History
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Boulevard of Greedy Dreams
Child labor laws did not apply in my hometown. The young, and very young, turned out to hustle the summer crowd—just as in the country, all the kids labored on […]
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S.O.S. Origins
Gene Laughter, an ex-lifeguard from the Fifties—nicknamed “Swink,” was a mischievous and creative man. He used to entertain his family on summer vacations by writing notes and putting them into […]
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Pertinent Points
“Dancing is a vertical expression of horizontal desire,” said Robert Frost, maybe America’s most famous poet. The first time I heard that line quoted I wondered who said it first. […]
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Florentine Patio
Among the originators of the Shag was a bright-eyed kid from Florence, South Carolina, the night owl, Billy Jeffers. Billy had trouble with asthma as a kid. He grew up […]
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Rosy Red Magic Box
There were only a few hundred thousand jukeboxes scattered around the United States prior to World War II. In North and South Carolina they were few and far between. They […]
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Society of Stranders
Nostalgia for the Shag took root in the early Seventies. Competitive dancing rescued the art from oblivion. In 1980, an old lifeguard from Richmond, Virginia, Gene Laughter, thought he’d throw […]
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Wild Peacocks
In the late Thirties and early Forties, the Shag was performed to swing music, the jazzy sound of the big bands. As the Swing Era waned, the Shag continued to […]
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Invention
In the old days, it was not cool to learn to Shag in public. You stood rather sheepishly in the crowd and watched the top dancers work out. You tried […]
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Ode to Subtle Wildness
A timeless moon is rising above the memory of a beach town. Beyond the town is a restless ocean, and somewhere near the water’s edge are the dance floors. The […]