Turkey trot & other dances

[Wilson Gray]

On 9/14/05, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      Turkey trot & other dances
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I have been reading an article by Lawrence Gushee "The Nineteenth-
> Century Origins of Jazz", from Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 22
> (2002), supplement, pp. 151-174.
> This articles gives several early citations for the "Turkey Trot"
> dance.  Checking the OED, I find, under "Turkey", section 7, the
> following:
>
> 1839 Southern Lit. Messenger V. 337/1 May-be I didn't set up a high
> *turkey~trot, and peeled it like thunder. 1895 F. REMINGTON Pony Tracks
> 187 He would run me off the plantation at a turkey trot if I did shoot.
> 1908 W. G. DAVENPORT Butte & Montana beneath X-Ray 42 The light
> fantastic, the turkey trot and the pazamala were indulged in by all to
> a late hour. 1912 Nation 22 June 427/1 The Lord's prayer, followed by
> the 'Turkey trot'. 1913 G. GROSSMITH in Daily Graphic 12 May 9/1
> Adventurous persons will see the Turkey trot or Tango as they are
> danced in a cabaret, but not as danced in a Paris ball-room.
> --------------------------------
>
> The first two mean "to run like a turkey", but the others refer to the
> dance.  Gushee refers to "the lyrics to Ernest Hogan's famous song of
> 1895, "La Pas Ma La," which mentions, in addition to the title dance,
> the Bumbisha, the Satin Louis Pass, the Chicago Salute, and
> finally, "to the world's fair and do the Turkey Trot."" (p. 170-71)
> Gushee's bibliography refers to this song as printed in Kansas City by
> J. R. Bell, in 1895.
>
> Gushee also quotes a story from "the somewhat scruffy New Orleans Item
> of January 15, 1908, headlined "The Moral Wave Strikes New Orleans
> Dancing Schools""
> "No More Turkey Trot, a Dance Which Was developed Into Its Highest
> State of Efficiency at Milneburg and Bucktown.  Signs Up "No Turkey
> Trotting Allowed". . . .  At Washington Artillery Hall last evening,
> hundreds of couples arrived to do the turkey tro.  Brookhoven's band
> played "Walk Right In and Walk Right Out Again."" (p. 169)  The
> capitalization follows Gushee, and gives the impression that No More
> Turkey Trot ... and the sentence beginning "Signs Up" were also part of
> the headline.
>
> Also, from Variety, November 3, 1916, a paragraph, evidently under the
> heading "Cabaret", signed O. M. Samuels, from New Orleans:
> Now that a siege of erotic dances has started in New York, it may be as
> well to place New Orleans on record as the home of "the Grizzly
> Bear," "Turkey Trot," "Texas Tommy," and "Todolo" dances.  San
> Francisco has been receiving the questionable honor." (p. 170)
>
> The dance named in OED's 1908 quotation, "pazamala", isn't given a
> separate entry.  It's the "La Pas Ma La" from Hogan's 1895 song.
> Gushee also notes a song by Irving Jones from 1894 called "Possumala
> Dance or My Honey" (p. 171)  The bibl. specifies New York: Willis
> Woodward, 1894.
>
> "Texas Tommy" doesn't appear in OED.  "Tommy" doesn't appear with
> reference to dancing.  I have seen it stated -- didn't note where --
> that this dance name was considered offensive, either at the time or in
> retrospect, because "tommy" was slang for prostitute.  If so, this
> meaning isn't in OED.  I can't probably find this reference.
>
> I won't argue if the OED says that its mandate doesn't require it to
> document the name of every dance fad and that it will leave "the
> Grizzly Bear" to some specialized dictionary.  But "pazamala", "Pas Ma
> La" or "Possumala" are a distinct word that survived for 12 years or
> so.  "Bumbisha", which also isn't in OED, is another distinctive
> word.  "Todolo" is of interest at least because an early composition by
> Duke Ellington is "St. Louis Todolo".

Interesting. When I was a child in St. Louis, the family owned a
record by Duke Ellington and his band entitled, "East[sic] St. Louis
Toodle-Oo." According to something that I read somewhere somewhen - a
biography of the Duke that I read in the '80's, perhaps? -
"toodle-oo," regardless of its spelling, was pronounced "toad-low" and
was the name of a formerly-popular dance step.

-Wilson Gray

> Gushee also says "The slang term "ratty" is commonly used to
> describe "hot" music or the oler ragtime style or a kind of "strutting
> walk ***."  (p. 154, fn. 2)  He cites Merriam-Webster's Third and
> several mid-1970s books of interviews with NO musicians.  This sense is
> not in OED.
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>


--
-Wilson Gray