The Twist is a dance that was inspired by rock and roll music. From 1959 to the early sixties it became a worldwide dance craze, enjoying immense popularity while drawing controversies from critics who felt it was too provocative. Having seen teenagers in Tampa, Florida doing the dance, Hank Ballard wrote “The Twist”, which became the B-side of Hank Ballard and The Midnighters’ 1959 single “Teardrops on Your Letter”. Dick Clark, having noticed the dance becoming popular among teenagers, recommended to Cameo Records that the more wholesome Chubby Checker rerecord the song, which was released in 1959 and became a number one hit in 1960. The dance became passé among teenagers as it became acceptable among adults and the song was re-released, becoming a number one hit again in 1962.
The Mashed Potato is a dance move which was a popular dance craze of 1962. The dance move and mashed potato song were first made famous by James Brown in 1959 and used in his concerts regularly. It was also a dance done to songs such as Dee Dee Sharp’s “Mashed Potato Time”. The move vaguely resembles that of the twist, by Chubby Checker. The dance was first popularized internationally after being named in the lyrics of Motown’s first mega-hit in the song “Do You Love Me” written by Berry Gordy Jr. and performed by The Contours in 1962.
The Madison is a novelty dance that was popular in the late 1950s to mid-1960s. It was created and first danced in Columbus, Ohio, in 1957. The local popularity of the dance and record in Baltimore, came to the attention of the producers of The Buddy Deane Show in 1960, which led to other dance shows picking it up. The jazz pianist Ray Bryant recorded “Madison Time” for Columbia Records in 1959. Billboard stated that “The footwork for the Madison dance is carefully and clearly diagrammed for the terpers.” The Ray Bryant version was the version featured in the film Hairspray. Another version was recorded by radio presenter Alan Freeman for Decca Records in 1962.
“The Loco-Motion” is a 1962 pop song written by American songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King. “The Loco-Motion” was originally written for R&B singer Dee Dee Sharp, but Sharp turned the song down. The song is an enduring example of the dance-song genre; much of the lyric is devoted to a description of the dance itself, usually performed as a type of line dance. However, the song pre-dates the dance. The song is notable for appearing in the American Top 3 thrice, each time in a different decade: in 1962 by Little Eva (No. 1); in 1974 by Grand Funk Railroad (No. 1); and in 1988 by Kylie Minogue (No. 3). Billboard ranked it as the No. 7 song for 1962.
The Hully Gully is a type of unstructured line dance often considered to have originated in the 1960s, but is also mentioned some forty years earlier as a dance common in the black juke joints in the first part of the twentieth century. In its modern form it consisted of a series of “steps” that are called out by the MC. Each step was relatively simple and easy to execute; however, the challenge was to keep up with the speed of each step. The phrase “Hully Gully” or “Hull da Gull” comes from a folk game in which a player shakes a handful of nuts or seeds and asks his opponent “Hully Gully, how many?” In 1959 The Olympics sang the song “Hully Gully”, which involved no physical contact at all. In 1961 the Olympics version of the song was popularized in the south of England by the first version of Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band and involved the audience facing the stage in lines and dancing the steps of the “Southampton jive”.
