Eclectic Company: Life's A Beach

When the summer starts rolling in in Louisiana, it's time to head for a body of water to offset the hazy heat and humidity with a reviving breeze, a fast boat ride, or even a swim. I for one am looking forward to many lazy days lying around the pool, umbrella drink in hand, boombox gently pulsing the music of summer oldies on 92.9-FM The Lake, with my copy of War and Peace handy, just in case I'm awake long enough to actually focus on a page or two. And I will definitely make it out to area beaches, maybe even to kayak or canoe on the lake or take a party barge picnic trip up the river. But this year, I'm also planning a vacation to the Myrtle Beach, South Carolina shoreline, so I can finally hear and dance to Beach Music in its natural habitat.

You may not have known what it was called when you were listening to it, but Beach Music is the definitive sound of the American summer: Songs like "My Girl," by The Temptations, "Under The Boardwalk," by The Drifters, and "(I'm A) Girl Watcher," by the O'Kaysions are all Beach Music top 100 hits. Traditionally, the term Beach Music referred to R&B, and was popularized starting in the racially segregated 1940s and 1950s out at southeast coast beach clubs from Virginia to South Carolina, where white audiences could dance "the shag" — a slow version of the jitterbug — to the music of the black R&B bands who played there.

You'll know the names of some of the artists and groups from the formative years of this genre, whose minor and regional hits did make it onto the airwaves, including Clifford Curry, (known as the 'King of Beach Music'), Artie Shaw, Wynonie Harris, Ruth Brown, Little Willie John, The Drifters, Clyde McPhatter, Billy Ward and His Dominoes, Hank Ballard, Maurice Williams and The Zodiacs, The Tams, The Tymes, The 5 Royales, The Coasters, Fats Domino, Solomon Burke, Sam Cooke, The Platters, The Four Tops, Louis Prima, Big Joe Turner, Wilson Pickett, Clarence Carter, Dinah Washington, The Temptations, The Impressions, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, The O'Jays, The Spinners, Otis Redding, Jackie Wilson, Etta James, The Checkers, The Clovers, Mary Wells, Garnet Mimms and The Enchanters, Ben E. King, Major Lance, Willie Tee, and Ernie K-Doe. You can still find their records online and at garage sales and flea markets in most recorded formats.

Beach Music songs are typically played at 120 beats per minute. Recordings with a 4/4 "blues shuffle" rhythmic structure and moderate-to-fast tempo are most popular because they're the perfect speed for "shagging." While some of the Beach Music hits appeared on the R&B and rock and roll charts nationally, a great many of them were "b-sides" or even more obscure recordings that never charted. The vast majority of the music in this genre fits that description.

The use of the term Beach Music became more popular in the 1970s, and was played by non-R&B bands in an attempt to crossover; Jimmy Buffet's CD Beach House On The Moon was intended as an homage to the genre. For a while Buffett featured Beach Music stalwarts The Tams ("What Kind of Fool (Do You Think I Am)", as vocalists on his tours. The phenomenon crosses cultural boundaries: South Carolina author Pat Conroy (best known for his novels The Prince of Tides and Conrack), titled a novel Beach Music from the musical genre.

These days, although the traditional sound is still heavily R&B-based, Beach Music is treated as a more flexible term, referring to doo-wop, Motown, and close harmony music — or it can be any music you'd hear on an ideal summer night at the beach. In the 1990s, the country-rock band Alabama recorded a Beach Music country song, "Dancing, Shagging On the Boulevard," and others by artists associated with Jimmy Buffett that have had that "perfect shag beat" and a beach music feel to them have become hits with shag dancers, including "Drift Away" by Uncle Kracker, "Some Beach" by Blake Shelton and "When The Sun Goes Down" by Kenny Chesney. These country-flavored songs went over well on the dance floor regionally but did not please the more R&B-oriented Beach Music fans, who have made local and regional stars out of Beach Music bands whose reputations are as local as the dance style.

Producer Don Dixon (co-producer of Murmur, R.E.M.'s first LP, of James McMurtry, and co-producer with T-Bone Burnett of Tommy Keene) a North Carolina native, recalls seminal Beach Music bands that weren't household names outside of the South, including Embers, 1957 , Raleigh, NC, Catalinas, 1958, Charlotte, NC, Rivieras, late '50s, Charlotte, NC, Bill Deal & Ammon Tharp (Rhondels) debuted 1959, Virginia Beach, VA, Venturas, 1959, Statesville, NC, Shadows, late '50s, Charlotte , NC, Harry Deal and the Galaxies, late '50s , Taylorsville, NC, Maurice Williams and the Gladiolas, 1956, Lancaster, SC. "All of these groups had huge hits on the beach circuit, but few had Top 40 success," Dixon recalled. The same is true for the groups performing Beach Music in summer clubs today — hometown heroes, most of whom you'll never hear, or hear of, unless you go down to the beach and hang out in the clubs at night.

You can hear some Beach Music songs on our local oldies radio station, 92.9-FM The Lake, where radio host Gary Shannon assures me there is a small, but regular quotient of the Top 40 Beach Music hits, even if the obscure songs aren't often spun there. Or you can pick up a copy of Dixon's Beach Music project, "Dip Ferrell & The Truetones," a new "studio only" 10-piece band playing recording the music of Billy "Dip Ferrell" and Jack Jeffords, two South Carolina music veterans. For more information about their 2007 and 2009 Beach Music CDs try www.dondixonmusic.com, or www.billyjeffords.com.

Get up off your beach towel when you hear one of these songs, and keep on shagging!