This clip may be an old, off-the-screen fuzzy kinescope, but what a performance, what a performance!
DISCUSS YOUR FAVORITE JUKE BOX OLDIES
Contrary to many beliefs, Georgia Gibbs, Kay Starr and The Mc Guire Sisters
were not the first released versions of "Dance With Me, Henry."
Round screen? If you're under 50, here's why: the first CRT's (cathode ray tubes were called "picture tubes"
back then). They were round in the 40's and 50's, cabinets had a square cut out and
cameramen had to be mindful of that for cropping.
RCA developed the first sort of square CRT
in 1956).
As to Kay Starr & The Mc Guire Sister's releases, of course
none of those were the original version, any more than the Crew Cuts' version of "Sh Boom was the original"
Sadly in the 50's, major market radio stations would play the "white" cover versions
of so called "race music" (would you believe Pat Boone singing "Tutti Fruitti"?).
Hank Ballard, who wrote and first recorded "The Twist" long before Chubby Checker,
produced "Dance With Me, Henry: for Etta James back in the mid fifties (Hank is "Henry" in the clip).
It was Alan Freed who stood up to the programming gods at WOR radio in New York and refused
to play cauc cover versions of black artist's records. Freed played The Chords' "Sh Boom"
and The Moonglows'"Goodnight Sweetheart" and mainstreamed what eventually became R&B and Soul,
grandaddy and teacher to today's hip-hop and rap. Freed's no-no: he put his name as writer
for "Sincerely ...he was not.
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