From Philadelphia: BANDSTAND Dancers JIMMY PEATROSS, JOAN BUCK, & JOE FUSCO

[Methuselah2]

In the late 1950s, Jimmy Peatross & Joan Buck were clearly BANDSTAND's most accomplished and unique dancers. And they were responsible for popularizing the great slow dance--THE STRAND--that featured so much more than simply slow dancing: great flips and openings from side-to-side, with many terrific flourishes in-between.

In this video filmed many years later, you'll see Jimmy & Joan doing THE STRAND at the beginning of the clip, and the video ending with them doing THE SLOP.

And in the middle of it all, some great double-dancing with Joe Fusco and a variety of partners.

Welcome to Philadelphia--truly the land of 1,000 dances. And thousands of terrific dancers--like Jimmy, Joan, & Joe . . .

And many, many thanks and great appreciation for all the wondrous YouTube postings by Bandstands Best--who has unearthed and showcases a simply amazing array of Bandstand videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHq7C_gkJxw

[nosey]

Our style of stranding in the hood incorporated walking the floor or the perimeter of the dance floor. Great video and it would have been perfect if they danced off of Dancing the Stand by Maureen Gray http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-f0znV7K3s

[Soul Sister]

That's the strand I remember too, Nosey. Moving down the line across the floor.


S.S.
***

[Methuselah2]

Nosey - Thanks very much for the Maureen Gray tune. Hadn't heard it before and liked it a lot. I suppose dancing has regional influences just like dialects and accents take on. In the late 50s when Jimmy Peatross and Joan Buck [[both now deceased) danced on TV, Bandstand had already gone nation-wide, I believe, so I would have thought their way of doing The Strand had made a real influence throughout the country. It certainly influenced local dancing to the hilt in Phila. at the time. Watching Jimmy & Joan, to me, always felt like I was watching a teen-age version of Astaire & Rogers. I loved all TV dance shows I could lay my eyes on.

[nosey]

Methuselah2 not to be argumentative but most Black kids in Philly found Bandstand to be corny especially since we were not welcomed there. I personally had an UNPLEASANT experience attempting to get on Bandstand and the much beloved Dick Clark was quite nasty to me and my friends.

Jerry Blavat's teen dancers closely reflected how we danced as he was always receptive to having Black kids dance at his shows, hops and on TV. The simple truth is that we [[Black kids) were far better dancers than the Bandstand dancers and when Georgie Woods had his show 17 Canteen, we were finally able to really show our stuff.

Even though some of the dancers on the Philly version of Bandstand could keep the beat upon looking at the clips, they had no "steps" or moves and did the same old thing throughout the whole song. In my community the thing at cabarets, dances and house parties was to "squirrel" or "sit somebody down" with steps done in unison or to just have many, many steps done with flair and finesse. My girls and I would practice our routines before going to dances, etc., not to mention coordinating our outfits. Social Clubs such as the Carpetbaggers, the Soul Serenaders, Club Newport, the 69ers, the Marlboros always were prepared to shut you down at their cabarets, etc., with their unique steps. You could even tell where a person was from by the way they danced: Germantown, South Philly, North Philly, etc. Those were some fun times showing your mettle and my girls and I rarely got "squirreled".

The only dance the Bandstand kids probably created was the Stomp but the Strand definitely came out of the Black community .

Again, not to shoot down your post because I'm loving it but being from Philly Bandstand was not influential in my community, no way.

[blueskies]

Joan Buck passed away in 2001, I belive and Jimmy Peatross has also passed.

http://theprincesandprincessesofdance.com/pictures/

[Methuselah2]

Nosey - I'm not sure there's really anything for you to shoot down in my thread. I loved Bandstand while it originated out of Philadelphia and I loved the dancing of the kids who became the shows "regulars"; the dancing of the rest of the show's attendees held little interest for me. Bandstand had just a core of great dancers in my estimation; Jerry Blavat's Discophonic Scene, in contrast, seemed to have all great dancers. Which Jerry, himself, is. I also liked several dancers on Ed Hurst's Summertime at the Pier, 17 Canteen, RJ at the Disc-o-tay, and The Hy Lit Show.

I'm aware of the color barrier issue you brought up regarding Bandstand and also that it received considerable attention in the media just a few years back. I've read various reports and comments in support of the position you mentioned, as well as a few that didn't see the issue so cut-and-dried. But it's an issue outside the scope of my thread and one that I'm not knowledgeable enough about to discuss. My thread was solely about my liking some of the dancers and dancing that I got to see on Bandstand from Philadelphia.

My comment about Jimmy Peatross & Joan Buck popularizing The Strand was made specifically in reference to the fact that they brought it to a television audience for the first time--circa 1958--as far as I had seen, and numerous other Bandstand dancers picked up on it directly from them. Surely something can became popular without it taking hold everywhere, or in every part of Philadelphia. And I was not implying that Jimmy & Joan had created The Strand, although they did admit--in the 1992 documentary TWIST by Ron Mann--to having implied that when they danced on Bandstand, and also admitted that they had actually learned The Strand from dances held in the Afro-American communities in Philadelphia.

I'm not at all certain what you saw in my thread that you felt needed rectifying. But I did enjoy reading your perspective and opinions.