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The
mirrored walls at the Peppermint Lounge. 11/8/1961.
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The
second installment of Bob Schulenberg’s Manhattan Diary.
For those who didn’t see the first entry last Friday, the
drawings are from one of the sketchbooks the artist has made monthly
over the past half century.
This week’s features one of Schulenberg’s late night
forays in November 1961 to the Peppermint Lounge, a tiny hole-in-the-wall
on West 45th Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. It was here
that a dance called the Twist was born.
Discovered by one of the columnists – it could have been
Liz Smith (then writing for Igor Cassini as Cholly
Knickerbocker in the Journal-American) or Dorothy
Kilgallen or maybe Suzy (Aileen
Mehle, whose column then ran in the Hearst tabloid, the Daily
Mirror) – the
Peppermint Lounge had a small danceband – Joey Dee
and the Starliters; a postage stamp sized dance floor, nickel-sized round
black bakelite topped cocktail tables, and smudged and shiny mirrored
walls to give the effect of space.
Clubs like that were a dime dozen in the West 40s off what Walter
Winchell called “The Main Stem.” They were
patronized almost entirely by Broadway types, theatre people, agents,
bookies,
small time mobsters (and maybe some big ones too), dames, hookers
and sundry aspects of what some would call lowlife. The fancy nightclub
scene in New York was obviously drawing to a close after more than
three decades of jubilation and joints jumpin’. It was the
last days of the high class watering holes like the Stork, Toots
Shor’s and El Morocco. The rest — joints like the
Peppermint Lounge were strictly for the hoi-polloi where society
types went
only to be not seen.
But when Joey Dee stood up on the bandstand and sang:
“They’ve got a new dance and it goes like this;
The name of the dance is the Peppermint Twist ...”
it started up all over again, and it started a movement. Overnight
the grittier became the wittier. This tiny club, kind of a dump
with its ticky-tacky décor, reeking of booze and stale cigarette
smoke, became a feature in Vogue and Harpers Bazaar.
It wasn’t
slumming tho – it was cool. The hipsters and the trend-setters
actually were waiting in line to get in (and do the Twist). The
block was lined with the double-parked, idling limousines of the
Beautiful People who were inside doing the Twist and taking in
the passing parade that Schulenberg so accurately portrayed.
It was the first time the general public saw men dancing with men
and women dancing with women, because the Twist was basically dancing
solo. It was the first time we saw the young and the old both getting
up and rocking together. Strange as it sounds today, most of us
had never seen that before. Ever. Theretofore, rock and roll was
reserved strictly for the teens and had no cultural legitimacy
whatsoever.
There were no steps to the dance, of course, just a rotating of
the hips from left to right. People were instructed to practice
with a towel, as if drying off one’s backside, to get the
gist of it. Millions did just that, in the privacy of their own
homes, for knowing how to do the Twist was simply very cool, even
to people who never used the word. It was also funny looking, which
amused everyone – all types and all ages. And tame. Compared
to today, it was tame.
This was beginning of the very glamorous era of the Kennedys,
and even Jackie and her sister Lee made
a late night sorta-secret visit to the place. They may as well have
brought a pot of gold with
them because that’s what they left to the club’s owners.
The whole world wanted to go to the Peppermint Lounge. A simple
body gyration being rhythmically performed, a dance movement, in
some Broadway dive, turned out to mark the birth of a cultural
revolution that changed everyone’s lives — as our friend
Schulenberg reiterates in his drawings and accompanying text. |
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In
the words of Schulenberg: A progression: from
observer to participant — The Elegant Lady.
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JoeyDee
was the well-known twist-maven at the Peppermint Lounge. |
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The
"world as we'd known it" was, literally, ended here. Who could've imagined
what was to come? |
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Eds
Note:
A mutual friend of mine and Schulenberg's, Ray Smith sent me an
email this morning (2/11/05) correcting the facts about the inception
of "The Twist":
A
little history of the twist because it was not born at
the Peppermint Lounge. It was born in Philly on "American
Bandstand." In
1958 Hank Ballard recorded "The
Twist" as
the b-side of "Teardrops on Your Letter." Dick
Clark liked "The Twist" and tried pushing
the record on "American Bandstand". He
booked Ballard to appear on the show to sing the song — or
lip sync it as they did on the show. Ballard did not
appear. But
we, the kids on "Bandstand," liked the song and a group
of bandstanders went into a room and created the dance.
But
Ballard's record
did not connect with the public. In 1959, Chubby
Checker recorded it (with
Ballard's arrangement, note for note — which
was not
unusual in those days). Clark played it, Chubby appeared
and did the dance the Bandstand kids were doing.
The
song and dance
caught on, to put it mildly. Although it separated
dancers, it was still a partner dance and for that
reason it was
strictly limited on "Bandstand." Clark kept it away
from the cameras for
quite a while because it looked lewd. At dances
around Philly, chaperones broke up circles where
a couple was
doing the twist in the middle. The song went to #1
in 1960.
Joey Dee created what he called the "Peppermint
Twist" which
was faster than the Philly original and had more of
an up and down motion that a side to side motion.
The
"Peppermint
Twist"
hit the charts and before long it brought Chubby's
version back to the charts and for the first time
in history
the song re-entered
the charts and went back to #1.
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