First came the club conversion period in the Spring of 1979 where all the Disco Clubs went Country. Then "Urban Cowboy" was released in June, 1979. The Summer of 1979 marked Houston's awkward, yet impassioned love affair with Western Dancing. By September of 1979, the Western Swing had conquered our entire city !

To understand how an entire city could invent a new dance form in the space of perhaps four months requires some background information. Western dancing has a strong tradition in Texas that probably dates back to the invention of the fiddle.

The Texas Twostep and the Polka have been around a lot longer than I care to imagine. A third dance also existed. Some people called it Aggie Jitterbug. Others called it Country Swing. Around the rest of the country this form of Swing dancing is known as Street Swing or High School Swing. Aggie Jitterbug as we shall refer to it is the most common form of Swing dancing in existence. It has no specific footwork and does not care what the beat of the music is. The partners go to the ends of their arms, then snap in the other direction. Country Swing was a big part of the Texas Dance Scene in the 70’s because students have told me they either danced it or saw it up at A&M when they were in college.

Early in my dance career as a Disco instructor I taught a primitive partner dance known as the "New Yorker". It was the first Disco partner dance I ever learned. Until the superior Latin Hustle came along and blew the New Yorker out of the water, it was the major Disco partner dance in Houston. One day in early 1978 a man called me on the phone and asked for a private Disco lesson. When I showed my student the New Yorker, he frowned and said he already knew that dance. He had used it in college at the University of Texas to Soul music. Oh.

Despite the awkwardness of the moment, at least I received a useful dance history lesson. This dance had been around a lot longer than Disco. As I asked around, I realized every kid who has ever been interested in partner dancing learns a form of Swing dancing in high school similar to the New Yorker.

Street Swing, New Yorker, Aggie Jitterbug, High School Swing, you name it, does not require dance teachers to learn, just strong arms. What Texas had going for it was a huge love affair with Western music and a strong tradition of Saturday night dances throughout the state in rural communities. Since I was a City Boy, I never knew until then that every kid in the State who lived in a farming community probably knew a form of Aggie Jitterbug. On Saturday nights it is a tradition in many places for parents to take their children dancing with them at local community centers like VFW Halls. These same kids got an education in Twostep, Polka, and Waltz as well that I regret City Boys like me were never exposed to.

When "Saturday Night Fever" came along, the Aggie Jitterbug became the New Yorker. When "Urban Cowboy" came along, the New Yorker became the Aggie Jitterbug. Same dance, same speed, diferent clothes, different music. However until "Urban Cowboy" came along Twostep and Aggie Jitterbug remained two separate dances. That was about to change !

 

Recently I reviewed the dancing in "Urban Cowboy" to help stir my memory for this article. I was amused to see John Travolta dance perhaps the most primitive Waltz in history and tickled to see him lead a Pretzel to the Aggie Jitterbug in an early dance scene. Unfortunately for my purposes the movie used the dancing mostly as background to the rest of the story, so I could only get glimpses. Nevertheless 90% of the couples did Circle Turns to Twostep and Polka. Perhaps one couple in ten added Aggie Jitterbug-style Swingouts and Single Turns to their Twostep, the humble beginnings of Western Swing.

11 minutes before the end of the movie there was a dance contest scene.
All the dancers were quite ordinary until Couple #34 did Double Turns with perhaps the skill of someone taking today's Intermediate Western Swing. Then came the Stars !

In a spotlighted scene that was part of the dance contest, Couple #66 did smooth-as-glass multiple Circle Turns followed by Western Swing Double Turns. Although they only did two moves (Double Turn, Cross the Line, Double Turn) their skill-level was equivalent to someone in our Ghost Town class. In the movie they won the dance contest.

Their dancing was so far superior to anything else shown in the movie it seemed like they might have been beamed in from another planet. Couple 66 danced just as smoothly in 1979 as anyone in 1999. This couple was quite a ways ahead of their time. In my opinion, their 10 seconds of Fame should probably be credited with inspiring the birth of the Western Swing. 

However, these turns did not catch on like Wildfire. It took about four months. For one thing, people did not have access to VCRs. They couldn’t run the scene over and over as we could today. The scene only lasts 10 seconds. How many people are going to go see the movie again and again for 10 seconds of dancing ? My hunch is this scene can only be credited with showing everyone what the possibilities were, but not how to get there.

Now on the floors of Houston’s Western clubs, the men started playing with ways to turn the girl. They would separate from the girl as they traveled around the floor and try some sort of turn. The patterns clearly resembled the Aggie Jitterbug except that the men and women were trying to travel at the same time. These were mostly single turns at first, but a few couples even knew a mysterious double turn pattern.

These were the same turns as Couple 66 in the movie. With the Double Turns, they became the flashiest couple on the floor, but they guarded their secret carefully ! Like a firefly, you could catch a glimpse of their move, but then they disappeared into the crowd. My impression was the couples that the Double Turn couples were more than aware they had something everyone else wanted. When they saw someone watching too closely, they would move to the other side of the floor before they did the turns again. We would watch like a hawk, but none of us were bright enough to find the key.

Watching these Double Turns, one guy said to me, "You know, those turns remind me of Disco !" I smiled as I thought about it. He was right. These turns looked a lot like Disco, except that Disco stayed in one spot while these turns Traveled. Now if we could only figure out how to do them ! I knew a half dozen guys who were trying to be the first to solve the mystery. You could see men experimenting all over the dance floor. Everybody was trying to copy those double turns, but no one was having much luck. Since I was a dance teacher, my friends at the club asked me about those turns as we stood at the railing on scout patrol, but I was just as much in the dark as they were. I watched and wondered in frustration.

 

As the Summer of 79 progressed, the cat was out of the bag. Now that we knew it was possible to add turns to Twostep, we were determined to figure how these other guys had put Disco turns into their Twostep/Polka. Nobody was content to simply go backwards and forwards any longer. Everyone was trying to unlock the mystery of these new turns !

However first we all had to endure the comedy stage. You might see a couple where the girl would backleading a spin. Couples would stop dead in the middle of the floor and start to argue about the right way to do a step. Or we might see some guy cussing up a storm in obvious frustration as he was unable to figure out how to turn his partner and Twostep at the same time. Everybody in the place was confused and the ladies were falling all the time because no one knew what they were doing !

A little perspective might help. Today now that people know how double turns work, the system is so obvious and clear. Yet it might help to understand the dilemma of 1979 better if we compare the situation to 1999. Here at SSQQ in 1999 my Beginning Western Swing classes don’t really get the hang of the dance till the third week even though we explain how it works in the first ten minutes of the first class. The Western Swing is a tricky dance and very few people can learn it just by watching.

The Double Turns take a lot of practice on the ladies’ part and leading the Double Turns well takes an equal amount of practice on the men’s part. So learning Western Swing is no cakewalk even after you know what you are supposed to be doing. It would be like showing a couple from today’s Beginning Twostep the Western Swing for one minute at Practice Night, then with no explanation at all telling them to figure go it out. Now put yourself back in 1979. There were no teachers; there were no guides. It was like a giant riddle for all dancers. We saw it could be done, but darn if we knew how. Confusion ruled the day.

After the movie came out in June, it took about four months for Western Swing to catch on. Slowly but surely more and more couples seemed to be getting it. Each week someone new seemed to have discovered that mysterious way to double turn the girls in time to the music. The next week three more couples had it figured out, the next week six more couples… plus now people were less secretive and starting to share their secrets with others.

By October, 1979, enough people had figured out the key that Critical Mass was reached… It was a Western Swing Explosion ! Now everywhere you looked, men were spinning women !  Houston's Western dance floors became veritable oceans of women double turning this way, that way, any the guy could think to lead. It was a very impressive sight to behold !

For 100 years of Western dancing in Texas women had danced backwards holding belt loops with the man’s arm wrapped like an Anaconda around their neck. If she was lucky, maybe the guy would lead a Circle Turn. Here in Houston those days were gone forever. In the space of just four short months the entire city’s style of dancing changed ! Western Swing had been created before our very eyes.