Really something when the joint is jumping!

I frequently get questions about what I'm talking about. In my dotage, I tend to go on about my early days and the cultural landmarks that dotted my horizon like nuts on a sundae. And the songs! And the stories about the songs! How about the one that I reference in the sand quote above, the beloved "Bristol Stomp" by the Dovells? To explain the song, I will have to use some expressions that have fallen from the current lexicon, such as "dance craze," "fire house record hop" and "The Dovells."

First of all, is there a dance craze now, a specific step ("little dances that look so neat," as The Showmen sang in "It Will Stand")? I know that people who go dancing all do a variety of hip hop or something. It all looks a little bit aggressive to me, as if the dancers really don't care for each other. Don't ask me. I never could dance, but I enjoy seeing people who could, which is why I was a regular viewer of the Buddy Deane Show on Channel 13 on those days when I didn't have detention after school. That's the show upon which John Waters based a movie that became a Broadway show which became another movie, all called "Hairspray." And for those seeking the essence of Baltimore, well, that's how we roll here. Anyone who can get three meals out of the same pot of stew is doing things the BallTEEmore way!
Buddy Deane

But all the cool kids on Buddy Deane knew all - or started all - the latest dances. The Madison, The Roach, The Mashed Potato, The Stroll...we viewers learned from the cool kids of Baltimore. We did not watch Dick Clark's American Bandstand out of Philadelphia, because we had our own show. In the spirit of ecumenism, Buddy did have some Philly-based guests on his show, in the fashion of an archbishop providing overnight shelter to a traveling pilgrim. But Buddy, like Dick Clark, was available for record hops...another vestige of that long-ago era. The deal was, someone rented a social hall or a volunteer fire hall, hired a radio deejay looking for part-time work, and then the deejay showed up with tons of records, a couple of turntables and amplifiers, and then they opened the door to kids who wanted to demonstrate their ability to dance what they had seen danced on TV all week.

It was at one such event at the Goodwill Hose Company hall in Bristol, Pennsylvania, that a group known as the Dovells, led by Len Barry (ne Leonard Borisoff - I love researching real names!) heard a record with a cool guitar intro that had been recorded by some local kids. It was called "Every Day of the Week." The Dovells got the idea to take that guitar riff and write a song about the cool kids dancing at a volunteer fire house in Bristol Pennsylvania. The dance they were doing was The Stomp. It only seemed natural to call the new song "The Bristol Stomp." A few minutes with a couple of professional songwriters, Kal Mann and Dave Appell, and the song was ready to record, and hit as high as #2 on the charts in November, 1961. People dashed to Kresge's to pay 79 cents for a 45-rpm copy of the song, so they could hear Barry's wobbly vocals and the insistent, even hypnotic, backbeat of the song.



Now you can hear it too, and even see it, and you don't have to put on your tshirt and drive to Kresge's, as if there were a Kresge's to drive to. All you have to do is click right here, and make believe you're at a fire house:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDo9yYSuzkk


No one makes dance craze records any more; at least, I hear none that are devoid of calls to shoot or stab people or call them nasty names. There are no fire house record hops, or none that I've heard of for years and years. Len Barry had a couple of solo hits, "1-2-3" and "Like A Baby," but has not remained a huge part of the entertainment business we know today, what with Justin Timberlake being so popular and all.

And I sit here wondering why.