Dance Lessons

Everyone in my hometown danced. There were some shy girls, but if I grabbed their hands at a sock hop, they’d join in. Dancing is infectious, but it’s also tribal. If you grew up in a dancing town—like Orangeburg, South Carolina, or Memphis, Tennessee, or Athens, Georgia—you surely dance. I loved to. I had two older sisters, so I never had to buy 45s because they had stacks of them. I was six when Nancy bought Hound Dog by Elvis Presley. She had pictures of Fabian and Ricky Nelson pinned to her bulletin board, but it was The Diamonds’ “Little Darlin’” in 1957 that really got me going. The song was originally recorded by a Black group from South Carolina, who later became Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs, whose Stay from 1961 propelled them to fame—and me and my junior high friends to the dance floor.