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Has Anybody Here Ever Danced The Madison?


JSngry

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Ok, I'm waaaaay behind the curve, but I'm just now finding out about this...

Was this thing actually POPULAR popular?

Those calls are wack, and the clips of the dance itself that I've seen...it's like today's line dancing that they do to C&W only with hipper steps & better music.

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There were lots of line dances in the 60s-early 70s. I don't recall ever hearing someone refer to one of them as "the Madison," but memory is often faulty.

All that to say: I have no idea! :)

Edited to add: from checking the YouTube clips, I'd have to say "no." Looks like this iteration of line dancing was a French thing.

Edit edit: OK, I'm wrong - it's from Columbus, OH

clip from Baltimore teen dance show:

Edited by seeline
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f93736dz5c6.jpg

Yeah, i guess that was the big hit version, and the one used in the John Waters film.

Ya' know, the notion of teenaged American dancing to Ray Bryant, even a "commercial" Ray Bryant (and hell, it's just a riff blues with a deep-ass groove, so how commercial is it really?) is one that strikes me as not at all undesirable or unpleasant...

"I want the big strong Jackie Gleason & back to the Madison."

KREE-ZEE!

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I danced the Madison. Sad to say, I didn't have the Ray Bryant version at the time (only got that when it was reissued on Collectables CD). I had the Al Brown & his Tunetoppers' Amy single (I'm on my second copy of that. Tell the truth, there ain't much to choose between the two versions except they're different tunes, slightly. Bryant has Buddy Tate on tenor; Brown has Big Al Sears. I'm listening to Al Brown's version as I write. Yes, it swings nice and hard! Side 2 is a little looser and slightly more invigorating for a jazz afficionado. Oh there's a good pianist on it but I forget who. Al Brown sings the calls.

Oh the steps...

Well, it was a kind of shuffle, where you crossed your legs over then back in a kind of square. A year or so later the Shadows (Cliff Richards' backing group) developed a kind of box shuffle based on it. It was much less energetic than the Twist, the Slop or the Bird or any of the thousand dances, so it greatly appealed to me.

Well, I'm listening to Ray Bryant's version now. And, yeah, Buddy Tate wipes Sears. But Bryant's piano is too set into a medium boogie riff, compared to the pianist on the Brown version. And whoever that pianist is, he shreds Bryant. But Bryant's also has solos by Edison & Urbie, which make a difference, too.

Anyway, they're both great!

Oh, and the Brown version made #23, the Bryant #30, according to the article referenced earlier in the thread. So Amy took out Columbia!

MG

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Al Brown was a local Baltimore musician who had formed a jazz group known as the Tunetoppers in the late 50’s.

Was Big Al sears living in Baltimore at this time? Listening to this version, it sounds like a pick up group of top whack pro jazz musicians, not a bunch of local guys. The rhythm section in particular is so loose and groovy it just swings the hell out of the Bryant version, which is fairly strict tempo.

Maybe Brown DID form a band in Baltimore but it sounds like when they got to the New York studios, there were all these other guys who'd been assembled by a producer who knew what was what.

MG

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Al Brown was a local Baltimore musician who had formed a jazz group known as the Tunetoppers in the late 50’s.

Was Big Al sears living in Baltimore at this time? Listening to this version, it sounds like a pick up group of top whack pro jazz musicians, not a bunch of local guys. The rhythm section in particular is so loose and groovy it just swings the hell out of the Bryant version, which is fairly strict tempo.

Maybe Brown DID form a band in Baltimore but it sounds like when they got to the New York studios, there were all these other guys who'd been assembled by a producer who knew what was what.

MG

I'm pretty sure Al Brown was New York based, and the players on his version are all NYC session cats. Brown's name can be found as leading the backing band on a number of R&B sides from the late 50's and early 60's. Brown's record was definitely the hit Madison tune in the Northeast at the time. I never heard Bryant's record until years later when I had gotten into jazz. I was in high school when the "craze" happened, and nobody ever danced the Madison at any dances I attended! I believe it was a Baltimore fad, and has already been suggested.

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Al Brown was a local Baltimore musician who had formed a jazz group known as the Tunetoppers in the late 50’s.

Was Big Al sears living in Baltimore at this time? Listening to this version, it sounds like a pick up group of top whack pro jazz musicians, not a bunch of local guys. The rhythm section in particular is so loose and groovy it just swings the hell out of the Bryant version, which is fairly strict tempo.

Maybe Brown DID form a band in Baltimore but it sounds like when they got to the New York studios, there were all these other guys who'd been assembled by a producer who knew what was what.

MG

Y'know, Baltimore and D.C. have historically produced some great musicians (jazz, R&B, blues, etc.) who haven't always been able to break out nationally. A case in point: Chuck Brown... but I could add many more names.

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i graduated from high school in 1962. I was student council pres and was responsible for the music at the weekly "hops" in the school lunch room. <_<

The Bryant version was on local radio and we did the dance. Never danced to another version or other tune.

Does that mean that Elmore James' "Madison Blues" was a flop in Chicago?

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Brown's record was definitely the hit Madison tune in the Northeast at the time. I never heard Bryant's record until years later when I had gotten into jazz. I was in high school when the "craze" happened, and nobody ever danced the Madison at any dances I attended! I believe it was a Baltimore fad, and has already been suggested.

Now that's strange ... I'm far too you young to have witnessed that Madison dance being danced but based on writeups of the early 60s pop/dance craze scene I was aware of its existence (before my time) for almost as long as I've been collecting records (i.e. since 1975/76).

And in fact I did pick up TWO different period pressings (with pic covers) of Ray Bryant's

2-part Madison 45 at local fleamarkets/garage sales (and have seen more copies) so it must have been sort of a hit tune over here (not all of those copies can have been dumped by G.I.'s, especially as they were German/European pressings).

And as another indicator of the hit status of this dance, there were a couple of other Madison tunes recorded by local artists to capitalize on the fad (I remember a "Madison Time" version from Italy sung in atrocious English but still fun to listen to ;)).

Now could Europe really have been hipper than the U.S. outside of Baltimore, I wonder? ;)

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I checked on the Billboard R&B charts for the two versions of the Madison.

Al Brown's was the bigger hit on the pop charts: #23 pop; #14 R&B. Bryant's was bigger on the R&B charts: #30 pop; #5 R&B (and stayed on that chart 18 weeks, which ain't bad).

I had the thought this morning, as I got up (!), that the band that played on the Goddard film might have been that of Jacques Denjean. Anyone got any ideas about that?

MG

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My wife and I used to take ballroom dancing classes here in France. The Madison is one of the stock dances they teach. I think every teacher uses a slightly different version of the steps, but it's all the same idea. People in a line kick, hop, step, swing their arms, whatever, then turn 90° and repeat with variations. It goes on until you get sick of it, which is pretty quickly in my experience.

Edited by Tom Storer
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This is what we're talking about?

What a band! Whooooo! Pity they kept interrupting the music for a bit of rabbiting.

Any idea who the band was, Nate?

MG

No, no idea who's in the band, though I think the music there is by Legrand. Maybe some of our European organissimo members can help....?

If you found the dropouts annoying here, just try A Woman Is a Woman....!!

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IIRC there's a couple of cuts in the Maynard/Roulette Mosaic box called Madison Pt. 1 and Pt. 2, where MF "calls" the dance. I remember trying to visualize the dance by mentally following his directions, but apparently my brain has two left feet (lobes?).

http://learning2share.blogspot.com/2007/10...combo-1960.html

madisoncvr.jpgmadisonbaccvr_1.jpg

madisonlabel.jpg

Edited by JSngry
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How the Madison and the Twist “Crossed Over”: http://wallofsound.wordpress.com/2007/10/0...t-crossed-over/

An excerpt:

The origins of the Madison in black culture, though, go back well before the recording of Bryant’s record in March 1959 in New York. Dance historian Lance Benishek suggests that the Madison started in Chicago in the late 1950s; Pruter indicates the dance was associated in the midwest with a completely different recording. Benishek also claims that it was danced in Cleveland after the Baltimore Colts brought it to Baltimore in 1959. Bryant’s record was clearly adopted for a pre-existing dance within black youth culture, and then picked up within the black entertainment world. This also explains how a hard bop instrumental became a black teen dance record with a vocal, and the reasons it gained novelty status in white teenage culture. Sometime between Bryant’s recording and its play on The Buddy Deane Show, a spoken narration was over-dubbed. This narration was provided by radio DJ Eddie Morrison, whose early 1960s afternoon show on WEBB Baltimore mixed jazz and R&B records with slick raps.

Like most radio DJs of the time Morrison would have also hosted record hops where he would have picked up on the popularity of Bryant’s record and seen how young dancers developed dance moves to fit. He could have easily started calling some of the dance actions executed at these hops on his show. The pace and funk swing of “Madison Time” is certainly ideal for Morrison’s DJ style, which was characteristic of black radio talk of the 1960s. For black dancers it asserted a common culture; to white teenagers his adjectives “wild,” “crazy,” “looking good,” and the abstract verb “hit it” would be as exotic as the musical sounds. Morrison’s lyrics also reference the contemporary television westerns, variety shows, and spectator sports, which were common cultural reference for both black and white teenagers. These cultural resonances were clearly understood in the wider entertainment world because sometime in 1960 Bryant’s recording was licensed by Columbia and, with added talk over, was released as a single aimed at white teenagers. The novelty of the dance and the record, and its local popularity, brought it to the attention of the producers of The Buddy Deane Show and then to other such dance shows across the country. Thus, it reached a broader range of local white dancers.

Edited by JSngry
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