You
Gotta Know How To Pony
From Robert Fontenot,
Your Guide to Oldies Music.
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The dance crazes of rock's first era
As befits a music that was birthed mostly from black musical sources, rock and
roll became synonymous with dance crazes - blink-and-you-missed-it fads that
involved some wild new dance steps, usually accompanied by a hit single either
before or after the fact. In the Fifties, rock dances were generally appropriated
from other sources; the lindy hop and the jitterbug served as a basis for many
of the fast dances, and aside from the occasional glorious one-off (The Diamonds'
deathless, monumentally sleazy "The Stroll"), most rock dancing in
the Ike Years remained confined to a few moves.
That all changed in the early Sixties, as a nation desparate for fads and
able to buy armloads of 45s discovered the thrill of making an idiot out of
yourself, all by yourself, on the dance floor. If you were around then, you
know the names by heart: The Twist. The Hully Gully. The Watusi. The Jerk.
The Fly. There were dozens of others.
