Land of 1,000 Dances

    The first million-selling single in jazz came, not in the '30s, '40s or '50s when jazz was king but in the '60s when rock'n'roll was running things. It was "The Sidewinder" by Lee Morgan. You've heard it. Even if you haven't heard it, you've heard it. There was even a Mystery Science Theater 3000 skit about it. Google is being decidedly unhelpful, but it went something like, "You know that song, it's the one Chip Douglas was dancing to in the malt shop. It's the one Greg Brady was shuffling to by the jukebox." "The Sidewinder," as I say, was a monster hit and spawned many imitations, mostly also from Blue Note Records, presumably as ordered by Alfred Lion.
    I have one, "The Turnaround" by Hank Mobley. It's more obviously a dance number than was Morgan's and the title sounds much more like the name of the dance. And this got me wondering: which came first in the '60s, the dance or the related song? Obviously, the phenomenon goes back for ages, from the Bunny Hop to the Lindy Hop and probably back through waltzes, quadrilles and on and on. But as a mass marketing phenomenon, there was no time like the '60s because there had never been that many young people. I figure Chubby Checker made a record and a dance called The Twist and the flood gates opened. But for all I know the dance came first; hell, for all I know, Rock Around The Clock was the name of a dance.
    I'm blithering on and on, but what I was really trying to get to was where do you find the dance in a jazz number? The beat is usually a lot more complicated than in rock. I'm assuming that somebody at Blue Note was going around devising a dance, coming up with a name, and then asking the guys to come up with a number with that title. But hell, those musicians have been playing in clubs all their lives and know what people dance to. Maybe they just come up with a title that sounds like a dance and hope that the kids do the rest. Now I go look it up and of course find out that there was never a dance called the Sidewinder or the Turnaround. It still struck me as fun speculation, though.