Word: stomps
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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That U.S.-hip-sounding line, strangely enough, is as British as "jolly good," or "raw-ther." It describes a musical fad that has washed over Britain. "Trad" is traditional jazz, the 1920s variety now in booming revival, and fans are streaming to hear it at stomp centers from Scotland's isle of Arran to an old dance hall on Eel Pie Island off Twickenham in the Thames, where Henry VIII once twitted his mistresses while eating the best eel pie in the kingdom. Bankers, clerks and beardless youths, secretaries, bus conductors, doctors, bricklayers, teachers-the traddists are a class...
...feels that the dance is too complex for definition, but an executive of the Fred Astaire Dance Studios describes it easily as "two basic movements, a swinging from side to side and a style of truckin' done in half time, with infinite variations." At any rate, the stomp was on and the handkerchiefs were out. Skirts, which are worn sin-tight at the Palladium, were double-sewn at the seams. Up to 350 panting pachangueros crowded into the hall's weekly dance classes...
Elsewhere, reactions were mixed. Roseland, a staid, family waltzery near Broadway, banned La Pachanga because it feared for its floor. Freddy Alonso, an El Morocco bandleader, played pachangas but reported sadly that someone had knocked over a table while essaying the stomp. It is "just not El Morocco," according to one patron, to wave one's handkerchief while pachangaing...
...into record shops everywhere; across the nation the hopeful hip are beginning to ask for lessons. In Manhattan, the Astaire Studios and Arthur Murray's were offering instruction up to the Ph.D. level, including such variations as the Under Arm Step, the Indian Hop, and the Kennedy Stomp. But even the experts still seemed somewhat confused. "The Pachanga," Arthur Murray pronounced sagely, "is gay and fun and sexless." Clearly, Murray had been watching the Palladium's handkerchiefs, not its skirts...
...most of them priced between $9 and $10 for a package covering about 2,500 sq. ft.: Scott's Halts, Dow's Crab Grass Killer, Vaughan's Pre-Kill, Pax's Crabgrass and Soil Pest Control, Swift's Rid; others, presumably with names like Stomp, Unconditional Surrender...