MUSICAL DECADES - 1960s - Dances

This week, I'd like to take you back to the dances of the 1960s, when back then, it seemed like a new dance came out every week.

To set the mood, here's Ray Charles in a clip from The Blues Brothers movie. In his song he mentions quite a few of these dances: The Boogaloo, The Shingaling, The Twist, The Fly, The Swim, The Bird, The Jerk, The Monkey, The Watusi, The Frug and The Mashed Potato.

Chubby Checker (born Ernest Evans, October 3, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. His 1960 cover version of Hank Ballard's R&B hit "The Twist" gave birth to the Twist dance craze. His single became a hit, reaching number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 19, 1960, where it stayed for one week, and setting a record as the only song to reach number 1 in two different hit parade runs when it resurfaced and topped the popular hit parade again for two weeks starting on January 13, 1962

There was a rumour going around back then that "Chubby" Checker lost 90 pounds doing the twist. So, of course, we teenaged girls got right into it!

Dee Dee Sharp (born Dione LaRue, September 9, 1945, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American R&B singer, who began her career recording as a backing vocalist in 1961. In 1962 she began a string of successful Billboard Hot 100 Top 10 hits: "Slow Twistin'" (with Chubby Checker) ( #3) for which she was uncredited on the label, "Mashed Potato Time" (#2), "Gravy (For My Mashed Potatoes)" (#9), "Ride" (#5) and "Do the Bird" ( #10). Both "Mashed Potato Time" and "Ride" each sold over one million copies, and were awarded gold discs.

Get ready to twist your feet and do The Mashed Potato!

"Mickey's Monkey" was a 1963 song recorded by the R&B group The Miracles on Motown Records' Tamla label. It was written and produced by Motown's main songwriting team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland. Described by Miracles lead singer Smokey Robinson as "One of our biggest records ever in life", "Mickey's Monkey" was a Billboard Top 10 Pop hit, reaching #8 on that chart, and a Top 10 R&B hit as well, reaching #3. It was also the Miracles' third million selling record after "Shop Around" (1961) and "You've Really Got A Hold On Me" (1962).

A comical story about "A cat named Mickey from out of town" who "spread his new dance all around", this song helped popularize The Monkey as a national dance craze in the early 1960s.

Eva Narcissus Boyd (June 29, 1943 – April 10, 2003), known by the stage name of Little Eva, was an American pop singer. As a teenager, she worked as a maid and earned extra money as a babysitter for songwriters Carole King and Gerry Goffin. It is often claimed that Goffin and King were amused by Boyd's particular dancing style, so they wrote The Loco-Motion for her and had her record it as a demo. Music producer Don Kirshner of Dimension Records was impressed by the song and Boyd's voice and had it released.

“The Loco-Motion” reached #1 in the United States in 1962. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc.

Soupy Sales (January 8, 1926 – October 22, 2009) was an American comedian, actor, radio-TV personality and host, and jazz aficionado. He was best known for his local and network children's television show, Lunch with Soupy Sales—a series of comedy sketches frequently ending with Sales receiving a pie in the face, which became his trademark.

What started out as a joke because of all the weird dances at that time, Soupy's song and dance, “Do The Mouse”, became a huge hit. It was rushed out and sold 250,000 records in New York City alone then went on to be a national hit, culminating with Soupy doing his song and dance on the Ed Sullivan Show—and sharing the same stage that evening with The Beatles!

Here's Soupy doing The Mouse on the TV music show, Hullabaloo, in 1965.

This ends Musical Decades for this week. Thanks for listening and I hope to see you here next time.

(The information used in this post is from Wikipedia.)

Dominique "Nik" Petersen is an aficionado of "oldies" music and the author of The Dr. Hook Trivia Quiz Book. Read about it and her other books at the website: 

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