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Thanks for tracking that down, Brian. Very cool of Paul to reply
and give us all the "I was there" perspective. Now, maybe you
could ask Dick Dale if he was the one who first did The Stomp
and Trippin' ;)
Gavin
--- In , "Brian Neal" <
bneal@i...> wrote:
> I was very excited to get this from Paul Johnson (Belairs, et al)
on the
> origins of "The Stomp":
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> Hi Brian -
>
> At the earliest surf dances (summer of '61), not too many of the
new young
> surfers were very sophisticated when it came to dancing. I
don't know just
> how it got started, but somehow they took (en masse) to
simply stomping
> their feet heel-first on the floor - and the louder the better. Since
most
> of them wore huarachi sandals with big horseshoe taps, and
since the dance
> floors were usually wooden (and thus very resonant), a big part
of the
> appeal was to see how much noise they could make
collectively. The pattern
> was generally to stomp on every count of the measure (on one
and two with
> the right foot, then on three and four with the left); the cool look
was to
> do this slightly bent with hands joined behind the back. The
dance floor
> thus looked like a barnyard full of roosters strutting about. And
the noise
> all but drowned out the band.
>
> The "stomp" fad peaked during that summer, and was
succeeded by that other
> noteworthy dance-style of the surfers, "Trippin'" (which may
have been a
> variation of the stomp, as it was similar). This dance required
a bit more
> skill: it entailed pulling one's feet backward and "scraping"
(rather than
> stompimng on) the floor. (Same pattern - right foot on one and
two, left
> foot on three and four...) When trippin', the cool look was to
hold hands
> together up in the air, from side to side opposite where the feet
were doing
> the scraping.
>
> Hope that helps...
>
> - pj
>
> Paul Johnson
> rock instrumentals
>
> e-mail: paul@p...
> website:
> event calendar:
