My song today is ‘Twisting the Night Away’. This song was written and recorded by Sam Cooke. It was released as a single in 1962 and became very popular, charting in the top ten of both the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ at Number 9 and ‘Billboard's R&B Chart’ at Number 1. ‘Twisting the Night Away’ was successful overseas as well, peaking at Number 6 on the ‘UK Singles Chart’.
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I was 19 years old, going on 20 when this song was released. Being both a lover of fashion as well as beautiful women, the thing I most recall the twist for more than any other was the new style in women’s dresses and skirts that the dance ushered in to become the ‘in thing’. This was the era when the best incentive of seeing how far any male dancer could twist down towards the floor was the view on offer to the ‘lowest of the low’. The tighter the short skirt was worn by female twisters and the lower they twisted and gyrated their derrière towards the dance floor, the more the skirts rode up their legs, revealing their thighs, and sometimes a good deal more! The young men and women at the time would often refer to this dancing practice as ‘getting down and doing the dirty’.
This was also the time in women’s dress fashion when it became more popular for stylish young women to wear dresses made in the Chinese style. These were satin dresses that had a long slit going up the thigh of the wearer. This new fashion to the West enabled a young woman to wear the tightest of fitting garments that accentuated their firmness and shape of her bust as well as showing a good bit of leg and thigh with every step proudly walked. It was in many ways the most tantalising of female dress ever fashioned in my youth, far more sensual than the briefest of mini skirts that showed off every woman’s bottom drawer ('s). The Chinese slit dress was the ultimate sartorial seductive garment, a silken temptress which appeared to promise everything to the male observer without giving up anything at all, except the occasional glimpse of a long leg going nowhere and everywhere at the same time!
So, if ever you hear the term ‘getting down and doing the dirty’ today, remember that it was first coined during the early 1960s and has more to do with ‘looking up a lady’s skirt' instead of ‘touching down’ in the stakes of having made 'a home run'.
Love and peace Bill xxx