Beach Music
Music touches us in places where words can't. It has the power to unlock even the most tightly closed heart. Music is a language that everyone can understand. Music has always been a part of me. I'm sure it started with the lullabies of my mother.
Let me be clear here right at the beginning, I am not musically inclined. I do not play any instrument, I do not write music and when I sing most people ask me to please stop. I like music and can't imagine a world without it. I like all kinds of music, jazz, classical, opera, country, show tunes, rock, reggae, rhythm and blues, soul... I am willing to listen to pretty much anything, at least once. If you listen to the soundtrack of my life, the core is "Beach Music". I'm not talking about the West Coast "Beach Boys" Surf sound, although I like that too. Carolina "Beach Music" is different. This music is: ‘Far
Away Places’ by The Embers, ‘My Girl’ by The Temptations, ‘Under the Boardwalk’
by The Drifters and anything by The Tams.
The Tams are the essence of Beach Music. ‘I’ve Been Hurt’, ‘Be Young Be Foolish Be Happy’ and ‘Silly Little Girl’ are classics. The raspy intonations of Joe Pope, the blare of the horns, the deep beat of the drums and the soothing harmony of the backup singers take you to another place.
A lot of the top 100 songs of Beach Music were written and recorded nowhere near a Carolina beach, a lot in Motown (Detroit), Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York City. The roots of Beach Music start with our old Southern friend Mr. Jim Crow and is closely tied to a dance form called "The Shag".
In the Southern United States following the Second World War, by virtue of the Jim Crow Laws, Black people and White people were not allowed to listen to the same music, dance in the same places or drink beer in the same bars. In the segregated South, Black performers could not have their music on the radio or on the jukeboxes in White venues. It sounds crazy today, doesn't it.
Well, young people will be young people. They don't necessarily do exactly what their parents want or necessarily follow the exact letter of the law. They heard Black music and they saw the way Black people danced. And they liked it. Along the Carolina Seaboard there are a lot of beach towns where the rules are a little looser than the ones inland. White companies serviced the jukeboxes in both the White venues and the Black ones. These companies were run by businessmen. Their objective was to have quarters dropping into these machines all the time. To do that most effectively, they need to have records on those machines people wanted to hear.
Back in the late '40s there was a man in Myrtle Beach, by the name of "Big George" Lineberry. He and a buddy, Malcolm Ray "Chicken" Hicks enjoyed dancing and drinking. They would travel to nearby Seabreeze S.C., a Black community that had a number of "Jump Joints", dancing and drinking establishments. They saw the dancing and heard the music being played. They liked it. It has been hinted that they also picked up some moonshine on these trips but that has never been proven conclusively.
Big George's daytime job was installing records in the coin-operated jukeboxes, at that time called "piccolos", for Southern Amusement Corporation. He was given a White playlist and a Black playlist. At this time Black music was forbidden in the jukeboxes of White establishments. Big George ignored his bosses, Jim Crow laws, and the threat of the Klu Klux Klan and installed the most popular Black records on the jukeboxes in White dance halls and bars. He had lots of encouragement from the young White customers of these venues.
This music was particularly suited to an emerging dance style called the Shag. The Shag had been around since the mid 40's but not in this slower, smoother, slot-style, 6-step version. Pretty soon the music and dance were in every beach venue from Virginia Beach to Savannah. The young tourist at the beach took this music and dance home with them and introduced it to their friends. Like all things forbidden to young people, the dance and the music spread like wildfire. When asked where they got this music, everyone said "from the beach". So, it became known as Beach Music.
The Charleston of the 1920's was the start of the Shag. It evolved into the Little Apple. That evolved into "Carolina Jitterbug" during the 1940's. A much slower and no bounce but shuffle Carolina Shag evolved in the late 40's and early 50's as it became ingrained in the "Doo-Wop" sound that is called Beach Music. The moves and the steps of the Shag developed in South Carolina but its name was coined from its popularity in the dance halls of North Carolina. Of course, there has been controversy over which state developed the Shag and Beach Music, but that is not really important. What's important is how it captured the imagination and soul of the youth of North and South Carolina at a time when the political climate considered Black music and dance the devil's brew.
My first exposure to Beach Music and the Shag was when I went off to college in 1967. I was from a small town north of Richmond, Virginia and went to school at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. I chose this particular school more because of its ranking in Playboy Magazine as one of the top party schools in the country than its academic reputation. I must tell you I have never regretted that decision.
The Shag wasn't called the Shag in this part of eastern North Carolina. It was called the "Carolina Bop". I first saw it in Greenville at a bar called The Coach and Four.
The Coach and Four was a
typical college drinking establishment. It had a dance floor with tables and
chairs around it. There was a huge bar at one end of the room. They only served
beer, 3.2 beer. The bathrooms were in the back and always had a line. The women’s line was
longer than the men’s but it’s always that way. I remember standing in the men's line blasted by the room’s roar. There was always a cloud of cigarette smoke
hanging in the air. This was when smoking was still acceptable. Back then tobacco was an important crop in North Carolina. In this line there were
intriguing aromas of old beer, rancid fryer oil, Chanel No. 5, Canoe aftershave
and sweat mixed with urine. This combination is a permanent sensory memory for
me.
The entertainment was a jukebox and a drummer. Occasionally there were ladies dancing on the bar. The
drummer was on a balcony above the dance floor. He played along with the
jukebox. This was a Carolina thing, as I have never seen it anywhere else. It
was loud. It wasn't conducive to conversation but, very conducive to drinking
beer and dancing the Carolina Bop, my kind of talking.
The Bop looks fairly easy and laid back and it is when you are doing the basic steps. I wanted to get better so during the second quarter of my freshman year I took Social Dancing 101. Yes, East Carolina had a course in dancing. They taught formal dancing, ie. the waltz, the fox trot, the tango and slow dancing. The last dance of the course was the Carolina Bop. That is what it was called in the course description, the Carolina Bop not the Shag. We learned the Bop to "My Guy" by Mary Wells, the perfect song to learn how to Bop.
The class consisted of 30 young ladies, some quite charming and 2 guys. The instructor, also a charming young lady, took the 2 guys aside the first day and indicated if we had perfect attendance, we would get an attractive grade no matter how insufficient our talents. We were okay with that.
Over the course of my college career, I had several willing Bop instructors, mostly female but a few guy friends would show me a few of the more complex steps. One who was in ROTC showed me some steps while wearing combat boots. He was quite talented.
One lady in particular was an expert dancer. I met her at a fraternity social. She was a member of Alpha Xi Delta. They had a sorority house right around the corner from the Kappa Sigma house. She was able to take me to a higher level of competence. I was never as good as she was but I was much better than I was before she took me under her wing.
You have to realize that most of these young ladies were Carolina Girls, they had been doing the Bop their whole lives. I have been lucky in my life to have encountered several young ladies who took pity on the unenlightened guy from Virginia.
Wherever I went in North Carolina, there was Beach Music and the Carolina Bop. When I went to the Azalea Festival in Wilmington, Beach Music and the Bop were there. In Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, Durham, Asheville, Winston Salem, Wilson, Hickory, Salisbury, and all the small towns along the 3,375 miles coastline of North Carolina there was Beach Music and the Carolina Bop.
When I went to Nags Head in the Outer Banks, Beach Music and the Bop were there, especially at the Casino. The Casino has to be the most unique place I have danced the Bop and listened to Beach Music. It was built in the 1930's. It was purchased in the 40's by Ras Wescott and was in its heyday in the 50's and 60's.
It was a two story wooden building with a snack bar, bowling alley, pool tables and pinball machines on the first floor. Upstairs was a huge wooden dance floor that could easily accommodate 1000 people. The floor was polished with the same bowling alley wax they used downstairs. No shoes were allowed, they had to be checked at the door. You danced barefooted. At one end was a stage and at the other was a long bar that always had cold Pabst Blue Ribbon available.
In the 40's and 50's all the Big Bands played there, Louis Armstrong, Artie Shaw, Woody Herman, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and all the others. In the late 50's and 60's all the Beach Music bands played there, the Coasters, the Tams, the Embers, Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs and all the others. They also had a Wurlitzer Jukebox serviced by someone just like Big George.
The dance floor was always crowded. Everyone drank beer to stay cool. They had large windows that were always open, with no screens. Some people jumped out of them. Some people were thrown out of them. Ras had a crew of large imposing bouncers to maintain order. He wasn't afraid to use them. I always behaved myself.
After college, I moved to Virginia Beach and lived for a while with an old fraternity brother. The Bop or the Shag wasn't as predominate here as it was in the Carolinas, but there were certainly lots of young ladies who knew the the dance and appreciated Beach Music.
I wasn't the only one to move to Virginia Beach from the Carolinas. Big George Lineberry moved too. He was still working for Southern Amusement Corporation. I think he might have been one of the owners. He provided the financial backing for a couple of friends of mine to open a bar called The Shack. I pretty much lived in The Shack my first 3 years at the beach. They didn't have a dance floor but they did have a jukebox with Beach Music and lots of young ladies who were willing to go where there was a dance floor. Most of them knew how to do the Carolina Bop or Shag as it were.
Beach Music has spread all over the country and even to Europe. The Bop or the Shag has remained a Regional dance form. The Region being North and South Carolina. But unlike other dance forms, it has remained. There are Beach Music and Shag Festivals and contests to this day in Myrtle Beach, Carolina Beach and Wilmington, North Carolina.
I'm old now and don't Bop any more. But I still love Beach Music. The Classics like "Under the Boardwalk" by the Drifters, "Be Young, Be Foolish, Be Happy" by the Tams, "Ms. Grace" by the Tymes, "Sixty Minute Man" by the Dominoes, "My Girl" by the Temptations, "39-21-40 Shape" by the Showmen, "Hold Back The Night" by the Trammps, "Give Me Just A Little More Time" by Chairman Of The Board, "Ocean Boulevard" by Band Of Oz, and "I Love You 1000 Times" by the Platters are songs that I love. They all remind me of a time when I was young, I was definitely foolish and certainly happy.
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