Transcription
1965 record releases from James Brown and the Fantastic Johnny C would take advantage of an already growing Soul music dance craze called the Balo. Would you teach us how to do the James Brown [Music] Baloo? Even the Puerto Rican musicians in New York would be influenced to start their own style they called the Latin [Music] bugaloo.
This new bugaloo dance craze, that we will now call Soul bugaloo, would sweep the country and start a trend of dance craze records. When this trend hit the west coast city of Oakland, California, is when the dance began to change. My name is Larry Thompson, aka the Pirate. In 1965, we started a dance group called Pirate and Easy Walkers. We would come out with a skate and then you take a coup steps this way and you shake. And so that's how we came out, and that was our form of the Boogaloo.
Then you had these young guys come in there, and I mean they were moving and wiggling and doing things that we never seen before. It was just the dawning of a new era. But here comes the new style with Jerry Reny, who was a much younger guy, and at that time he was very well known. That was a new style of boo. With the 1967 release of James Brown's "Cold Sweat," the intensity of the funk would come in and change the body movement of this new Oakland Funk Baloo [Music] generation.
My name is Jerry Reny, aka the Worm. I started dance while in junior high school at the age of 13, called the Baloo. I started dancing originally by myself, dancing against quite a few people, really showing people snapshots of my mind. I uh had a friend moved down the street from me that same year. His name was Michael Leno. I later learned about another guy and his name was Albert Milton. Then we started the group One Plus One. The Ditalion that LT did at the time, when I saw it, real smooth and soft. So we took the D ton from Saw and sliding to a stepping with a stor and a bounce and a hop and a skip, bounce, hop. And from that hop, you could go into your hard step. Starting out, we called ourselves Boos. Then as we developed and worked more, we also changed it to bugging. When we were bugging, we meant Baloo in the term of the style of dance. The freeze was a part of a step to, whereas in doing it, we stopped, and that pause was to lead into the or accent the next movement. Worm originally started as a means to do turn in a step. One of the things that really got me start in the area of the Worm, but they had a cartoon on. The cartoon had these superheroes. Ran was this guy who so thin, his body looked like rope. Before he could fly, would always go, "I would always go, I would always go." So that would have been February of '68 that I made Worm a separate step.
That information that was just shown gives you another perspective on what Poppin is and how deep the roots actually go. The power of information is what you want. So now we go back to 1971 for the next evolution of the Oakland Funk bugaloo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't if I'm considered. I'm my name is Charles Paw, better known as Chuck. And I was raised in Oakland. Was 1970 and they was having a dance. So I seen this guy and his name was Jerry Durent doing the Baloo, stopping the air, was doing the puppet, coming through the doors, backsliding. It wasn't just regular slide, it was like he had some kind of like fancy footworks working with it. And he was like, it was Baloo, you know. And so back in 1971, I was influenced by how they move. Most Baloo in Oakland, that was one of the moves that a lot of bugaloos did was swinging your arms, you know, however you want. Right, worming, stopping in the air, boo, and hook it up like this, stopping like they want to, rolling their necks. It was that was just part of the Baloo. Okay.
The Black Messenger group started in U 1972. We start turning the um the bugaloo into a more robotic type of style. So that's how we went from the Baloo to the robot. When you look at buo as as the dance as something soulful, as something where they moving and they they expressing themselves and they throwing their head in it and all that kind of stuff and stuff that he's talking about. Once you add the robot to it, you begin to you begin to use the robot and then the bugalo movement within some type of uh synchronicity. Meaning if I'm roboting and I'm booing, I'm going to time it to the beat. And remember, popping is essentially the dancing robot. We're robots and we're dancing on beat. See, and the hit in between the pop is how we get to the next beat, which is how we get to the next beat, which is how we get to the next beat. This is essentially what popping is. So uh I'm continue with ch cuz it was cats already in Oakland that was robot and like a group called The Aces or so. They was a rot a robot group. And most of the other groups was just um they was either steppers like the Black Resurgence or they was robot. Okay.
This next piece is very important, very important information. OG Chuck is going to explain and we see how it ties into what we do today. Okay, in Oakland, guys was posing, but it was just mainly a stop. They Baloo, you know, when they Boogaloo, it just be stopped. They just stop, right? So The Messengers, we came with this concept of posing hard. We didn't call it popping, we call it posing. We took the soft style of dime stopping, right, and we added to tremble to it. Bam, right, to make it the hard po. Bam, right, bam, to create the type of um style called posing hard. We took the soft style of dime stopping, right, and we added the Trimble to it. Bam, right, to make it the hard pole. Bam, right, bam, to create the type of um style called posing heart. Great information.
Now it's important for you guys to understand that I'm not saying that this is the only evolution of of how uh popping and hitting and everything got started because I'm going to read a quote from Kisso, a very educated uh popper over there in on the East Coast. He uh was very close to Granny and the Robotoids and he brought up a great point. It says uh that uh that Elastic Boy, you can't mention uh the pioneers without mentioning Elastic Boy in Terrible Dawn and uh and uh Elastic Boy from Frisco and Don was from Oakland. Now I don't uh you know, there's more history obviously that I don't know about. Another thing, you know, and me giving you a a educating you on on some of the evolution, however, I'm not educating you on the Bas history. What I'm doing is right now, the uh the popping scene is in chaos because they're looking for uh the roots of this. And what I'm saying is, you can't pinpoint it to one person when it comes to the baby because they all collectively uh put in to create the dance in different time periods and stuff like that. Uh when the the time periods that that that the people started creating, we don't we um we don't know who did what first as far as like what Oakland did and then what San Francisco did and what Philmore did and stuff like that. But you know, eventually it'll all work itself out. The main thing is we know that it didn't come uh we know that a version of popping, which is the electric Baloo style of popping, we know that that came from something else. Got something for you guys. [Music]
So let's try that fast. It's going slow. Bam, right, to make it the hard Pole, right? Bam, F, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam. See, right, to make it the hard P, right? Tremble, pose, pose, hard, pose, hard, faster, pose, pose, pose, hard, right, right, to make it the hard P, right? Let's go. [Music] Faster. Change position. Guess what? [Music]
Now, if this was going down in if this was going down in 1970, between 1972 and 1974, you know, not to drive home the point, but how the they said they created Poppin. You you understand? They created the Baloo style. You know, I don't want to keep harping on him, but uh my my point was, you're seeing some of the evolution of the dance. And then we haven't talked about like Kisso pointed out, Elastic Boy and Don, and there's there's more people. So you guys got to understand how the common sense plays a bit part in uh in unraveling everything. You got to use your common sense about this, really, you do.
These next two names are very, very important to uh popping development and very important to the electric bugalo style and how they develop their style. That's uh Daryl McDal, which is Twisto Flex Dawn, and uh William Green Jr., which is Ticking Will. Pay close attention to Tick and Will and what he [Music] says.
William Green, aka Tick and Wheel. We used to be messing around in the backyard. And Darn came up the name, a Try Lockers. So, you know, people they might have thought we was locking. They before they seen it, if they seen the name, but if they seen it, then they like, what that a locking? What is they doing? Now, there was the first one I seen popping. First, we didn't call it popping. We was just the dance move. After, you know, people start seeing them more, you know, at parties and people start giving them names like, "Me like, he's popping. Like he's ticking." And that's how the names came about. Then we just, that's we stuck with the name. D one say, we don't lock, we pop. It wasn't locking, it was popping. It was a different dance mov. It's my danc. Mostly looked like an exercise. I heard the word creeping when I started creeping. It was at a party and men of the apartments called the uh Villa. I was just doing it and I didn't know. But when I did it that night, people start calling me backslide, like he backsliding and creeping. I'm about 14 years old. Uh, we came up to old man. We had a store called Louis Ke. We got it from an old man that was just when walking in the store and had he had a crooked leg. And this old man was in front of us and a lady had asked him, she asked him, can she help him or something? And he said, "Yeah." It went like this, but his leg was all his leg was crooked and he just went like this, like this to the side and Ste to the counter like this. And me and Darelle was looking and we start laughing at him. When we laugh, we was like, man, that looked like a a move right there, you know? So we start stepping out with it. Cuz he had did like this at the end and we start stepping out. We start calling the old man. And then we caught the old man with the step out. That's how the old man came about right there. Talked to so fast. He just just be in the mirror, just doing, you know, moves like that. He be like, "Oh man, he said, I just look, I just look how this look, you know?" He, I like, "That's cool, man. It's cool." He said, "That's Twisto Flex." Well, when he made the Twisto Flex, he did have a slinky and he used to be playing with it. And that's why he used to, you know, do his his showers like the slinky. Try to do everything that the sneaky did. So he put it on the bed or the stairs and watch it go down, make it go sideways. And he try to make up a move off sleep. So and he basically do it with his body. And so that's where I start calling him Twisto D. The how the Necco Flex came up. I was in this room one day, I was looking in the mirror and I just I was turning my neck like this. And then I turned my shoulders with it. Then I was like, I wonder can I turn my neck and keep my shoulders still? And then turn my neck. Then I did it. And then Don like, man, that's a Necco Flex. Me and Dar used to practice in in his room cuz we should be trying to get ready for the West Coast relays. People from out of town be coming in and they used to have a big party at the convention center and all groups from all over be coming to the convention center and they just like, you know, make big circles and people just be going out, calling each other out and going at it and stuff. So we want we we trying to be ready for people to come out of town and people from Oakland and all over. They used to come down and come to the party after the West Coast relays. Then we went to the park, we at Rodan Park and on the stage messing around. And that's when we met Baloo Sam. My name is Sammy Solomon. So we go there and we see a Trey Locker. Me and Darn went up on the stage and we was up there doing some our steps. And he was just looking at us, you know, we he was just looking at us for a long time. And he finally came on, he said, "Man, he said, man, y'all bad, man." I said, "Why would y'all like to get in a group?" Now, that's me. And we was like, "What? What is y'all?" He told us they have practice at uh Ivy Center. So we was like, "Man, I don't know if we should get with them. We can do our own thing, you know?" So we practice with him the next day. You man say, me and D already had routines and S. They might have had maybe one one or two steps, but they was, you know, just mediocre. It was just regular regular steps. When we got with them, we had with a whole group and do a whole step together. So we show them. And then we used be in there all day trying to show them, you know, how to do it. They be like, "We like, man, come on, man. It's easy. Do it." You know? Oh, it become unison, right? Looking real tight. We not aware of what we actually doing, but it looks neat. Me and Darnell put the popping, the twisting, the Twisto Flex, old man, all that. Me don't put all that in the step. Sam, he was just like a Bo. So we was like, "No, this look better. This will look better." So we was like, "We got to put the twist. You got to put the Twisto Flex in it." And Sam was like, "Yeah, that's clean. You know, I like I like that. Yeah." You know? So we basically, I mean, our moves was already perfected when we met Sam. So when we met Sam, we taught them our style. The guys was great. It's like the style was just totally from here. Sam's style was like way different from our. Booing is way different from popping. It's nothing like. Boo is just like, you know, just moving your body all kind of ways, you know, doing that. That's Boo. And popping is just like moving your muscles. And he seen that, he start putting that with his Boog on. So we all in it heavy. Then all of us would imitate the style. So me, Sam, and Darnell got together. We became Electric Book Boo. Then, you know, we start putting electronic Boogaloo lockers on electronic boooo locker. So now it's only me, Joe Thomas, is Slam Nate and Slide, Darnell McDown, William Green, and PR. We call him Ty. We twisting was going to be the style that we're going to portray now, right? Cuz everybody, we trying to get it all in unisis and everything. So join Nate wasn't too flexible with the style we was doing. They used to do they just slow routines with the robot cuz they could catch. We used to be moving too fast for them. So we did the show at uh at Ivy school. It it turned out all right, you know, the danc is starting to get more noticed now in Fresno. They started getting to really know our names. Electronic Bucklo Lockers, man, they bad. You should have saw then. We got into this talent show at one of our junior high school or talent show. Uh, we got on our Nick baka, our stripy socks, our little white hats on. So we end up winning first place, got a big old trophy. You suggest any contest, we would hear about. We took off from there. We started doing other shows and uh fashion shows. But I was just branching off weekly, going down into Sacramento, San Jose, who was able to start competing in a in a more talent fashion than I was aware of. That grind in the robr kind of theice now came out. They style and got hooked up with the Gong Show. The Bay Area got it all down. Got all down. About a year later, Sam was telling us about a group they was getting together in Long Beach. So we was like, "What? I mean, the the booo is here in F. You know what they mean? Booo in Long Beach." So, you know, he said, "But they don't know how to dance." That's the only problem. He said, "They want us to come down there and show them how to, you know, how to pop in Baloo." My brother Baloo Sam, who he stayed in Fresno when we left. So my dad, you know, he gets a a job in Southern California. I don't left Joe, I don't left Nate, I don't left the whole crew, right? So I moves down there. Long Beach was still locking. They hadn't even seen popping. Oh, we throwing down. Oh, man, I'm Poppin Pete. He he got the fundamental song. They want ask question. Do you know? I want to learn how to dance like that. He said, "Come on over to the house." This is when it was just me, Pete, and then now we incorporating Gary Allen, is SC Scout. And then so dang quite get it. Keep on working with him. So days go by. Finally get it in a rhythmatic type form. Well, it looks sort of good, you know, I mean? So get Boozer, by him being so short, look like a pupp. Put him on some string or something, you know? Start teaching Bo. So he will always speak flimsy in his arms and stuff. Me and Sam and other people, members of the group, Le Boaka, would be practicing. Cre would be like in back looking and doing the routine, learning the things that Sam was teaching. Where other guys were taking a long time to learn a routine, Sid was learning a routine like this. So Sam start noticing that and put in people can see it. So we get on the RTD transfit and going to Hollywood. Got ghetto blaster. So she saw us, she said, "Jeff Cach, it's a production number getting ready to go to Lake Tahoe. And maybe he might want to see y'all." Okay. So she gave us the address. He said, "Yeah, let's see what you got." Put on the music, man. Cut up. Get down. Yeah. Everybody stop. Everybody shock. Now his mouth wide open. It was like, you're higher following the first show at Hara's casino in Lake Tahoe. Jeff Cach asked Sam if he knew of any other dancers he could get. So I called him, got in touch with him, and called him. I said, "William, I said, man, you want to come down here, man? Or want to go on tour with me?" So me and Darnell was like, I know I talked to Darnell, and they going. Darnell was not going to go. When we got down there, it wasn't really like we expected. God, we was having it hard. We was sleeping in the garage and scraping for food. And I mean, this that Mama wouldn't let us sleep in the house. And then plus, we had to teach him how to dance on top of all that. When we got there, they didn't they didn't have no routine or nothing. So me, Sam, and Darnell, we had routines and we had steps. So we taught them our steps. And that's those the steps that we us it in the in the shows. They were Boozer, s PE, got taway, SK, Dan, Darnell, Sam, and me. Jeff Coutz, they he want us to audition for a show. He put know going to be in Chicago. After the audition, he was he sett it down. He's talking to her. He said, "Yeah, he said, I like the lecture book. He said, I only got two words for you. I'm going to make you rich. I'm going to make you famous." When we got with Jeff Coutz, they changed the name to Jeff Coutz Dance Machine, preaching the Electric Boogaloos. See, that's something his that was something he tried to make up. But what not name, we just went for it though. But Darielle, that's when he decided to go back, come back to Fresno cuz he feel they they ain't going to do nothing but try to rob it. So he, I'm going back home. So he didn't even he didn't try to pursue it no more. Jeff Cout when they split the the group up and they wanted half the group to stay in California, half the group to go to Chicago. Me, Sam, and Ski end up going to Chicago. And Pete, Sh, and all the resturant was doing shows in California. This 1978 performance of The Long Beach Electric Boogaloo will be the third time Funk Baloo had been seen on National Television. Ladies and gentlemen, the Jeff Cout [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] dances. Ladies are get we late for a show one night. Dave like a bodyguard manager, the ski got into it. I know I seen him when he snatched him up in the dressing room. Had a booking to go to uh Sydney, Australia. Well, I didn't want to go anyway. I didn't want to go. I think then I get back to LA, man, that's it. I'm get it. I'm through. Jeff Cach would have his assistant talk Sam into performing with the group one more time, presenting Gamee Parker, Popp and Pete, and Sam Solomon of the Dancing Machine doing the Baloo. [Applause] [Music] [Music] J make got a I can get a little crazy sometimes. It's good to try it out, just like a dream in your head. [Music] [Music] Is excited with their new found notoriety from everyone outside of Northern California's Bay Area. The group continues to perform for Jeff Kach as his dancing machine. And with Creep and Sid being the first to backslide on National Television, the only problem is they still have not been introduced as the Electric Baloo. Now we got to open up a show for Bobby Goldboro. Jeff holl me and say something about, I don't want you CH in that routine. I said, "No, I don't want to Dan." Then I think we we weren't even there 24 hours. Gave Sam's ticket back to LA. And then they looked at me since I was Sam's younger brother. They said, "What are you going to do?" I didn't leave because I wanted to dance. Uh, we wasn't getting paid a whole lot of money. But for that reason, we kind of start drifting apart and splitting up. If I we were left, everybody else would have followed, you know, just follow Su. But it didn't happen like then. I wish it did. I I pulled out. P kept going. Somehow Don K got in touch with us and he want to showcase us on television show. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Everything we do is [Music] [Applause] for watch your watch your watch. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause]
So we left that and eventually I just said, forget it. Sam would give up on his dream and live his life out in Fresno. But things weren't so good for Will. One evening in 1982, the Fresno Police were chasing a robber. As they looked over a wall, they saw Will sitting with his girlfriend in her backyard. Assuming he was the perpetrator, the police attacked him and almost beat him to death. Police down here and they jumped on me and messed my kidneys up. And that right there ended my career right there. So I couldn't go back. I had got messed up and Darnell, he didn't want to go back without me. So that ended that right there. And next stand I was on, I ended up on dialysis. So I quit Dancing after that. St. [Music] Uh, come on. Uh, come on. Yeah. [Music]