Some terrific dance music for a grey Wednesday – some genteel, early-Downton-Abbey era numbers, and some a bit more scandalous:
Mae West wants you to shimmy.
“Ev’rybody shimmies now,
Ev’rybody’s learning how,
Brother Bill, Sister Kate,
Shiver, like jelly on a plate.”
Evr’ybody shimmies now, by Eugene West, Joe Gold and Edmund J. Porray, 1918.
A “hesitation” waltz.
“Bill’s little Daisy was more than dance crazy,
she never knew just when to stop,
The waltz – wait a minute – each time she’d begin it
some neighbor would send for a cop.”
Hesitate me around, Bill, by Wm. Jerome and Malvin Franklin, 1914.
A foxy lady from 1915.
Foxy fox trot, by N. H. Moray, 1915.
Buster Brown and his dog Tige
Buster: one-step, by Charles F. Gall, 1916.
Country dances – with hayricks?
Hayrick dance, by Warner Crosby, 1905.
Please. Ouch.
Get off my foot: fox trot, by W. B. Kernell and Van Campen Heilner, 1916.
Who doesn’t?
I wanna fox trot, by Joseph Fecher and Herman Kahn, 1916.
Apparently it’s contagious.
“The fidgety fidge, I cannot lose,
it’s got me shivering,
flivering, quivering,
from my head to my toes”
“I’ve got it”: the fidg-et-ty fidge, by Henry Creamer and Lew Pollack, 1922.
For the inspired, here’s a link to a collection of American dance instruction videos at the Library of Congress.
Please, try these dances at home!
[Thanks to Dana Gee, Project Sheet Music Cataloger, for contributing this post.]