Rockabilly

You might have detected a slight change in the music selection for Blue Suede Souls. Yes, we've still got the classic, 30's and 40's swing tunes but we've also added a selection from the 50's…music that's (in contemporary times) called 'rockabilly'. Since we attended Terry Lee's show at Mike's Dance Barn back in June, we've been dying to learn some sort of dance that's fast enough for the music of Jerry Lee Lewis. Sure, you can bend a Lindy Hop to fit - but for these increasingly old bones that's a hell of a bend to get around and my tires wind up in the ditch almost as much as they stay on the road. For a long time we sweated it and just tried to get faster - and then we (and by 'we' I mean my lovely wife) came across some information on the web about rockabilly swing.

Rockabilly is somewhat synonymous with jive and jitterbug - jive is less stylized and more tangoy and jitterbugging is a closed-position version of rockabilly swing. In short - take a fast 4/4 beat and break it down to a 1-and-2 -and-1-and-2 count. You've now cut the speed in half which lets you dance really fast tunes. The problem is rockabilly swing is just as hard as Lindy Hop (maybe harder) and it's different than anything we've been doing. We've been following Ms. Wolfe's Swing Course on DVD which is good for a start and we've got Kav Kavenaugh's higher octane Aussie rockabilly moves.

We've been making really good progress on rockabilly during August. We've got the basic, rotating basic, Statue of Liberty, Flat-hand push, and washing machine and I'm hoping by September we'll be ready to take it out on the road and give it a real test drive. In the meantime - check out the pros.