Carolina Shag Dancing

Some history and a question.

I imagine there are some snickers out there about "Shaggin'". After you get those out of your system (hell, why bother. Keep laughin'.) I'm just curious. My folks are from central North Carolina, and I grew up in South Carolina. Now, there is a dance that everyone I knew learned as a kid, and that was shag dancing. You learned it in SCHOOL. It was the state dance. It was immortalized in SHAG: The Movie, which I watched being filmed. When I moved to Georgia 10 years ago, I brought the knowledge of how to dance the shag with me. And BOY was I surprised to learn not a soul had ever heard of it. Evidently knowledge of it halves for every 50 miles you go from Ocean Drive SC. The beach music bands I thought were huge hits? Regional bands only. The motown hits I thought I knew (Coasters, Drifters, Platters, Four Tops, Temptations, etc)? All the music sounded tinny and too fast (fun fact, shag djs will slow favorite songs down or speed them up slightly so they hit that perfect shaggin' beat...; so everytime I heard this old music it sounded slightly off. When I decided to teach my fiancee how to dance it, I had to send back to my daddy to find a video and a cd of beach music; everything I found in GA in the 'beach music' section was California surf.

So here's the question; does anyone else out there know this dance? To me it is a nice natural companion for an evening of cocktails and Tiki (it's meant to be danced on the beach barefood for cryin out loud). I'm just curious. For that matter, anyone out there in TC-land live in GA and wanna get together for some shag dancing?

Hey Tiki-Atari!

I used to be a big Shag dancer and loved "beach music" (it's just Motown and has NADA to do with surf or God-forbid tiki)), but that's cuz I was going to school in Virginia (Hollins) and that was ALL that we heard/danced to at parties.
Period.
Except this one frat house that listened to The Dead, but they also were big into something else that's probably not hard to guess.

The Shag (that we danced) was simply the jitterbug with the arms moving doubletime. I knew how to jitterbug already, so I taught all the freshmen boys how to do it. They were very grateful, especialy as I could teach them all the cool twists (e.g., the pretzel) and how to dip the girl.

It's a very regional thing, and I daresay in the past? I have no idea. These were late '70's/early '80's for me. Pink and green. Talbots. Gatoring. Grain punch. Preppie coming out your ears. "Til you puked.
shudder

Is it any wonder I tranferred as a sophomore to UT in Austin and hung with the punks?

alice b

Hi! Nice to meet you.

Sounds very regional, as it sounds like you learned to dance it an entirely different way! How cool!
Carolina shag is very much about moving the feet and legs, and there is very little upper body movement. I guess I bring the Shag up here more because there is some (small) degree of overlap betwixt the popularity of the two, what, lifestyles? Interests? Hobbies?

Regardless, thanks! Nice to hear a bit about your experiences.

A good story is always awesome.

Hi T-A, welcome to TC
I live in coastal SC and have lived in SC most of my life so I'm well aware of the shag. Now I maybe putting a foot in my mouth here, but the shag to me has always been an 'old folks' thing. There was a shag club here on Folly Beach that closed down a few years back and I never saw anyone close to my age go in there.

I used to live in North Augusta, SC and there was an annual shag festival in nearby Edgefield,SC. I think it was called something like 'Uncle Tom's Cabin Beach Blast' . It would feature several of the 'big' name beach music bands that you mentioned. It was a huge party, me and my buds would just go because there was beer and girls.

We used to have (maybe still do?) a shag radio station somewhere near here in the low country. "Beach, Blues and Boogie" was/is their slogan.

I'm glad people are still into it, though. I hate to see old traditions fade away.

One thing I do know--the shaggers know how to party!

I think the confusion in the dance is there are variations of Shag...

One is the "Boogie Shag" which is faster, a bit jitterbug, a bit Lindy, more west coast style...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP-1YCJw0cg

Another is the "Carolina Shag" which is much slower and crazy legs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxpXtJm-fDs

type "Shag Dance" into youtube and there's oodles of videos...

It's funny that someone should bring up this subject; only for me, the dancing isn't mysterious at all: the forms are merely those of the popular jazz dance styles from the 1920s-1940s, arguably adopted by white people from black people, and possessing more of a glide and slide, than bounce and bop. The history and progression of the Carolina Beach Music scene is far more interesting, though again hardly mysterious. And it is only called Beach Music because that is where one would hear the music: on jukeboxes at beach joints along the SC Coast.

When I joined MUZAK in December 1999 and the company moved from Seattle to Fort Mill, SC (on the border next to Charlotte, NC), we all thought the Carolina Beach Music Scene was some sort of state surf music scene. After some research (which I had to do for my job), what it all came down to in basic terms was this (I include this link as it sums things up pretty well, albeit leanly):

http://people.cornell.edu/pages/kpl5/Shag_rap.html

Basically, there's really not much to it, as today it is all very convoluted, progressive, and up to individual definition (often based on your generation and where you spent your days 'Shagging').