EARLY AMERICAN DANCE IN EASTERN KENTUCKY

PETER ROGERS: An interview with Mr. Charlie Whitaker at his home in Pippa Passes, Kentucky on the 27th of June, 1975. Mr. Whitaker now teaches at Alice Lloyd College, but often returns for square dances in his home community at Carcassonne, Kentucky. First question is how long have you been dancing?

CHARLIE WHITAKER: Nineteen years, once I came to Pine Mountain. I started there first. And before that I done, I just, I guess you’d say I drug through. They’d pull you out and you didn’t know where you were going or what you were doing. But I actually, I guess, really started knowing what I was doing after I came to Pine Mountain. We used to go to pie suppers and there’d be square dancing. Watch it as much as you could without getting drug in. Dance if you had to.

ROGERS: Was that up in your home community?

WHITAKER: Yes, that was at Carcassonne. I went to grade school there. They didn’t have square dancing in the schools at that time, but we had pie suppers, box suppers to raise money for whatever projects they had in mind. They’d have a square dance afterwards. Of course, I had a problem. Dad didn’t approve of dancing, so that would have been the only time I could go anyway, when we went to something else.

ROGERS: He didn’t approve of it for…?

WHITAKER: Religious reasons, Regular Baptist preacher. And a Regular Baptist doesn’t believe in comm…or uh, dancing. Therefore, we were discouraged. Not exactly told we couldn’t, but made to know how he felt.

ROGERS: What were the reasons for that?

WHITAKER: The official reasons, I couldn’t tell you, but I have my theories. I think that most of them went to square dances when they were young and they raised so much hell that they didn’t want their kids to get into the same thing. Such things as moving the well box back four or five foot and have people walk into the wells and all of that type. And drinking and so forth.

ROGERS: Did they ever give any biblical references?

WHITAKER: No, not really. Dad never did. I sincerely believe it was just because of his experiences, fighting and drinking and tricks they pulled on each when they went to the square dances.

ROGERS: What kind of tricks besides the well box?

WHITAKER: Well they’d hide each other’s mules. They had to ride the mules; they didn’t have cars. They’d move the mules, tie them up somewhere where they couldn’t find them. Or loosen their saddle gear, type thing. Not a lot of what you’d call meanness, but quite a few pranks pulling on each other. One thing he always said, everybody was trying to take everybody else’s girl. He didn’t like that too well.

ROGERS: But he does say he used to dance?

WHITAKER: Oh, yes. He used to go to all of it, square dances…

ROGERS: Was that before he became a member of the church?

WHITAKER: Yes.

ROGERS: What occasions did they used to have that he used to go to it?

WHITAKER: Well they had the workings, they’d have a working, raising a house and then they’d dedicate it by having a square dance that night. They work hard in order to get the house up enough to have a floor in it, so they could dance on it. Or get it leveled out so it could be used for dancing. Then they’d have the other type of workings where they’d all get together and hoe corn all day long and then they’d have a dance that night. They’d take down all the beds and move them all into one room and use all the other rooms to dance in.

ROGERS: What other occasions would they have danced on?

WHITAKER: Well, let’s see, a lot of communities, they would gather at different houses each weekend just for dancing purposes. They didn’t have to have a special occasion on those, just the express purpose of getting together. I guess that would take care of television time that we use now.

ROGERS: Who arranged the parties and how would they go about getting people?

WHITAKER: Most of the parties were arranged by the married couples and word of mouth was the way it was spread. And usually a group would get together and they’d go to someone’s house where they knew they would be welcome. And they’d just take up [LAUGHING] and they’d have a dance. And a few lucky enough to have a big house, you got caught quite often. A lot of the houses were so small or so poorly constructed they wouldn’t stand the vibrations from dancing, so they had to get the houses that were well built.

ROGERS: How would people know that there was to be a dance?

WHITAKER: They would spread it, of course, by word of mouth and some people seemed to be the town crier. They seemed to travel around all the time, one place to the other. I guess today we’d call them bums. Wherever they were at mealtime they’d take up and eat and talk and move on and talk somewhere else and then pass it on that way. They seemed to know – Now one way they did it in our community was, they had a traveling doctor. He didn’t have any office; he just went in a circuit like the circuit preachers. He’d holler over, anybody sick? Need a doctor? And everybody knew pretty close to where he would be at a certain time on his circuit and they’d intercept him. And he had all the word. He was the gossip spreader.

ROGERS: Who came to the parties or the dances?

WHITAKER: Usually all of the single people were there and the newly married ones went to a lot of them. And sometimes, unfortunately it would be the male member of the household would get out and carouse around and leave the wife at home with the kids. And I think that was one of the things that we were saying about a while ago, that my dad objected to, was this type of person, who moved into the circuit, you know, just for raising a ruckus and seeing what he could get into.

ROGERS: Would whole families be involved at once or once they had a family would they probably….?

WHITAKER: Well, yes and a lot of these dances the whole family would come, especially at the working – the whole family went to the working type ones. Now the ones on the weekend it was more young folks or middle age people. But when you had a working, everybody went. They’d take turns about babysitting in the back room and letting the kids sleep while they danced. And house raisings was another family affair. And the whole family could take part. It didn’t matter if you was knee high, if you wanted to get in dance, you’d get in and dance.

ROGERS: What proportion of the community would be involved?

WHITAKER: I would say of the community, you’d have to eliminate the ones that belonged to the church. If you went to a dance and they found out about it, of course you were churched or turned out of church, whatever you want to call it. I’d still say it must have been thirty, thirty-five percent of them. And sometimes even the ones that were in the church, if it was not called a dance, could take part.

ROGERS: Was there times when it wasn’t called a dance?

WHITAKER: Yes, play parties. No music. As long as you were singing and playing games.

ROGERS: Was it the same activities exactly or were they…?

WHITAKER: The same activities, same figures, the same, exact, but it wasn’t a dance unless you had the fiddles and so forth why it was play parties games and anyone could do those.

ROGERS: Was there every anytime they did both the play party games and the uh…?

WHITAKER: Almost always there would be, it would be mixed, except for the events when they had the church group with them. They would sing their games, then they’d dance while the musicians rested. They’d sing songs like “Good Bye Girls, We’re Going to Boston”* and let’s see, one of the games they played was “Paw Paw Patch”.** Everybody would get into it and sing. Nobody felt backward about singing.*

ROGERS: Were these games, each of them were a set activity, I mean a certain length of figures?

WHITAKER: Yes, you’d have a, a lot of the play party games would be, you’d have one, two or three in the center of the circle and it was ‘choose your partners’ at a certain place in the song. You choose your partner and swing them and promenade with them and then the one that had started dropped back in the circle and the one that he had chosen go around and choose someone else. And sometimes the game would be like “Bluebird, Bluebird Come in the Window”,*** where they all stayed together and went through until everybody was chosen. And then that way it involved a lot of people going at one time, instead of just the one, two or three that you started out with.

ROGERS: So the games were done at the same time?

WHITAKER: Yeah.

ROGERS: But they were some of the same figures, but in the games they were a set pattern, whereas in the dance…

WHITAKER: It would be any pattern the dancers chose to make, really. Might have say, five or six different figures going at the same time.

ROGERS: In talking about the dancing, how did it start, how would the dance itself start?

WHITAKER: You mean, when they got together how would the dance start?

ROGERS: Oh, first off, let me back up. Let me ask, what name did they use for it? What title?

WHITAKER: Of course, the regular one, they just called it the square dance, but when they had to get around the community to keep from getting disapproval of the community, they were going to have a get-together and play games. That way the founding fathers of the church wouldn’t frown upon them and blast them in the church the next day on Sunday when they went to church.

ROGERS: So when they called it, going to play games, they wouldn’t have the fiddle and they wouldn’t do the square dance and such?

WHITAKER: That’s right. And they knew pretty much which houses they would have the play parties at and which houses they’d have the square dancing at. And when they went to one house they wouldn’t take the musical instruments, because they knew the father of the house or the mother of the house, whichever one might be there, would frown upon the music, but she’d join in with the games if you had the games. And the others they knew they liked music maybe the person that was having it was the main musician. And too, a lot of people would come to the dances simply to get out and ride through the community to see who was having a party and

they’d crash it. It wasn’t exactly crashing because everybody was welcome, but today we would call it “party crashing”.

ROGERS: Okay, the dance, when they had it they called it square dance? They never use the term “running sets” or “set running”?

WHITAKER: They did use the term “set running”…

ROGERS: Set running?

WHITAKER: …as you heard it. Yeah. There would be “set running” at John’s house, for instance.

ROGERS: Would they call it set running more than square dance or would they call it both just as easily or one…?

WHITAKER: Well they’d use it through and through and usually call it set running more than square dancing, especially way back. And then in the later part they started calling it square dancing more than they did set running.

ROGERS: Do you have any idea when they first started calling it square dancing and why?

WHITAKER: No, I don’t really. But I know it was set running in about 1938, it was almost entirely set running. And then by the time the Second World War, ‘45, for instance, it was referred to as square dancing and a lot of your folk dancing had crept in with the square dancing. Have a mixed folk dance, square dance, set running all at the same time. I think the difference in what, when people get the idea of set running and square dancing, that square dancing, you’re referring more to squares, which is not true. But they think of it as making squares and dancing

in squares, where set running means you have a big circle and everybody is running different sets.

ROGERS: You mentioned the war being in between that time. Do you think the war had something to do with the mixing effect?

WHITAKER: It had a lot of effect on the dancing, square dancing in the area, I think, simply because everybody was mixed up from the West. Everybody was more intermingled and when you started having the square dance, all the people had been different places in the United States. You started getting your different steps and your kicks and all this, you know, different mixed up with what we had here in Kentucky as your running set. And Western square dance did creep

into Kentucky quite a bit at that time.

ROGERS: What things would you say crept in or how was it before and what’s changed since?

WHITAKER: Well it was almost entirely a circle dance before and now about every other club you find works some squares, almost entirely the Western squares. And the Western version of square dancing, it has a lot more high stepping, kicking

I’d guess you’d say bouncing and jumping, in it than what we had in a running set, where we had run a smooth pattern, without a lot of throwing of feet in the air and that type of thing. And they put more stress on everybody doing the same thing at the same time than what we had been used to. Where we had been used to I could

start something and you could start something and somebody else start something, the squares, everybody is supposed to be doing the same thing at the same time.

ROGERS: How much of that has crept into…?

WHITAKER: A lot of it has come into places like, Prestonsburg has a Western square dance club. I know they have a couple in Lexington and all around. Small towns are starting to get Western folk dance, I mean not folk dance, square dance. And if you’re not used to Western square dancing, you really get lost in it, if you get with a group who knows what they’re doing.

ROGERS: What effect would it have back in your home community?

WHITAKER: So far it hasn’t had any, because the majority of them in the Carcassonne area are, I’d say the influence is forties on up, forty-year-old on up, has the influence over the type of dancing that is going on. And as long as they have the influence it will stay Kentucky running sets, but if the younger folk that go out to college and if they get into Western square dancing, it could creep back into the community when they start being the “leaders” of the community.

ROGERS: Well, for instance the swing, has that always been done as it is there, like an open hold position?

WHITAKER: Yes, the one that Carcassonne has been done in the hold position with a running step, not the buzz. And I think the buzz step has come from our folk dance, they’re the ones that does that. The buzz….And of course the Western swing does a combination of the buzz and running. It’s a little faster and different swing. And the running swing is shorter than the usual buzz. You turn around once and then you’re ready to go on to something new.

ROGERS: Do you ever remember it being a two-hand swing?

WHITAKER: I can’t remember it being a two-hand swing.

ROGERS: You ever hear anybody talk about it?

WHITAKER: No. Only the young girls and boys that were the age where they knew that they was girls and boys, but they didn’t really know what to do about it did the two-hand swing. They didn’t want to touch them. I don’t remember talking about the two-hand swing in our community, so it must have been before my time that I started to dance.

Addenda

*Going to Boston

Goodbye girls, I’m going to Boston,

Goodbye girls, I’m going to Boston,

Goodbye girls, I’m going to Boston,

Early in the morning.

chorus: Won’t we look pretty in the ballroom?

Won’t we look pretty in the ballroom?

Won’t we look pretty in the ballroom?

Early in the morning.

Saddle up, girls, and let’s go with him, (x3)

Early in the morning.

Out of the way, you’ll get run over, (x3)

Early in the morning.

Swing your partner all the way to Boston, (x3)

Early in the morning.

Johnny, oh Johnny, gonna tell your pappy, (x3)

Early in the morning.

**Way Down Yonder in the Paw-Paw Patch

Where, oh where is pretty little Susie? (or Nellie)
Where, oh where is pretty little Susie?
Where, oh where is pretty little Susie?
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch.

Come on, children, let’s go find her,
Come on, children, let’s go find her,
Come on, children, let’s go find her,
Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch.

***Bluebird, Bluebird

Circle Game

Bluebird, bluebird through my window,
Bluebird, bluebird through my window,
Bluebird, bluebird come through my window,
Oh, Johnny, I am tired.

Take a little girl,
and tap her on the shoulders,
Take a little girl,
and tap her on the shoulders,
Take a little girl,
and tap her on the shoulders,
Oh, Johnny, I am tired!

Bluebird, bluebird through my window,
Bluebird, bluebird through my window,
Bluebird, bluebird come through my window,
Oh, Johnny, I am tired.

Take a little boy,
and tap him on the shoulders,
Take a little boy,
and tap him on the shoulders,
Take a little boy,
and tap him on the shoulders,
Oh, Johnny, I am tired!

Game Instructions

Children stand in a circle holding hands high up in arches (to form the “windows” in the song). One kid is the “Blue Bird” who flies in and out of the arches or “windows”. During the second verse, the “bird” chooses a partner by patting him/her on the shoulder. The second kid then follows holding the 1st kids shoulders while they pass through the “windows”. Then game continues on until all the kids make a chain and there are only 2 children left forming an arch (or “window”. They become the first two bluebirds in the next round.

Document Created by Ladder Survivors, Inc.