Talk:History of Lindy Hop

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PlainJane 08:47, 20 April 2006 (UTC) this is only a first draft of the article which will eventually replace the lengthy 'history' sections of the main lindy hop article. I will delete those history sections from that article.

This article needs some serious expanding in the 'Dean Collins and the West Coast' section - I know next to nothing about this period.

Please add comments and feedback - esp let me know if I've taken too great a liberty with such a substantial reworking of the lindy hop article. :)

Contents

[edit] Article title

I moved the article from "Lindy Hop history", as I have with many others - lindy hop is not a proper name, and like jazz, samba, blues etc. should AFAIK not be unnecessarily capitalised. However, I think most articles on the history of things are named on the form "History of X". For now I created a redirect from history of lindy hop, but maybe the article should actually be moved there. // Habj 09:22, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I was going to make a similar comment. Every history article on wikipedia I've seen is "History of ...". I.e. I support a move.--Koeppen 11:49, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Info without a home

This article has some really interesting information that is probably better suited to another article. I wanted to put start a section here in case someone wanted to take these kinds of things out, put it back in, move it, or just have it around. But it's an entire paragraph that doesn't directly pertain to the history of lindy hop. (Maybe "history of jazz music"?)--Koeppen 05:48, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

"The white reworking of black art was echoed in the music of the day, with artists such as Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington working in clubs such as the Cotton Club often required to compose and perform music in shows with decidedly racist overtones. Despite their reluctance to perform this material, artists such as Calloway and Ellington owe much of their success in both black and white communities around the world to their stints with these sorts of establishments, the live broadcasts of these performances and subsequent recording contracts, all of which brought them to wider audiences."

Here's another. It was on its own line and is too vague to be worthwhile. But maybe someone can elaborate on how the end of Prohibition directly affected lindy hoppers?

Prohibition ended in 1933. These and other events sparked a change in a generation of musicians and dancers.


Good idea, Koeppen (and excellent editing of the article - want to help me edit my disseration...? ;) ). PlainJane 09:43, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] World War II Era

Certainly there's more information from this Era, right? In my quest for lindy images, almost all the ones I've been finding are in the 1940s. Was lindy/jitterbug just incredibly mainstream by then?--Will.i.am 00:25, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

One other thing that jitterbuzz article says is that "Lindy Hop passed from the American scene when the music stopped having eight beats per measure (about 1957)." Any idea if that's true?--Will.i.am 09:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


I'm not sure if the two facts are necessarily related (though of course changes in music resulted in changes in dancing). I think it's perhaps more useful to think of lindy as declining in popularity or perhaps lindy as changing to suit the newer music (rock n roll etc), and evolving into a new dance form ('rock n roll'). PlainJane 01:31, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing this article

I've gone through and tidied up some written expression, as well as sorting out some spurious references. I've used Stearns and Stearns for most of this, though Malone has some interesting information to add. I've cut out the bit about cats corner, though I'll add it back in as soon as I can. PlainJane 05:02, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Old photographs

The quest for old lindy images goes on. If anyone wants to see some really cool old (1938-1939) photos of lindy/jitterbug, the LA Public Library has some stellar ones. Just search their photo collection for keword "jitterbug" — lindy won't get you any hits. Unfortunately they do not grant Wikipedia permission to use their images (I already asked, they were nice about saying "No."), but it's a wonderful view into the history of lindy.--Will.i.am 02:00, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

There were some photos of African American dancers taken for that issue of Life magazine that would be great - I think it was Al Minns? I'm not sure. I don't have time to look atm, but if someone else does, it would be neat to have some photos of black dancers doing this African American dance! PlainJane 08:25, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

If they were for Life magazine, there are probably copyrights on those photographs. It will be harder to get permission to put them on Wikipedia. --Cswrye 14:38, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately there's a dearth of photos from Lindy's earliest days (pre-1938) in all the public domain places I've looked and most are still restricted via copyright. What about some screenshots of old movies that featured African American dancers? I thought that some of those might qualify as fair-use, we'd just have to find them.--Will.i.am 04:08, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reference

Does someone have a link for the NCLS workshop interview in 2002? I tried to find it today but only came up with the Jazz transcript interview from 1997.--Will.i.am 20:23, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possible newsreel of Shorty George naming the dance

There is possibly a newsreel that supports George Snowden's story about him naming the dance during a dance marathon. If anyone happens to be nearby the University of South Carolina (in Columbia, SC), you may want to check on the FOX Movietone News video entitled "MVTN C 4980: Couple Dance on Way to Get Marriage License". I believe the film is still not transferred to video, so you'll probably need to call first and request that that be done before it can be viewed. (See the article's notes section for details about this.) –panda (talk) 17:30, 18 November 2007 (UTC)