One night we went to see Slim Gaillard in a little Frisco nightclub. In Frisco great eager crowds of semi-intellectuals sat at his feet and listened to him on the piano, guitar and bongo drums. ... Now Dean approached him, he approached his God; he thought Slim Gaillard was God."
Jack Kerouac, On The Road
Friday's Choice: The recent discussion of galvanizin' and galliardisin' brought Slim Gaillard to mind. So here he is, along with Whitey's Lindy Hoppers from the 1941 movie Hellzapoppin':
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4 comments:
I don't think I've ever seen such good swing dance.
My parents used to talk about Olsen and Johnson all the time.
Tell me about it. I watched the clip originally to see Slim G., then got blown away by the dancers. I just fixed the link to an article about the company. It's pretty interesting.
I took some lindy hop dance classes. I never did get to the flips or sliding on the floor but I have seen that up close and personal. It's amazing!
Great jazz, great dancing, great video pick. Sign of the times: the black percussionist was smiling and showing his teeth and then at the end, the white bosses are clapping for the black dancers and as soon as the dancers saw them they thought they were in trouble and got scared and ran back to the kitchen.
Maybe they spit in the soup!
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