Our Time after a While

A disc jockey usually prevailed at the dance, spinning the hits and fielding requests announcing snowballs, ladies’ choice etc. Some people just hung out or walked around but most danced. I’m not sure how they came about, but the dances were of local creation. One was called, of all things, the California, and best performed to a tune called “I Remember Carol,” by Tommy Boyce, which had a good dancing beat and some clapping in it, an assessment that sounds like what Dick Clark used to elicit from teenagers on “American Bandstand.” The California was a group dance, something like what is now called line dancing. Everybody went through a series of shuffling steps while standing on one spot, first with the right foot then left. Then you kicked twice, turned 90 degrees and shuffled three steps back and clapped, followed by a sliding motion to one side, then back again. Then you turned another 90 degrees and started it all over again. Or something like that. Think turn, turn, kick turn. It was pretty easy and we would have 20 people doing this at one time. Doubtless it would look lame now but at the time it was a blast. Another favorite tune for the California was "You Can't Sit Down," by the Dovells. It was like what Chubby Checker said about the pony. “Do the pony with your partner, or in a big boss line. Well any way you do it, you’re gonna look real fine.” The California constituted our “big boss line.” As for “I’ll Remember Carol,” it must have been only a local hit because in my travels I never met anyone who had heard of it. “The Locomotion,” by Little Eva, prompted a chain set up, something that had been done on TV, “a chug-a-chug-a motion like a railroad train, now,” as Eva sang it. We all thought she was a babe. The “Chalypso” was another local step, with two lines facing each other and shuffling back and forth. Anybody could do it. The favorite accompaniment for the Chalypso was anything by the Four Seasons, “Sherry,” “Rag Doll,” and “Walk Like a Man” and “The Gypsy Cried,” by Lou Christie, another falsetto crooner. Of course, the twist, mashed potatoes and jerk were also popular, along with the general sort of gyrating that was called the fly, the monkey, the pony, the hully gully – after the Dovells tune – the shing-a-ling, and the boogaloo, a favorite. Jimmy Dugal, while not generally known as a dancer, was great at the boogaloo. Certain tunes were guaranteed to get people up, particularly “Do You Love Me?” by the Contours, which began with a kind of monologue backed by a kind of plaintive guitar, almost like a mandolin, then really rocked out. Another favorite was “Shake Shake Sherry,” by the Flairs, which had verses punctuated by "abomomalom, a bomalomalom." This was more of a national hit, unlike “Mind Over Matter,” by Nolan Strong, which charted locally. Nolan Strong was a talented guy who pissed a lot of people off by failing to show for a concert in Detroit. Jamie Coe, also out of Detroit had a local hit with “The Fool,” a man who told his baby goodbye, and came to regret it. A crooner named Matt Lucas also scored locally with “I Want to Move,” which was actually a 12-bar blues, with train sound effects. The singer wanted to move down to "that good lovin' land." Little Stevie Wonder’s “Fingertips” always got the joint moving, as did the offerings of the girl groups, “One Fine Day,” by the Chiffons and above all “Dancing in the Street” by Martha and the Vandellas. The Four Tops, a Detroit group, appeared at dances in Windsor. So did Bob Seeger, then known as Bob Seeger and the Last Herd, with a local hit called “Heavy Music.” “Don’t you ever listen to the radio?” the first line said, “when the big, bad beat comes on.” We did. Dave Drayton, Rick Michalski, and Don Torchin, three of the coolest locals, part of the “in” group, improvised a step called the “DRD,” for Dave, Rick and Don, though it sounds like some government agency. This dance didn’t really catch on but I remember Dave Gratton showing me how to do it, while singing, “Come on, baby, let’s do the DRD.” Dave was an aspiring musician who once tried to play with Larry Roy, who put his guitar back in the case and walked out when Rick proved unable to play a G chord. Dave’s older brother Rick, though not very big, was a more athletic type, and could often be found at the Dairy Bar. You generally dressed up for these dances. The prevailing styles included tight black pants, called “blades” appropriately enough, which had often been stitched even tighter by Mrs. Gaudette, Clem Gaudette’s mom, an excellent seamstress, whose house bordered West Grand, near the Grand Marais Ditch. You bought the pants 14 inches or so around the bottom and for a few bucks she would taper them down to 13 or even 12 inches. Getting them on and off was murder, particularly for me, even though some of the pants had a slot of about three inches that facilitated entry and exit. I had size 12 feet from the time I was 12, which led to some kidding. People would say I could probably swim well underwater, or that I’d be taller if I wasn’t bent underneath so much at the bottom. Nobody likes to be ridiculed and I tried to squeeze into shoes too small for me. My feet still show the effects of this habit. As for Clem Gaudette, he had a shock of dark hair and thick brows, and was always going somewhere on his balloon-tire bike. People would generally approach Clem first about “taking in” the pants. He played in the local softball league and I recall he was pretty good. At dances the guys wore white shirts with those tabs on the collar that held up your tie, in those days a narrow, dark job, often with some kind of clip. The really stylish types wore these blazers with a belt at the back, two buttons on each side, that served no purpose other than to be there, and to signify that the wearer was “in.” Jack Girty, a big-time dancer, had one of these, and so did Rick Michalski, probably the most athletic dancer of the bunch. Slow dancing was another matter. My favorite tune for this activity was “Sixteen Candles” by the Crests. I also liked “Talk To Me,” by Sonny and the Sunglows, and “Any Day Now,” by Chuck Jackson, a guy who really had soul, a quality that was very important to us. Some popular tunes weren’t suitable for any kind of dancing. For example, “Telstar,” this pretentious organ thing with a vocal accompaniment at the end that made it sound like the theme from Star Trek. And a tune like that one about flowers on the wall, playing solitaire till dawn, with a deck of 51, smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo, well that was a novelty, like “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport.” People could also be found singing “Does your Chewing Gum Lose its Flavor,” by Lonny Donegan. It had the ring of some British drinking song, or maybe a show tune from some farce. For a few years novelty tunes like “Purple People Eater,” and “The Monster Mash,” were the rage. “Sixteen Candles” was a hit for the Crests, a group I had never seen but which I now know from watching old footage on infomercials to be composed of blacks and whites. The Marcels, who sang that up-tempo version of “Blue Moon” with all the bom-ba-boms in it, were also black and white. The group that sang “The Book of Love,” I thought was all white but they turned out to be all black. As noted, I thought the Tokens, who sang “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” were all black but were all white. All this shows how little race meant to us. We wanted good music and didn’t care where it came from. My favorite boxer was Floyd Patterson, and I was absolutely devastated when Ingemar Johansen knocked him out. But Floyd came back to defeat the Swede twice, before being plastered by Cassius Clay. He was another guy we liked, a big-mouth and a show-off to be sure, but one who could back it up, and did. In our hood, it was okay to talk the talk as long as you could walk the walk.