KCRW’s acclaimed music documentary podcast, Lost Notes, returns for its fourth season. Co-hosts Novena Carmel (KCRW) and Michael Barnes (KCRW / KPFK / Artform Radio) guide you through eight wildly different and deeply human stories, each set against the kaleidoscopic backdrop of LA’s soul and R&B scene of the 1950s-1970s. Support KCRW’s original programming like Lost Notes by donating or becoming a member.
Lost Notes takes a dance break this week, as we turn our attention away from stages and studios to the streets of LA. We’ll talk about dances like the Slauson Shuffle and the Campbell Lock, and how they made the leap from tight-knit local communities to stages and screens across America. What’s lost – and what’s found – when a regional dance suddenly belongs to the world?
Novena Carmel
It’s January 11, 1964. And on tonight’s episode of American Bandstand, Dick Clark has enlisted his panel of teenage tastemakers to give their verdict on a record: “Slauson Shuffletime.” It’s by a new artist from Los Angeles named Round Robin. And none of these kids know it yet, but this is a dance that’s about to take teenage America by storm … at least in Southern California.
Michael Barnes
As you might have guessed, that dance is the Slauson Shuffle. And if you’ve never heard of it before this episode, we’re not going to hold it against you. The Slauson is a perfect example of a regional social dance that only existed in a very specific time and place … at least, for most folks. Nowadays, dances can slingshot around the world in the time it takes for a video to finish uploading to the internet. But back in the day, it wasn’t necessarily true that a kid from Detroit would know the dances from the Bronx, or that a kid in Atlanta could show you the latest moves out of Chicago.
Novena Carmel
But if there was any great equalizer in youth dance culture at the dawn of the ‘60s, it was American Bandstand. Dick Clark’s TV show was one of the few places where kids across the nation could pick up on what was happening everywhere else. But the Slauson wasn’t your average everyday dance.
Michael Barnes
No, indeed it was not. The true origins of the Slauson were undoubtedly a mystery to those kids on American Bandstand. But it’s a story that actually begins in South Los Angeles … and it involves neighborhood pride, holding space against a hostile world, and a series of simple moves that bound a whole community of kids to one another.
Novena Carmel
In other words, it’s a perfect story for us to talk about! So let’s wind it back: How exactly did the Slauson Shuffle get from the streets of South LA to the set of American Bandstand?
South LA in the 1950s, showing the Slausons’ territory. Map by David C. Hoerlein, used with permission of Temple University Press.
Michael Barnes
Well, to answer that question, we have to take a trip back to the source: more specifically, the Florence-Firestone neighborhood of South LA, just east of the 110 freeway. In the early 1960s, it was home to the Slausons Street Club, also known simply as the Slausons. They were a neighborhood crew that had their homebase in Slauson Park, at 62nd and Hoover, which is now called Bethune Park. The neighborhood had a high school, Fremont High, and a rollerskating rink, the Savoy – both of which played an important role in the birth of the Slauson Shuffle.
Novena Carmel
We talked to Bird Batani-Khalfani, one of the original Slausons, to tell us how it all went down. Now, he says that kids from the high school would hang out on open skate nights at the Savoy, which was right on Central Avenue near 78th Street. If you didn’t grow up with a roller skate night in your town, this was pretty much the place to hear the latest dance music and to hang out with your friends. And, of course, many of those kids were also members of the Slausons. One night in 1960, a young guy named Tommy Hughes was showing off a new skating move he’d invented, along with another friend named David Arnold. This move went so perfectly to the music. Hughes would lift his right leg off the ground and kick it out to his side, and then swivel his left leg to push forward on the beat.
Michael Barnes
Tommy and David called their new move the 80s Shuffle, after the street numbers where they grew up. But Bird reminded them that they were in Slausons territory — and if they were going to invent a new dance there, they’d better call it the Slauson Shuffle instead. Needless to say, Tommy and David were persuaded to go with the name change … and that was how it began.
Novena Carmel
As a social dance, the Slauson Shuffle had everything going for it. First of all, it was incredibly easy to do: just a sweep of the right leg and a tap of the left foot. But it’s also important to think about how and where it evolved. This was still 1960, a time when youth of color were severely constrained in their choices around how and where they could socialize safely in Los Angeles.
1960 advertisement for the Savoy skating rink. Courtesy LA Sentinel archives.
Michael Barnes
And the Savoy was the social epicenter of this corner of South LA — not only for the kids from Florence-Firestone, of course, but all the neighboring communities as well. The rink was owned by an older Black couple, the Crenshaws, who were absolutely set on maintaining a safe environment for their kids, with no fighting, and not even any cursing, allowed inside the Savoy’s doors. For just seventy cents, a teenager could spend their evenings and weekends “skating Savoy” with all their friends, in what we might call now a “safe space.”
Novena Carmel
And you can totally picture those kids, with all of their movement and adrenaline, and the pressure and chaos of the outside world held at bay … even if only for a few beautiful hours. Like all social dances, the Slauson Shuffle grew out of a subculture – in this case, the Slauson Street Club.
But before long, it was adopted as a mark of community by everyone growing up in, as they called it, “Slaus Angeles, Villa Fornia.”
Members of the Slausons in front of the former Savoy Skating Rink building, mid-1960s. Photo by Frenchee Guliex, used with permission of Temple University Press.
Michael Barnes
Among the many teens skating the Slauson that first summer was a kid from Watts named George Lloyd, Jr., who was a student at Fremont High. By age 16, he’d already put out his first single as part of a duo named George and Gene. He was also a regular at the Savoy and a friend of the Slausons, including Bird. And he remembers just how quickly the dance spread among the kids in that community.
Novena Carmel
Of course, it didn’t take long for some of them to ditch the skates altogether and invent a version of the Slauson that they could do on solid ground, with that same sweep of the leg and the tap of the foot. That move became so popular that more folks were doing it without skates. And from then on, any time there was a house party in the neighborhood, someone would break out that Slauson Shuffle.
Michael Barnes
But, of course, what is a dance without a proper soundtrack? The first person to write a Slauson song was a guy named Don Julian. He was the writer and musician behind a popular local group called the Meadowlarks. And he was also a proud alumnus of Fremont High. Julian wrote an instrumental called “Slauson Shuffle,” which he released under the Meadowlarks’ name on Dynamite Records in early 1963.
And as the Slauson gained popularity, others followed suit: that same year, a Mexican-American kid from East LA named Max Uballez wrote his own “Slauson Shuffle” for his group, The Romancers — and that recording became a landmark of Pachuco soul.
Novena Carmel
At the same time, this was a moment when novelty dance records were at the peak of their popularity in the broader culture — I’m thinking of massive hits like “The Twist,” “Mashed Potato Time,” “The Loco-Motion,” and “The Monkey Time,” among others. George Lloyd remembers that music-industry types were regularly scouting the clubs and teen centers of Los Angeles looking for the next big dance sensation. So, of course, one night a record-label scout dropped in and saw the rink packed with teenagers doing the Slauson.
Michael Barnes
The scout went back to his boss, Bob Krasnow, who ran a record label called Domain. Krasnow hired songwriters Tony Sepe and Martin Brooks to cook up a dance number, which they called “Do the Slauson.” It was arranged by Perry Botkin, Jr., who would later produce one of the most sampled breaks in hip-hop history with the song “Apache” by the Incredible Bongo Band. Botkin even brought in Darlene Love and the Blossoms to handle backup vocals. All they needed now was a lead singer.
Novena Carmel
Which is when George Lloyd showed up on their doorstep. He was fishing around for a deal for his own group, the Parlays. Bob Krasnow looked at these guys and decided he was going to audition the whole band to see if one of them might become the singer of “Do the Slauson.” In the end, George got the gig – he thinks it’s because he had the cleanest diction of all the boys.
Michael Barnes
…which is another way of saying that he sounded the least, shall we say, stereotypically Black.
Novena Carmel
Right. So, when Lloyd got the call that he’d been chosen, the rest of the band quit. Krasnow and his team decided he needed a catchier name, too … so they made him Round Robin. And Darlene and the Blossoms became the Parlays. Forget those other guys!
Michael Barnes
Now that they had their singer, and a finished single, Krasnow pulled a personal connection with a local TV personality, Lloyd Thaxton, to premiere the song on Thaxton’s weekly teen dance show, with the oh-so-creatively-titled name of The Lloyd Thaxton Show. And the next morning, his office was reportedly flooded with calls about the song. So Krasnow signed Round Robin to a deal, and released “Do the Slauson” on Domain in October of 1963. And, of course, as is always the case, a slew of covers and knockoffs followed. Groups including the Olympics, the Cornells, and the Hollywood Allstars released their own Slauson Shuffle songs around that same time. But none of these songs really made an impact – the Slauson was still just a regional thing.
Novena Carmel
I have an interesting side note related to that. The B-side of “Do the Slauson” was an instrumental called “Slauson Shuffletime,” which of course we mentioned earlier. Well, another Fremont High boy named Bobby Relf heard the song, and was inspired to write a new number with his partner, Earl Nelson. But Bob & Earl, as they called themselves, didn’t want their song to have such a specific tie to LA. They worried that no one else across the country would know what a Slauson was. So they went for a neighborhood with a little more name recognition, and called it “Harlem Shuffle” instead. And that really did the trick: “Harlem Shuffle” broke into the Hot 100 before the end of the year, and peaked at #44 in February of 1964. And, of course, it’s gone on to become an absolute classic of ‘60s soul.
Michael Barnes
And as “Harlem Shuffle” was climbing the charts, the Slauson Shuffle was slowly picking up steam on its own. Somehow the Slauson did make its way to Dick Clark’s people. But they chose the B-side instrumental, “Slauson Shuffletime,” for American Bandstand’s “Record Review” segment on January 11, 1964. The kids, they weren’t really having it, especially not this 16-year-old from Montreal named Jerry.
Jerry from Montreal: I gave it a 60.
Dick Clark: Why? You rated it low.
Jerry: Uh … I don’t think that it will make it.
Michael Barnes
Dang Jerry, a 60: that is a D-minus … which is a failing grade, folks!
Novena Carmel
And the funny thing is, when they play the record, the kids on the show aren’t actually doing the Slauson. American Bandstand was still being taped in Philadelphia at this point, which is why Dick Clark says in the show that the dance “hasn’t reached us yet.” The actual Slauson Shuffle didn’t appear on the show for four more months, until May 30th — by which time Clark is proclaiming it “the biggest dance of the year.”
Michael Barnes
And this time, Round Robin appears in person, dancing the Slauson to his latest single, “Kick That Little Foot, Sally Ann” - which was written and produced by a powerhouse team, including songwriter P.F. Sloan, arranger Jack Nitzche, Darlene and the Blossoms back again on vocals, and the legendary Wrecking Crew as the studio band. As the song kicks in, the studio floor is overtaken by a wave of white kids, who rush in to do their own versions of the Slauson.
Novena Carmel
Later in that same episode of American Bandstand, the Slauson Shuffle appears again, as part of a segment called the Spotlight Dance. But this time, Clark says the kids are going to do an “improvisation on the Slauson.”
Michael Barnes
…oh no…
Novena Carmel
…oh yes. Within the span of a single episode, you see that the kids are already putting their own spin on the dance. And the soundtrack to this segment isn’t Round Robin – it’s a song called “Romeo and Juliet” by a white doo-wop group from Detroit, the Reflections. So already the whole context around the Slauson is changing – y’know, just some good old fashioned cultural appropriation.
Michael Barnes
I’d agree with you. But Bird says that the Slausons were mostly amused by the sight of all those white, middle-class kids doing their dance on TV. But once it appeared on American Bandstand, the Slauson belonged to the world.
Novena Carmel
Round Robin worked the Slauson as long as he could — including a few more singles and an album called Round Robin’s Slauson Party. This lasted at least until January of 1965, when he performed “Do the Slauson” on Hollywood A-Go-Go. And the seasons were changing in youth culture, as they tend to do.
Michael Barnes
But, the Slauson never completely went away. As we fast forward a little bit to 1969, a teenager from South LA named Don Campbell is studying for a commercial art degree at Los Angeles Trade Technical College. Campbell spends his free time hanging out by the jukebox and sketching his classmates while they do dances like the Funky Chicken and the Robot Shuffle and — yes — the Slauson.
Novena Carmel
Campbell himself was an athletic kid, and he ran on the track team for Trade Tech. But he never thought of himself as a dancer, and he certainly didn’t think of himself as a funky chicken. One day after a track meet, one of his fellow runners decided to show Campbell a few moves. And, by all accounts, he was an awkward student … but he eventually got over his nerves enough to perform at a dance in the school cafeteria.
Michael Barnes
But in the moment, Campbell couldn’t quite get out of his own head: When he needed to flow, he’d freeze. When he needed to be loose, he’d lock. A popular dancer at school named Sam Williams took Campbell under his wing, and, over time, they transformed Campbell’s shortcomings into a whole new mode of personal expression. Campbell worked his moves into a dance vernacular which he came to refer to as “locking.”
Novena Carmel
And, much like the Slauson evolved from its roots in the Slauson Street Club, “locking” also grew into its own style. Don took on a nickname after his dance — “Campbellock.” And he and Williams began entering dance contests all over town, hanging out at popular spots like Maverick’s Flat in Leimert Park. Pretty soon, Campbell was so notorious that his competitors would often forfeit the contest to him rather than be humiliated on the floor.
Michael Barnes
Meanwhile, a tiny line item appeared in the August 12, 1971 edition of the LA Sentinel, buried in a wall of entertainment gossip. It read: “They’re ready to begin taping a weekly TV show, ‘Soul Train,’ here … It will be syndicated nationally.”
Novena Carmel
A local woman named Pam Brown had been hired as Soul Train’s dance coordinator. She’d been serving as the LA City Recreation Director since 1964. When Soul Train came knocking, she was the manager of the Denker Recreation Center, a popular teen hangout spot at the corner of Western and Normandie in LA’s West Adams neighborhood.
Michael Barnes
Brown had done some talent scouting for television before. So she had the advantage of being a familiar face to kids around LA. She told the Soul Train team that she had three locations where she could find all the talent she needed for the show. Denker Recreation Center was one of the spots. Another was Locke High School – which was relatively new, having opened in 1967, but already had a reputation because of its performing arts program. And the last was Maverick’s Flat – the so-called “Apollo Theater of Los Angeles” – which technically was a venue for adults, but the most talented neighborhood kids had found their way onto its dancefloor. All three shared a common thread as places where communities came together organically to show off and share their moves.
Novena Carmel
At its core, Soul Train understood the importance of social dance. The show started as a regional phenomenon, beginning as an afternoon program in Chicago on local station WCIU in 1970. And, for a few years, the show’s founder and presenter, Don Cornelius, continued to produce a local Chicago version of the show, in addition to the L.A. production. But the move to LA signaled a broader reach: not just in terms of its audience, but for the variety of dances and perspectives the show would represent.
Michael Barnes
When Pam Brown saw Campbellock and his friends doing their thing at Maverick’s Flat, she knew they were exactly what Soul Train was looking for. Of course, she wanted kids who could do the Slauson and the Robot and all the latest dances. But she was also looking for folks who brought their own unique style and flavor to how they moved.
Novena Carmel
Few people understood that assignment better than Damita Jo Freeman. She grew up in LA and won a ballet scholarship at eight years old. But although she excelled in her training, it became clear to her that she wasn’t being considered for the same opportunities as her white classmates.
So when she started hitting Maverick’s Flat and other dance spots around town, she felt she’d finally found her community. Also, her dance training made her fearless in a club environment. One Thursday night at Maverick’s Flat, she saw Campbell out doing his thing. And she studied his moves from a distance with a dancer’s eye. The very next night, she saw him again at a club called the Climax. And this time, she walked up and matched him move-for-move on the dance floor. And they became fast friends after that.
Michael Barnes
Freeman left town for a few weeks for a dance performance. But when she came back to Maverick’s a month later, Pam Brown happened to be there. Brown extended the invitation to both Campbell and Freeman to audition for this new thing called Soul Train. At first, Damita Jo didn’t understand that it was a TV show - she thought it was weird that she was being asked to audition to go to a new club. But they showed up at Denker Recreation Center at 7am that Friday to strut their stuff for Don Cornelius and the show’s production manager, Tom Kuhn. And the next week, Freeman and Campbell taped their first appearance together, stealing camera time behind Thelma Houston as she performed “Save the Country” on December 4, 1971.
Novena Carmel
Campbell and Freeman were two perfectly balanced sides of the coin:
He was the accidental innovator whose moves evolved out of his natural idiosyncrasies. She was the former ballerina who combined technical mastery with absolute freedom. And between them, they showed the range of possibilities of social dance. There’s a clip from a Soul Train episode on YouTube where you can watch them performing a brief freestyle to the Temptations’ “Superstar.” And with incredible fluency, they blend together popular dance moves like the Breakdown, the Rubber Band, and the Campbellock – all in under a minute.
Michael Barnes
The video showcases their own talents and musicality as dancers, but it also shows how versatile dance itself can be. You can break it down and put it back together in new ways and no two people will do it exactly the same. One person might cop another person’s move, which then might catch on with somebody else. So this very individual form of expression actually becomes a communal one. And that’s true whether it happens in a community center or a television studio.
Novena Carmel
…Or a roller rink.
Michael Barnes
…Or in a family room.
Novena Carmel
And that’s why the “Soul Train line,” in particular, has attained legendary status as a time in the show reserved for dancers to showcase their individual moves. It’s a moment of congregation for folks on the set, but it also connects to the viewers at home, who themselves might get up and dance and have their very own Soul Train line in their family rooms at the same time.
Michael Barnes
Yeah, it was a profound moment of connection — not just between the performers and the audience, but between the people sharing that moment among themselves. And that greater family of Soul Train viewers out in the world developed their own traditions and rituals around the show. And although Don Cornelius created the conditions for this community to come into being, the credit is really due to the dancers – like Campbell, Freeman, and the many, many others who shared the floor.
Novena Carmel
Shortly after his debut on Soul Train, Campbell met Sonny Craver, a musician and record label owner originally from Columbus, Ohio. Craver had spotted Campbell out in the clubs, but also knew that he was making a splash on Soul Train. Craver presented him with an instrumental track he’d been working on, and proposed that they work it up as a single. And in February of 1972, Craver’s label released “Campbell Lock,” credited to Don ’Soul Train’ Campbell.
Michael Barnes
Campbell then recruited some of his buddies from Maverick’s to form a dance crew, The Campbell Lock Dancers, and they hit the road to promote the single. Despite getting some regional airplay, the single didn’t really make waves on the charts … but, like “Do the Slauson,” it did give the dance a little bump of exposure outside of LA. And speaking of exposure, the Lockers and a whole slew of LA youth were featured in the Wattstax film of the legendary concert from 1972. Just imagine what that must have been like for those LA folks seeing themselves on the big screen!
Novena Carmel
By the time 1973 rolled around, Soul Train was firing on all cylinders, with four million viewers a week. Don Cornelius and his crew had a bona fide hit on their hands – due in no small part to the work that dancers like Campbell and Freeman were putting into the show. But that same year, our old friend Dick Clark came back into the picture. It turns out that Soul Train’s success had Clark feeling a little threatened – and not just by the show’s rampant popularity, which was regularly eating into his ratings.
Michael Barnes
So, in March 1973, Clark rolled out a new show called Soul Unlimited. He hired Buster Jones, a DJ from LA radio station KGFJ, to serve as his own Don Cornelius. He even poached some of the Soul Train dancers – though, in fairness, on Clark’s show, they were probably making some actual money, compared to the zero dollars they were getting from Don Cornelius. But Clark’s boldest move was going after the legendary Clarence Avant, a man known as “The Black Godfather” in the music industry for his incredible business acumen and his dedication to Black advancement in the field.
Novena Carmel
But Avant had been a loyal backer of Soul Train behind the scenes, and Clark’s attempt to buy him over to his side outraged Don Cornelius more than anything else. For one thing, Soul Train was a syndicated show, and relied on individual stations to support its production. Whereas Clark had launched Soul Unlimited with all the resources of a major network. But Clark’s most fatal flaw was his ignorance of the culture that had built up around Soul Train. Even after only a few years, Soul Train was more than just a television show. It was a community that included both ordinary viewers and major cultural figures like Jesse Jackson, who used their platform to call for a boycott against Soul Unlimited.
Michael Barnes
Dick Clark however, would not be dissuaded. In an interview with Rolling Stone’s Ben Fong-Torres, he said the following, and I quote: “I don’t dig black people not liking white people. I’ve been seeing too much of that for too long already.” In the same interview, he also accused Cornelius of “ghetto paranoia.”
Novena Carmel
No he didn’t!
Michael Barness
Yes he did. It’s quoted. But Don Cornelius’s old friend Clarence Avant dealt the final blow to Soul Unlimited. He went directly to ABC’s chairman and president to have words about Clark’s new show. And only four months after its debut, Soul Unlimited was canceled in June of 1973.
Novena Carmel
While all that was going on, Don Cornelius fired Don Campbell from Soul Train after a long battle with the producers for compensation and better conditions for the dancers. But fate works in strange ways: Almost immediately, Campbell got a call from a friend named Toni Basil. She got her start on the TV show Shindig! as a go-go dancer in the ‘60s. But over the past decade, she’d carved out a distinguished career as a dancer and choreographer. Like so many others, she first met Campbell in the clubs, and had learned Campbellocking from him. But now she was calling with a gig … with Dick Clark’s production company.
Michael Barnes
Clark’s team was producing a TV special for ABC starring the singer Roberta Flack, and they wanted a team of dancers to perform as part of the show. They originally tried to get Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theater, but Clark’s producers couldn’t work out a deal with Ailey’s union. So Campbell got the Campbell Lock Dancers back together, now performing as the Campbellockers. The special aired on ABC in June of 1973 … and from there, the Campbellockers went stratospheric. They appeared on the Carol Burnett Show, the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, the Oscars, the Grammys, and even an early, early episode of Saturday Night Live. At some point, they shortened their name again - to just the Lockers - and even came back to Soul Train for a victory lap in 1975, and again in 1976.
Novena Carmel
Damita Jo Freeman also went on to work with Dick Clark, and became a regular on American Bandstand and on many of Clark’s other projects for decades to come. In 1978, she was a featured judge on a couples’ dance show called Le Disco, which was produced by Clark. That same year, she appeared on Broadway in a short-lived rock musical called Platinum. And she had an acting role in the 1980 Goldie Hawn comedy, Private Benjamin.
Michael Barnes
And from there, her dance career explodes. She choreographed the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. And her list of collaborators through the ‘80s is like a Who’s Who of R&B and Soul: James Brown, Diana Ross, Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie, The Pointer Sisters, The Commodores, Smokey Robinson, and more. And in 2023, she published a book about her experiences called Are You That Girl on Soul Train?
Novena Carmel
The original Lockers disbanded in 1977, but many of them went on to have enormous success outside of the group. Founding member Fred Berry adapted his Lockers persona of Mr. Penguin to become the character Rerun on ABC’s sitcom, What’s Happening!! Adolfo Quiñones, also known as Shabba Doo, took a star turn in the 1984 film Breakin’, and went on to become a choreographer for Madonna, Lionel Richie, and Michael Jackson. And outside of her decades-long career in dance, Toni Basil will be immortalized for her 1982 new-wave hit, “Mickey.”
Michael Barnes
Campbell continued working for the rest of his life, both with and without the Lockers. And even up until his death in 2020, Campbell continued to stress the importance of individual expression in the dance he pioneered. He had a philosophy called ‘The Campbellock Essence,’ which contains some advice on the nature of being a Locker. Part of it reads: “Locking must be unified with the personality of the dancer. That’s what differentiates you from everyone else: your creativity, skills, and connection to the music.”
Novena Carmel
And although it was originally named after him, Campbell always refuted the idea that he owned locking. It’s the same way that the Slauson Shuffle bears the namesake of its crew, but ultimately had many collaborators and contributors, from the kids roller skating and dancing at the Savoy, to Round Robin, and on down the Soul Train line.
Michael Barnes
And if we think about the present day, the internet and social media have amplified that process of transmission, where dances can now spread from local to global in an instant. Modern-day teachers and practitioners like Dr. Shamell Bell are exploring ways that social dance can be used to heal collective trauma: how dance acts as a form of holding space, much like the Crenshaws held space for those kids at the Savoy in the early 1960s. As Dr. Bell wrote in 2019: “We can become the lighthouses that show others the way.”
Novena Carmel
And whether you’re waacking, Krumping, popping, locking, doing the Robot, or throwing it all the way back to the Slauson … it’s always good to know the moves, but also essential to bring your own flavor and your own self to the floor. And the next time you’re out getting down, take a moment to thank everyone who came before. From the streets of Florence-Firestone to the cafeterias of Trade Tech, dance is a language that speaks down the generations.
Michael Barnes
And speaking of generations … and Florence-Firestone … for most folks, the Slauson faded into memory before the 1960s had even ended. But every year, to this day, the former members of the Slauson Street Club get together for a family reunion. And without fail, the Slausons and their descendants fall in line to do the Slauson Shuffle to the strains of their favorite song. Can you guess what their favorite song is, Novena?
Novena Carmel
Ooh! “Do the Slauson?”
Michael Barnes
…Nope.
Novena Carmel
“Slauson Shuffletime?”
Michael Barnes
Nah…
Novena Carmel
“Slauson Shuffle?” No? I give up!
Michael Barnes
You’d never have guessed it: “Paradise” by the Temptations!
Novena Carmel
Such a good song! Perfect to close us out, by the way. Such a beautiful reminder of how dance connects us not only to ourselves, but to one another, across generations, and of course, to the music as well! So go out, catch a groove, go with the flow, and never, ever stop dancing!
Michael Barnes
Never, ever stop dancing, people!
Lost Notes is a KCRW Original Production. It’s made by Michael Barnes, Ashlea Brown, Novena Carmel, Melissa Dueñas, and Myke Dodge Weiskopf. Special thanks to Gina Delvac, Jennifer Ferro, Ray Guarna, Nathalie Hill, Anne Litt, Phil Richards, Arnie Seipel, Desmond Taylor, and Anthony Valadez.
Extra-special thanks this week to Dr. Shamell Bell, Bird Batani-Khalfani, and Round Robin, whose generosity with their time and experience made this episode possible. Thanks also to Naomi Bragin, Ericka Blount Danois, Nelson George, Domenic Priore, John C. Quicker, and Daniel Widener for their extensive scholarship.
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