When was that Lindy?

I’m guilty of it.

Most people who do the Lindy Hop at your local swing club are guilty of it.

Most of the bands that play those venues are guilty of it.

That ‘it’ is the assumption that the Lindy happened inside a time capsule which somehow began at the Savoy in New York in the mid to late 30’s and ended after LA’s Zoot Suit Riots in October 1942. In the modern mind, in fact, the dance has almost inextricably been linked with baggy pants, the Hollywood waistline, and wide-brimmed fedoras complete with some absurd feather in the hatband. In the modern era that is the definition of Lindy Hop, at least to the folks who don’t bother to do more than scratch the surface.

Like I said, I put myself in that category – or at least I did until I found a YouTube clip of Bill Haley and the Comets doing the song Rip It Up. I believe the clip comes from Don’t Knock the Rock, but I’m not certain of that fact. Whatever film it comes from, Haley’s band recorded Rip It Up for Decca in 1956 - that’d be a full 14 years after the end of the LA riots and well beyond the zone in which most of us would expect a good Lindy. Yet, take a look at the clip and you’ll see some dancers definitely ripping it up. The heartening part is that in ’56 the dance still was very much alive (and you’ll actually see dancers in a film doing a BASIC Lindy instead of strictly all the tricks). The sad part is that suddenly all the folks doing the Lindy are white – the modicum of integration that the Savoy brought to the New York scene obviously didn’t survive.