Designed for Dancing How Midcentury Records Taught America to Dance

When Americans mamboed in the kitchen, waltzed in the living room, polkaed in the pavilion, and tangoed at the club; with glorious, full-color record cover art.

In midcentury America, eager dancers mamboed in the kitchen, waltzed in the living room, Watusied at the nightclub, and polkaed in the pavilion, instructed (and inspired) by dance records. Glorious, full-color record covers encouraged them: Let’s Cha Cha Cha, Dance and Stay Young, Dancing in the Street!, Limbo Party, High Society Twist. In Designed for Dancing, vinyl record aficionados and collectors Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder examine dance records of the 1950s and 1960s as expressions of midcentury culture, identity, fantasy, and desire.
 
Borgerson and Schroeder begin with the record covers—memorable and striking, but largely designed and created by now-forgotten photographers, scenographers, and illustrators—which were central to the way records were conceived, produced, and promoted. Dancing allowed people to sample aspirational lifestyles, whether at the Plaza or in a smoky Parisian café, and to affirm ancestral identities with Irish, Polish, or Greek folk dancing. Dance records featuring ethnic music of variable authenticity and appropriateness invited consumers to dance in the footsteps of the Other with “hot” Latin music, Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and Hawaiian hulas. Bought at a local supermarket, department store, or record shop, and listened to in the privacy of home, midcentury dance records offered instruction in how to dance, how to dress, how to date, and how to discover cool new music—lessons for harmonizing with the rest of postwar America.

Janet Borgerson is Wicklander Fellow at DePaul University. Jonathan Schroeder is William A. Kern Professor in the School of Communication, Rochester Institute of Technology. They are the authors of Designed for Hi-Fi Living: The Vinyl LP in Midcentury America (MIT Press), named a best book of 2017 by the Financial Times and a best music book of 2017 by Vinyl Factory.

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1 Invitation to the Dance 21
2 The Drum 59
3 Let's Learn to Dance 79
4 Time for Dancing 99
5 Folk Dances 117
6 Fashion: Dressed for Dancing 139
7 Calypso 157
8 Latin 175
9 Designed for Dancing 193
10 Let's Go Out! 201
11 Waltz 221
12 Tango 233
13 Rhumba 245
14 Dream Dancing 253
15 Mambo 261
16 Merengue 273
17 Cha-Cha-Cha 283
18 Limbao 303
19 Hula 313
20 Square Dance 327
21 "Set Your Polka Feet A'Dancing" 343
22 Belly Dance 257
23 Mixing it Up: Hybrid Albums 375
24 The Twist 389
25 Dance Craze: Rock and Roll, Discotheque, and Soul 405
26 Dancing over a Lifetime 439
27 Let's Have a Dance Party! 451
Notes 475
Bibliography 507
Index of Records 527
Index 533