tax in the late 40s or early 50s. It made it almost impossible for a turing dance band to make any money.
Maybe so, ken, but getting turing out of dance halls was good for computer science.
Whoa. My opinion is that hard core Rock & Roll did not defeat dancing, no more than Boogie Woogie did before it...and you could argue, as I do, that it all began, Rock that is, with a then little known R&B and Rock & Roller (back in the early 50's)...a guy by the stage name of "Bo Diddley". In 1955 I had his albums and 45's and introduced many in my tiny high school to the man. I had some 8 years of piano training by then and knew what I liked (and my classical teachers abhorred)...Bo Diddley's beat and rhythm, Jerry Lee Lewis' blow out emotional rock piano, and just plain old Boogie Woogie and the dancing that went with it. To me "Sing, Sing, Sing" solos by Gene Krupa were obviously dance worthy as the solos in In A Gadda da Vida (Iron Butterfly)...it took a fair amount of fitness to dance either full length. Once upon a time I could do that, and I'd had 3 years of dance instruction by then (especially Tango, I loved that music in those days...do you realize how few white-boy Americans could dance the Tango as it is meant to be...?...chicks loved it, due to the romantic lust it portrayed)...but me dance well , uh, not today. Time takes a toll.
Never the less, if the pieces I've cited don't move you to dance, or at least feel the rhythm in your bones...you have no soul, none at all. If your feet don't at least "tap" to boogie woogie or solos like Sing Sing Sing or In A Gadda Da Vida, you are dead and just don't know it yet.
But, I know I was an odd duck then (and maybe now:) who really really liked Ahmad Jamal, Bo Diddley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jan & Dean (one of whom I knew fairly well), and Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps...among many many others. In my mind they were extensions Of the great classics, because of the raw emotion they pushed to the front, which of course gave my piano teachers apoplexy.
I must mention that if you don't recognize the impact of African American musical history, you have missed over half the whole point. Fletcher Henderson was the precursor to Benny Goodman. The value of music never declines, just the ignorance of the audience. I've never been shot at by a musician or a singer of classics. Among us they are perhaps the most valuable to retain in safety. YMMV.
Note: If you watch carefully the Youtube video of Shocking Blue's lead guitar on "You're My Venus" Here you cannot miss the finger & pick work begun by Bo Diddley.
It all comes full circle now...if you want to "feel" the music, try listening to most Art Blakey or Gene Krupa album collections. Then add in Bo Diddley and go on from there.
And yes, no matter how "un-hip" it was then and now, "Disco" was a great period in American music, simple but enduring (think Thelma Houston), and definitely dance-able. Dance to popular music is an expression of joy...we could use more of that today.
Nice comment, Ari.
DB, coincidentally I was looking at this a few minutes before I saw your comment:
lindy hop
Back in the retro-swing-dotcom era I worked hard to learn the lindy hop and other swing dances. Not for sissies. The steps are intricate and you must stay in sync with your partner, especially with the lindy, but a real pleasure when it's working.
I look back at those old movies showing ballrooms full of ordinary people swing dancing and marvel at their willingness to learn such complex dances.
I'd be surprised if I could still lindy today.
Xray...I neglected to include Deborah Harry aka "Blondie" in the mix...a disco queen if there ever was one....and one I'd love to meet just say howdy. I deeply respect her choices in her private life, and none of them benefited her...she did them just because, just because it was the right thing to do. I also didn't mention so many others of the 60's-70's era, such as CCR, Steppenwolf, et al...all emotional groups who said what had to be said in those days...and most without disparaging a single soldier.
One I met, several times in Detroit, was Country Joe McDonald, of "Fish Cheer" fame (be the first one your block to come home in a box, etc.)and yet I really liked, even loved them for their sincerity. Country Joe went far and wide for gratis to say he respected veterans in prose and song. He sang "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag", not as a critique, but as an anthem more or less. And I have that from him face to face...on more than one drunken night. I had explained to him how that song, with all the military negative impetus, was actually an inspiration to soldiers who were really, yes, f'ing god-damn-it fixing to die and were unafraid, at least that they showed it. I once could suppress that feeling, but I cannot anymore. I am now a punk, perhaps.
In my naiveté I suspect that music & dance in all forms reflect the best parts of us. Part of it all is the fairly recent change in my own demeanor...I no longer can suppress my emotions, ignore ugly tragedy, or switch off my anger or grief, which ever .... it may just kill me or get me killed. I have no patience anymore for those who live here and take it for granted.
What I am looking for no longer exists, at least in the form I once knew it...loyalty among those you worked with. My most recent consultation (officially approved) with my old Army office tells me I am wasting my time, except in support of the young lady I insisted replace me...mainly because she had my values in herself, and keeps them close and true.
I am both offended and discouraged by the blunt offenses by so many in my old 4 state area,it hurts. Why do men and women who work for the military or are enlisted in it, care so little? I am a silly man, who thinks loyalty to a nation and principles incorporated therein, mean something, not the "nothing" of ambivalence.
If anyone want to help out, just suggest to me what kind of gift I can give the young lady who took my place and has done a better job to boot. We are to go to dinner together shortly, with my daughter and anyone Sandra wishes to bring. I want her to know how much I respect her work now. Period.
Country Joe is also one of those rare individuals who passed the bar without going to law school.
Most of the anti-war songs of that era were anti-war and anti-government, not anti-soldier.
I have a friend who knows several Afghanistan and Iraq War veterans. He says they are losing their minds over what's happening in those countries now.
I fear we have deeply betrayed Americans serving in the military and the American spirit. There will be consequences.
Best to you, Aridog.
When I saw him the second time I got the sense that Country Joe never passed a bar - rather that he stopped in every one he encountered.
His band mate, Barry Melton "studied law while on the road as a musician and was admitted to practice by the State Bar of California in 1982. In 2009, Melton retired as the Public Defender of Yolo County, California", the quoted material is from Wikipedia.
I think about taking dance lessons. Would love to learn the Lindy and some Salsa and other Latin dances.
I learned salsa dancing in Toronto with Lori. Ballroom dancing with Lindy. Lindy hop and swing dancing with Joy.
Then the building burned down and swing stopped.
Joy now clogs. I clog drains. It's all good.
Fun :)
Clogging is an unusual dance form. Similar to step dancing.
Very similar to step dancing, especially when done with Clogs :)
Jean Butler with clog tap shoes and some slip jig thrown in....enough to break any Irish heart.
Similar to tap and flamenco...could there be a connection :)
I believe that "connection" was answered by Colin Dunne, Jean Butler and Maria Pages in Firedance and Maria Pages' Flamenco solo Firedance
Thanks :)
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