"The Fuddy Duddy Walk," is the ‘60s dance craze that never was

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/06/the-fuddy-duddy-walk-is-t.html

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I’m going get the Dear Wife and I on a Psycho Billy cover of that, yes we will…

3 AM and the neighborhood ain’t happy…

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" but your kids are going to love this."

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None of these ever caught on in the real world, except the Twist. (And maybe the Teaberry Shuffle a few years later.) Occasionally someone would do a step of the Swim, but ironically. Sid Vicious did bring back the The Freddy (though it was renamed the Pogo).

Shirley Ellis gave no description of the Nitty Gritty in her eponymous song, so Bobby Banas came up with choreography nobody could properly emulate:

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The song could have been a minor hit with better vocals, but they are so shrill and distorted only someone into ‘power electronics’ could dig it.

I’m surprised no mention of Nietzsche’s long association with Neil Young. His arrangement for “Expecting to Fly” more than makes up for the fiasco of “Fuddy Duddy.”

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Performance was a good movie.

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yeah, ok, but how do I do the dance?

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And half the lyrics of Ellis’s “The Clapping Song” are dance steps, despite it not being a “dance craze” song as such. I guess it all averages out.

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I see your “Fuddy Duddy Walk” and raise you one “Lipsi”.

Concocted at the “suggestion” of the central committee to stem the raising tide of rock’n’roll.
Some people support the theory that it was the Lipsi that caused the massive surge of East Germans seeking refuge in “The West” that eventually prompted Walter Ulbrecht to have Erich Honecker build The WallTM.



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Wow, that is really awful. Until today I’d thought that Dschinghis Khan was the all-time nadir of German music.

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Thanks for that! “The Clapping Song” is made of instructions for a schoolyard clapping game (mostly played by girls). Some of the rhymes are fantastic; Shirley Ellis recites two that I remember. “Miss Mary Mack” is another that became the pop song “Walking the Dog” (“Baby’s back, dressed in black…”) And a couple of decades ago I heard some schoolgirls in East New York chanting one about teen pregnancy that included the line “Ooh, ah, lost my bra…” I hope I have that cassette somewhere. If you are ever stuck with bored teenage girls ask if they know any clapping songs.

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