One More Time!

It doesn't get any better than this.  Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell tap out a storm in Broadway Melody of 1940:

And here's Eleanor remembering that number in a tribute to Astaire, 1981:

Somewhere on YouTube is the same delightful clip of their dance, but set to "Sugar, Sugar" by the Archies. I can't find it today, though. 

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Feel the Rhythm!

A lively excerpt from the Dean Martin Show, circa 1969:

Who knew Lee J. Cobb could dance?

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Sunday Drive: Frenesi

For M.P., who loves this tune and loves to dance.  Take your pick, amigo mio!

Julie London sings it in English, 1963:

From Latin America, a singer and two dancers:

From Mexico, maybe; two dancers have the floor to themselves:

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Vitruvian Men

Call it a summer fling. 

 

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Sunday Drive: Sugar, Sugar

Your Head Trucker couldn't get enough of this bouncy tune when it came out in the fall of 1969.  I got the 45 as soon as I could, and played it over and over and over again, dancing around the house.

My dancing days are long past, but the song still makes me smile.  And I'm loving this brilliant little collage with classic dancers from the golden age of the movies.  Enjoy.

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Wah-Watusi!

Booklet of dance instructions, early 1960s.

Lately it's been hard to get my mind and body in gear.  Perhaps it's just hibernation time.  There's nothing wrong beyond the usual creaks and rumbles of old age.  Guess I'm just in a blah mood.

The state of the world being what it is, I've tried today to think of something I could blog that might give me a lift - maybe it will help somebody else, too.  So here goes.

I'm sure many of my truckbuddies remember the Watusi song and the dance of the same name - or do you?  Alas, by the time I started going to high-school dances, say about 1968 or so, all the cutely named dances popular in the early sixties had degenerated into miscellaneous twitches, jerks, and shuffles.  There were no steps to learn - you just stood there and wiggled as you pleased, more or less in time with the music.  A couple of years later, the Cool Kids in their puritan zeal declared that dancing was "not relevant" - and so there were no more dances, in high school or college.  They didn't return until the rise of disco, about 1976.

But I digress.  Just what was the Watusi?  I've tried to look this up before, and apparently nobody really knows.  I've seen comments from dance teachers on YouTube who say they can't find any actual steps to that dance.  Well, here are some historical videos that might give a clue.  See what you think - and I think you will smile.

1.  The lovely Lennon Sisters on the Lawrence Welk Show:

 

2. Wednesday and Lurch from The Addams Family:

3.  The KCTU Dancers from Wichita, Kansas, in 2014, having big fun with something that may or may not be historically correct:

4.  Luci Johnson and Steve McQueen certainly ought to have known what they were doing in Beverly Hills in the summer of '64, so perhaps this is the definitive performance:

5.  On the other hand, how can you get more authentic than these chaps?  From the 1959 film Watusi, I think:

Vote for your favorite version in the comments section.

 

P. S. -- Actually, there is documentation for how to dance the Watusi.  See it and try it after the jump.  And let me know how that works out for you.

Sunday Drive: Oh Me! Oh My!

Jump-start your Sunday with this hopping little tune from the 1950 film Tea for Two, sung and danced (!) by Gene Nelson.  This you have to see, fellas: 

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How Low Can You Go?

Back in the late 1980s when I was 30-something, my two girlfriends from college and I went out on the town one night at a popular new nightclub called Studebaker's - a franchise now apparently defunct. We usually got together for a long, leisurely chit-chat over lunch or dinner at some nice restaurant, but this time we decided to go see what all the fuss was about.

The joint was hopping:  a huge, brightly lit room with a crowded dance floor and a gleaming, honest-to-God Studebaker convertible perched on a dais at one end. Probably there was no motor in it, but it looked showroom-new, and people kept taking turns climbing in, sitting on the back where the top folds down, singing along to the oldies music and waving their arms to the rhythm - of course we eventually took our turn there, too. It was great fun.

The drinks were delicious, the music was marvelous, and everybody was joyously well-behaved.  At some point, the staff set up a limbo stick, and a crowd immediately lined up to go under it, dancing their way through.  Even your staid and sensible Head Trucker - normally the very soul of decorum - got into the spirit of things and joined the line.  The stick was not set very low, and people were merrily dancing their way under it with ease, leaning far backwards.  Everyone but me, that is.

Just as I got my waist under the stick, and my chin on a level with it, I realized too late that to go an inch lower would require the use of certain back muscles which had lain entirely undisturbed since I was a schoolboy climbing on the monkey bars in the playground, and who were now loath to be roused from their slumber.  Chagrined and perplexed as to how to proceed without knocking the bar down or collapsing on the floor, I hesitated for a second in order to give reverent consideration to the laws of physics.

But of course hesitation is fatal on the dance floor.  During that brief second, two other people, one on each side of me, not to be hindered for a moment, came limbo-ing through without so much as a by-your-leave, followed closely by other impatient folks.  The crowd was not about to allow time for a rethink or a redo - onward, onward, onward!  Too bad for you if you can't make it.  Out of our way!

Mortified, I somehow managed to get on through by a kind of crablike crawl - most undignified.  But this humiliating experience did teach me a significant lesson about human nature:  if you can't run with the big dogs, better stay up on the porch.  

This principle applies in ordinary, everyday life as well as in society at large.  It is one thing to dance your own dance to the music of the moment - it is quite another to be completely out of step and out of tune with everyone around you.  In the latter case, you can waste all your strength and joie de vivre in a lonely, forlorn, unwinnable battle - and what purpose would that serve? - or you can pull off the road and let the traffic diesel on by, going hell-for-leather whither it will.

Only rarely does a single determined soul turn the tide, in the name of a noble cause; but such cases are few, and beyond the strength of most.

Your Head Trucker, now old and gray, and less limber each year, cannot keep up with the mad rush of the modern world.  In the last month, I have used what little talent I have to express outrage and call for reform - just one small voice, joined to a great chorus of others.  I have said my piece, and more I cannot do.  The world is rushing madly around and beyond me, on either side - I have no power to stop the flood or divert it from what seems a looming disaster of willful ignorance and arrogance on both sides.

For several years past, I have paid less and less attention to the news of the day because it is so awful and so depressing - in this great moment of crisis, I have refocused my attention on current events, but now I notice that the upset and dismay are intruding upon my hours of rest and filling my waking mind.  News in this day of endless and often mindless reportage, 24/7, is very much an addictive drug - some people are even called, deservedly, "news junkies."

But it serves no good purpose for myself or for anyone else to fill up my thoughts, day and night, with such an obsession; in fact, it is positively detrimental to my physical and mental health. In any case, I have long since outlived my time - this present age, even before the current uproar started, is not at all to my taste. I feel myself very much a stranger in a strange land - an exile far from home. And of course, one can never go home again.

So let the current generation make of it what they will - perhaps a better world, or perhaps something even more ugly, vulgar, and brutal than the present one - even so, why should I let that destroy my serenity and peace of mind?  I have no power to help or hinder.  I am an old man without family or posterity, and much closer to the end of life's course than its beginning. Soon enough I shall be a thing that is past knowing. I have had my day, a full cup of joys and sorrows - but now the sun is low in the sky, and the night is coming when I shall rest from all labors.

So I think I will now attempt to redirect my thoughts and spirit to more peaceful things, abstaining from further comment on current events, unless something truly earthshaking happens - and please God, it won't. In the past month on this blog, I have stated very clearly where I stand, and I am sure that my stand is very much in line with the moral arc of the universe, and of the highest Good - that patient, impartial, eternal Love that moves the stars.

So this old dog is going to lie back down in that shady spot on the porch.  If any of y'all want to run yourselves crazy chasing cars, have at it. I'm done.

Better is an handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit.

--Ecclesiastes 4:6

Notes from the Revolution, 6/16/20

. . . a revolution of hearts and minds . . .

Police chief Joseph Wysocki marching with protesters
last week in Camden, New Jersey.

Starting Over: "The City That Really Did Abolish the Police," at Politico. Excerpt:

As a movement grows in American cities and suburbs to overhaul police departments and confront their long records of racially unjust, violent enforcement, Camden [New Jersey] is one rare—and complicated—success story, a city that really did manage to overhaul its police force and change how it operated. And it took a move as radical and controversial as what some activists are calling for today: Camden really did abolish its police department.

And then the city set about rebuilding the police force with an entirely new one under county control, using the opportunity to increase the number of cops on the streets and push through a number of now-heralded progressive police reforms. And with time, the changes started to stick in a department that just years earlier seemed unfixable.

Over the past two weeks, Camden has become an example of reform that works—cited in articles, tweets and on network shows as an example of what can go right. And it’s true that the reforms produced real change in the statistics: The excessive use of force rates plummeted. The homicide rate decreased. And new incentives laid the groundwork for a completely new understanding of what it meant to be a good cop.

“You had to change the underlying principles of the way police officers were being trained and taught, and the culture in the department,” said former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who supported the changes in Camden. “The most effective way to do that was to start over.”

Then and Now: CNN asked black activists who were on the front line of civil rights protests in the 1960s to comment on the current demonstrations.  Excerpt:

It's not that things have gotten so much worse (now). It's just it is so much more obvious and apparent to everybody.--Charles Black, a leader of the 1960s Atlanta Student Movement

You've never seen as many white people marching (as now) -- never in history. We've been carrying this burden by ourselves, and you feel, they say, (like you are) carrying the cross. You feel like the cross is a little lighter today because you see other people carrying the cross with you.--Miller Green, one of the Freedom Riders

What's different is the variety of people at those marches, and that is sweet sunshine from heaven to me ... This is a wake-up call, and more people woke up this time than before.--Dr. Melba Pattillo Beals, one of the Little Rock Nine

The March on Washington, 1963

Dancing in the Street: Last week in Atlanta, National Guard troops and protesters danced together - something that never happened in the 1960s:





Also last week, Politico interviewed ten National Guard troops about their presence in Washington, D. C., in the now-notorious Lafayette Square photo op:

Many Guardsmen said they felt uncomfortable with the way they were used to handle the unrest because demonstrators lumped them in with the police. They felt that while they swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, their presence at times intimidated Americans from expressing their opinions and even escalated the tension.

And in the case of Guardsmen involved in the Lafayette incident, some felt used.

“As a military officer, what I saw was more or less really f---ed up,” said one D.C. Guardsman who was deployed to Lafayette Square last Monday and who, like some others, spoke on condition of anonymity to speak freely. The official line from the White House that the protesters had turned violent, he said, is false.

“The crowd was loud but peaceful, and at no point did I feel in danger, and I was standing right there in the front of the line,” he said. “A lot of us are still struggling to process this, but in a lot of ways, I believe I saw civil rights being violated in order for a photo op."

What I Say:  It has done my heart good to see the innate respect for civil liberties and American ideals shown by many police and military all across the nation, from the front lines right on up to the highest command levels.  Despite the killings and beatings and horribly bad decisions some have made, it does seem to me, surveying the scene from my seat high up in the digital bleachers, that the majority of police and military people are - like most civilians - aghast at George Floyd's brutal murder as well as committed to safeguarding every American's inherent right peaceably to assemble and to seek redress of grievances.

Last week, a two-block-long parade of demonstrators marched right by the house here, and the police were marching with them, escorting them through town with police cars fore and aft: protesters and police all moving together with a common goal of peaceful assembly at the town square - which is as it should be.  Unfortunately, your Head Trucker was asleep at the time; had I been awake, I would have gone out and waved my American and rainbow flags in support.

If you were to survey the list of recent protests all across the nation, especially in the South, as I have done over on Wikipedia, and if you were to take the trouble to look at the source citations, as I have done, and watch the local news videos from all sorts of small towns and small cities, as I have done, you would notice crowds of blacks and whites mingling freely with united purpose.   This would not, could not have happened in my childhood in the segregated South.

This is not to deny the existence of racist attitudes in all parts of this country, as the nightly news keeps reminding us.  To be sure, hateful bigots still infest the backwoods and back alleys of the South and North - some of them are highly placed, and some are even pillars of the church - but there are many good and decent folks in those small towns too.  And in almost every demonstration I looked at in those small Southern towns, the police, the sheriff's deputies, and often the mayor were out in force - not against the protesters, but in solidarity with them, guaranteeing their right to safely protest.

In other words, they and we are all one American people, in or out of uniform, regardless of race, creed, sex, or color: a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  And that gives me hope that we will all get through this time of outrage and sorrow together, make right what is wrong, and build a more perfect union - the unending task and high duty of every generation in these United States.

Alice Barker Sees Herself

A sweet little video about Alice Barker, a 102-year-old dancer who sees film of her younger self for the first time.



Alice passed away about a year after this video was made.

Les Beaux Frères: Serviette

Les Beaux Frères studied at circus schools in Quebec and Montreal, and have performed with Cirque du Soleil and other such companies.  They did this wonderful towel dance on stage in Paris last month.

Lost Time: Bounce Me, Brother, with a Solid Four

Wouldn't it have been fun . . .




From the 1941 Abbott and Costello comedy Buck Privates.

Dancing with the Stars, Indian Style

Okay, I've posted some heavy-duty stuff lately, now it's time for something lighter.  The President and First Lady were a smash hit during their three-day visit to India over the weekend.  This clip of Michelle dancing with some schoolchildren made me smile this morning, big time.  And then her husband gets into the act, to everyone's delight.



More photos of the First Couple's tour, and Michelle's "fashion diplomacy," here.

Last Dance

The Obamas strike me as being realists, not romantics. You know, the early-to-bed, early-to-rise type, putting nose to the grindstone and homework before playtime. And for goodness' sake, they've been married for years and have two school-age children. Hardly a fairytale prince and princess; but tonight they gave a good-enough imitation as the President danced "with the one who brung me" at each of the nine inaugural balls they visited briefly, each time to the tune of "At Last."

Said Barack about Michelle: "She does everything I do, only backwards and in high heels." A gallant compliment, a lovely evening; a wonderful beginning.

In time, our romance with the new President will wear off too and be replaced by something less illusory and more practical, workable, clear-sighted, grounded. As with every successful marriage. I know that, and maybe you do too.

But this is a night for dancing - and dreaming. So let us enjoy love's ardours while they last. How often do we get the chance?

And your Head Trucker is turning in uncharacteristically early here, at the end of this long, joyous, historic day. I'm whipped boys, all wrung out; got to hit the hay now. Tomorrow, like the man said, we go to work to change America, and the world. So from away out on the Texas prairie, good night and God bless.

Update, 1/22: Found a video of Beyonce channeling Etta James and serenading the Obamas - who look as sweetly lovey-dovey as any young couple at the senior prom - at the Neighborhood Ball, their first dance of the evening. What a memory they made for us there.

And despite the Vice-President's protest that he can't dance, the Bidens didn't look too shabby, either.