Thanks especially to Judy, Ake and Lindy George for posting up those clippings, none of which I'd seen before, although I've read similar material to the latter.

I take the view that 'history' is always about the present, and thus there are underlying reasons why we are collectively interested in considering these issues at the present, and maybe even why it is resulting in productive exchanges.

As some of you know I've been fretting about this Lindbergh issue for a number of years, but only now is it beginning to make sense. I can't help but feel that the loss of Frankie hangs over us all, and is provoking new thinking. To put it briefly, the Lindy Hop can't do without its real history.

I do agree with Ake though, the important thing is to publish results which I'm attempting to get on with and complete, but at times I feel I can't ignore significant discussions when they spring up.

Quoted from "terry monaghan"
Just noticed a related discussion on the BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/strictlycomedancing/F14713549?thread=7148544 and I also checked Google's advanced search which has now leapt to 23,900 since I last checked a couple of weeks ago - can this mistaken notion really be multiplying that fast?

Terry, why do those peoplle talk funny?

Everyone has gotta read that thread, it's hillarious. At first I thought it was a comedy script written about clueless people who never heard of this lindy hop dance.

Quoted from "frankyboy"
I had also found a couple of other articles that meantioned lindburg taking a hop in the text of the article but not the actualy title, and usually re a flight he took somewhere in the US, not across the atlantic. I wonder if it become a common term used at the time that pilots "took a hop" when referring to short flights, or were any flights Lindberg took after crossing the atlantic considered shorts flights and referred to as just a "hop" by the media?

Hi!

John sent me a few links: One to the newspaper site, where the term 'hop' is used in the connection to the Lindbergh flight:

http://www.newspaperarchive.com/FreePdfViewer.aspx?topic=1927 3a Lindbergh begins trans-Atlantic flight&img=31127423&terms=Lindbergh&dpviewdate=05 2f20 2f07&firstvisit=true

There are at least two references with 'hop'.

Frankyboy, are these the same articles that you found?

In addition to that 'hop' is a slang term for a dance that goes back at least to 1913: http://onlinedictionary.datasegment.com/word/hop

Those in addition to Peter BetBasoo's discoveries. There seemed to be several possibilities to name The (Harlem) Lindy Hop also according to Charles Lindbergh's famous flight. I think that there are reasons to take the Lindbergh connection back to discussion.

Frankyboy wrote:

Quote
Terry, why do those peoplle talk funny?

Basically as the whole International (British) Competition style is full of pretension on the inside, with an arbitrary and thus meaningless assortment of dance technique aspects on the outside, that is simply meant to convey how superior is dancers really are. Hence the familiar banalities of referring to 'ballroom jive' as 'jive' and as a 'Latin dance' when in fact it is neither. Once they have to depart from their usual clich s they really don't know what to say, and out comes the nonsense. I've written enough about this in the past, and thus don't want to repeat myself again! Just a little bit of conscientious research would come up with a background explanation that this non-American use of the word 'jive' stems from the HMB changing the neame of the relevent category to 'jitterbug-jive' in 1942 that was then shortened to the latter, and different variations of it have emerged subsequently. But that would mean taking 'the colonials' seriously in cultural matters, and of course that is unthinkable!

Re the other points - my major concern right now is with synthesis of understanding rather than endlessly trawling for 'new' individual facts. Any worthwhile discussion needs to refer to what has been agreed so far in order to get more specific about precise areas of misunderstanding or uncertainty. Thus various people have been over that Lindbergh Hop thing at different times, (including myself who rescued it from several decades of being forgotten), and thus most people who have taken an interest now agree it did exist as a dance, and although proceeding the Lindy Hop it also ran in parallel with it, and thus is not the same dance.

Similarly with Snowden's interviews. For various reasons I don't have them to hand, but I can assure you they say the same thing as the Stearns interview, with the exception of one, that asserts that he and Mattie created the dance by accident. A plausible story, that I think has been repeated elsewhere anyway. The best verification of Snowden's story is in Carl Van Vechten's novel "Parties" that was published in 1930, and thus considerable before Snowden's viewpoint is known to have appeared in print. Incidentally as best as I can remember it doesn't mention CL.

The main advantage we now have in researching this area is that we can compare the new interest in the Lindy and Savoy that has emerged outside Harlem since the beginning of the 1980s with the original Savoy based one, with which it overlapped. Thus there is an interesting mix of continuities and discontinuities. When I had the issue of the bogus headline "Lindy Hops The Atlantic" literally shoved under my nose in 1987, I realised here was something tangible to look at, especially as it began within the limits of our current experience. So if the argument that it is phoney stands up, yet nevertheless it is spreading round the world at an accelerating rate, by making the necessary additions and subtractions we can use it to understand more about how such myths were generated and spread during the first time round. The current high speed of developments is particularly useful in this respect.

At the same time this provides a more comprehensive reply to the original question as to whether anyone has discovered that headline. One answer is simply "No", but that answer quite reasonably begs a further question 'if so where did this erroneous assertion come from?' I've given one answer to the latter, and other useful points have emerged in this discussion that offer confirmation. Cutting down the associated myths to their just size is, I would suggest, the best way of getting an accurate grip on the subject, and that means explaining their consequences just as much as their origins.

Terry

Hi Keepa

The late Dicky Harris (won the HMB in 1966) of the Mama Lou Parks dancers told me that when he showed friends in Harlem the Mura Dehn footage of mambo at the Savoy that they just couldn't believe that regular young Harlemites were ever that passionate about the Mambo. Yet the infusion was real, and even now its not hard to see the Lindy legacy in Salsa, although of course it just doesn't swing.

Thus there is a parallel between that fast style of rumba/son being put together with big band swing music, and the respective dance styles being changed by the addition of a good helping of Lindy in the early 1950s to produce New York Mambo as we now know it. Hence my irritation with those who say nothing happened in the 1950's in terms of Lindy. The best mambo dancers came to the Savoy, and the best lindy hoppers went to the Palladium!

The hustle emerged in the late 1960s as the NY Latin scene wanted to get back to partner dancing, and it caught on quickly long before Saturday Night Fever. I suspect the besides leading on to Salsa, the Hustle also had an impact on the emergence of West Coast Swing as we know it, but I realise some people boil over with anger at that suggestion!

Re the Cha-Cha, it wasn't really a partner dance originally, so I doubt a direct Lindy connection, but of course it became the major dance expression of Doo Wop as so many of the key tracks had a Cha-Cha beat. I wouldn't be surprised if it became cross influenced by Lindy remnants as a result of popular dancing to different types of this music, i.e. swing, r&b and latin, which didn't consist of only slow tempos.

And by way of an apology for those annoyed with this seeming departure from the original question - these questions are all part of the incredible versatility and variety of the Lindy Hop which is why it has never needed the 'Lindy Hops The Atlantic' fiction to keep the dance alive.

Terry

ps in relation to Frankyboy's question about why do the Strictly Come Dancing people talk so weird - the finals of the latest series demonstrated why. Despite the clear choice of the judges who voted for a black guy and white girl to come first, a decision it seems supported by most other people in the wider world interested in dancing, the core ballroom fraternity voted for a white couple to win. The bias was obvious, but it remains an embarrasment that the organisers and the BBC in particular don't want to talk about. That discussion site was shut down immediately once the final decision had been announced!

Deacon Jones wrote:

Quote
but still people dancing socially to Cha-cha

possibly there's a misunderstanding here? I doubt whether there were any significant 'performance' cha-cha dancers at all, in otherwords it was all social. The point I was trying to make was that Doo Wop vocal groups used Cha-Cha rhythms in their songs on occasions , thus it would be reasonable to suppose that those dancing to them would actually be socially dancing the Cha-Cha. Perhaps I was being too brief!

Quoted from "keepa"

Quoted from "terry monaghan"
]Thanks Keepa for the Hartford Courant reference, Lance told me about it some time back but I couldn t find it. Funny thing is the description reminds me of how we used to dance the basic Hustle the first time round, which via the Mambo is a kind of derivative of the Lindy!

Terry, I have always wondered about the relationship of Mambo and Cha Cha and dances in the Swing genre. The Hustle is classified as a Swing dance, but it never occurred to me that it would come through the Mambo. This is very illuminating.

Hustle link to lindy seems to be more through the intermediary of East Coast Swing. You can see it in the early Hustle which used a 6-count basic. The footwork used to be some variant of touch-step, triple step. walk-walk. Many of the old time hustle dancers still phrase in 6, whether using the old basic or phrasing the new basic in 6 (&-1-2 3-&-4 5-6). I remember Craig Hutchinson who always included Hustle as a swing dance in his competitions, always taught hustle as a 6-count dance.

Quoted from "keepa"
I have also wondered about the Cha Cha, whose weight changes are identical to Lindy Hop, and how it may relate to Lindy Hop. I read once it was inspired by Lindy Hop, but I have lost that reference.

The relation between Cha Cha/Mambo and Lindy Hop seems to be more one of cross-pollination of music and dance. Musically, it seemed American and Cuban musicians listened to each other and used what they heard as inspiration. Supposedly mambo music developed when Cuban musicians (e.g., Chacao) etc) inspired by jazz/swing made innovations to the music of their day. Similarly you hear about jazz musicians being influenced by "the latin tinge"(e.g., WC Handy, Jelly Roll Morton, etc.). Plus you had musicians who were in both swing and Latin bands; for example, Mario Bauza, the father of Afro-Cuban Jazz, was an important figure in both Chick Webb's and Machito's bands. Finally, you have that whole debate over whether the swing rhythm and clave have common origins.

In regards to dance, you also have proximity that could lead to cross pollination. Up until it was eclipsed by the Palladium, the Savoy Ballroom was a major hub of Latin music and dancing. And you had many dancers who did both. Apparently in the 40s and 50s, Latin dancing was as popular as swing in the black community. I'm not sure if that was primarily just in NYC, but I attended a lecture once about the huge mambo scene that existed in DC back then.

Even now you can see the influence of Lindy/Jazz in the mambo jazz steps and breaks. I was quite surprised to find that Suzy-Qs are the of the first breaks they teach in mambo.

There's another parallel between Cha Cha and Lindy, and that is they both changed because of changes in the music; the tempos moderated some and there was more accents in the music.

Here is the article, where Herbert 'Whitey' White is mentioned as the creator of The Lindy Hop. I wrote it down here:

The Pittsburgh Courier September 28, 1940:

"Developing New Dance In Honor Of Joe Louis

Herbert White, creator of the famous Lindy Hop, will give the country a new dance some time this year, when he unveils his Joe Louis Shuffle. He's shown here taking a few of his dancers through the paces, getting them in the mood for things to come. Dance is named in honor of the Brown Bomber."

I think that he never really created Joe Louis Shuffle.

Here's a reproduction print of the May 20, 1927 edition of The Baltimore News. Given the other headlines I've seen posted, Lindy was apparently hopping all over.

The original question concerned the alleged specific headline "Lindy Hops The Atlantic" - to trawl through each and every reference to Lindbergh probably couldn't be handled by all the dance forums put together. But if you can find a reference to that actual headline before 1986, that would be of great interest!

Terry

Hi Deacon

no question about it, and you certainly don't have to spend money to find that out, Lindbergh was most defininately a Nazi lover - and to quote him precisely it was the "Jews and the English" who were responsible for WW2. Adolf it seems was misunderstood, although Lindbergh never said another word about that after the Fuhrer declared war on the USA following Pearl Habour. Sorry not my kind of hero by any measure.

However that is all irrelevent to the original question, as indeed are the sundry other points about Lindbergh and his various 'Hops' which I totally agree abound in many newspaper stories.

Slingshots original question concerned whether the actual newspaper headling "Lindy Hops The Atlantic" had finally been found. And given the huge number of references that are almost entirely derived from swing sites round the world, it seems logical to stick to the point, as all these accounts hinge on Snowden (usually) actually reading that headline. I asserted before and believe even more now that it is a fiction, and moreover there is not a hint of that story, using for that matter any recognisble combination of those key words, before 1986. I.e. it's not a question of finding a headline that vaguely resembles the "Lindy Hops The Atlantic" one, but finding an account that links the headline to the naming of the dance.

But thanks for raising the Nazi connection. Personally I only came to realise how despicable Lindbergh's outlook was through trying to fathom out this particular story. Now, as far as I am concerned, even if someone could prove the Lindbergh link story, we shouldn't commemorate the man because he held such despicable views, re the Nazis, unrepentantly to his dying day.

But that is another discussion. Let's focus on whether anyone can identify an account that links a newspaper headline that celebrates Lindbergh's flight to the creation of the dance, before 1986.

Terry

Hi Deacon,

Re your Mambo point I said more or less the same thing myself on Dec 20 thus can t see a sufficient enough difference to respond to.

Re your first point, I guess we use the English language differently (I have actually been asked a few times in the US as to whether I speak English?!) If someone talks about the Savoy being eclipsed by another ballroom when it wasn t for two reasons - the other ballroom was a different kind of operation and the Savoy was booming anyway - then it seems to me that the writer responsible, however innocently, has picked up on a negative vibe. I could explain the Savoy s involvement with Latin in more detail, but that would be another discussion.

This your point Deacon has an echo of this discussion s main concern, i.e. has anyone found the Lindy Hops The Atlantic headline in that I m sure the vast majority of those who continue to propagate this fiction do so in all innocence with not a trace of negativity in mind. Nevertheless that story and the way it is now so tenaciously adhered to, suggests it has become freighted to some degree with a dismissive take on Harlem s cultural authorship. Its retention however is even more remarkable now that it is increasingly looking as if the headline story was created in 1986 by Warren and Ryan, and again let me reiterate, in all innocence.

Apologies if I seem a hardened contrarian, but this does seem an excellent means of thoroughly testing this conjecture of mine, although I can t help agreeing it would all be so much simpler if the headline story was true, and Lindbergh had of been just a real nice guy as projected.

I should also explain, that in as much as this headline linking of the flight and dance came from the JLH, I feel a responsible for doing what I can to clear up the world-wide confusion that it has caused.

Terry

Quoted from "Penguinbob"
Some evidence that Fox Movietone news did cover the dance marathon would be more conclusive - although that wouldn't prove that Shorty George made up the name on the spot.

Shorty George had to "Hop" every time he wanted to lead Big Bea into an under arm turn. (See clip)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Sdk3mqVSRA

Quoted from "Deacon Jones"
Shorty George had to "Hop" every time he wanted to lead Big Bea into an under arm turn. (See clip) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Sdk3mqVSRA

True, but irrelevant. The term "Hop" was being applied to many dances and dance patterns at the time. And at the time when the term Lindy Hop first came into usage, I don't think Shorty George was partnered with Big Bea.

I have recently stumbled across thissite:

which seems to much more archive access (or at least searchability).

There's about 30 odd references to "Lindy Hop", "Lindy's Hop" or "Lindy Hops" in connection to various flights of Charles Lindbergh in 1927 and 1928. None of them seem to have been from papers in New York and none mention the Atlantic crossing and all are from the post Atlantic-flight period, with the earliest being the article posted earlier about a flight to St. Louis.

Some other interesting references regarding the name though. For example:

The Afro American - May 17, 1930, Baltimore - on an exhibition of Lindy Hop at the Roseland Ballroom.

Quote
...To show how the church people of Harlem felt towards the dance which they consider immoral, we will just run through their statements. This dance, as you know will be known as "The New Lindbergh Hop...According to the management of Roseland which arranged the exhibition, the feature of the dance and the reason for the name are the terrific speed at which the couples whirl and glide. ... Contention that the "Lindy Hop" is in any way representative of the colored race and is danced in Harlem only behind closed doors, came from Miss Nina Wilson secretary to Dr. Bishop of St. Philip's Church at 220 W. 134th Street.... It consists of seven movements, he explained, and introduces tap dancing into ballroom dancing for the first time.

On another note it appears that Fox Movietone News did cover the dance Marathon in June 1928. See here

This would seem to add some weight to the account that appears in Stearns. Anyone in South Carolina able to check it out?