Swing Dancing in Untamed Youth

Dance is intimately connected to music. When the music style changes so does the dance. If you dance the same way as you are used to, you not really paying attention to the music. Your dancing style should reflect what the music expresses.

When early rock and roll appeared in 1950's the music became rougher with the introduction of the electric guitar, the music was wilder and more rebellious . The dance of course reflected the music.

Here is a movie clip from the film Untamed Youth from 1957 where there is a lot of wild swing dancing going on. Mamie Van Doren sings to a song by Eddie Cochran.




When you are swing dancing to rock and roll music, you need to be aware that the music often has 4 bar breaks (and even 8 bar breaks) instead of 2 bar breaks as in classic swing music.

What do you think of the video clip with swing dancing from Untamed Youth? Tell me.

The Treniers - It Rocks! It Rolls! It Swings!

Here is a video clip with The Treniers called "It Rocks! It Rolls! It Swings!". As the title says the song is at the border between swing, jump blues and early rock 'n' roll.

I just love bands that get a little animated and give the audience also a visual experience along with the music. Check out the moves that these crazy cats make. Dancers, here are moves to steal!


The Treniers were an American musical group led by identical twins Cliff and Claude Trenier [Wikipedia]. The group appeared in the film "Don't Knock the Rock". This is definitely music that makes you want to dance too.

What do you think of The Treniers? Tell me.

Louis Jordan - Caldonia

One of the things I'd like to do in this blog is to introduce you to great jazz and blues artists; here is one I haven't featured before: Louis Jordan performing the song Caldonia.



Louis Jordan was one of the best artists in the music style that is called jump blues. Jump blues is based on blues and swing but the horn section is more prominent and often an electric guitar is added. Jump blues was a step in the evolution of rock 'n' roll.

Caldonia is a fun song to play at dances, first of all it got great energy. Secondly, most dancers recognize the big break in the music at "What makes your big head so hard" and do something spectacular. Often they make a big jump. On one occasion when I was swing djing, the floor vibrated some from the dancing and I actually had to lift the cd player up when break came, otherwise the cd player would have skipped a beat due to all the jumping dancers.

What do you think of this video clip with Louis Jordan performing Caldonia? Tell me.