Jitterbug, Foxtrot, Charleston and swing
Lindy hop, whip, spin, give her a fling
She thinks it?s just a dance, but she?s promising
To be your great grandma
bruce mckinney
Creative Commons license
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Story behind the song
I was dancing with my friend Cathy at our local blues festival. We noticed some ladies dancing. They were old. They were really old. Cathy went over to talk to them. They said they were great grandmas. Cathy and I started trading lines about Great Grandmas dancing. I wrote them down so we could write a song. Then I went home and forgot all about it for three years. Then this song emerged.
Lyrics
Great Grandmas Boogie Down
Great. Grand. Mas. Boogie on down
Mas of mas of mas of mas
Of sons and daughters of somebody?s pas
Dancing a dance called the Grandfather Clause
With great grand mas
They were swinging the forties, bopping through the fifties
The flower power sixties and the disco seventies
Thrilling to the eighties, the hip hop nineties
Becoming great grandmas
Danced in circles, danced in squares,
Danced in long straight lines
Danced alone, danced in pairs
Naked or dressed to the nines
Jitterbug, Foxtrot, Charleston and swing
Lindy hop, whip, spin, give her a fling
She thinks it?s just a dance, but she?s promising
To be your great grandma
They have a secret, a smiling secret,
A mystery that you'll never know
Cause they saw the scandal, what really happened
At those dances a long time ago
Dance in the dresses you avoid your dad in
The ones that cling and make you feel unclad in
The low neck short ones that you wanna be bad in
Like your great grand mas
Danced before their daughters were born
And before their daughters? daughters
Danced before their sons were sons
Danced like walking on waters
Their husbands don't dance, no blue suede shoes
Their sons are singing two left-foot blues
But their granddaughters? daughters stomp till they bruise
Like their great grandmas
Danced to the music of a bad, bad man
From before you can remember
Danced to the songs with the bad, bad beat
With persons of the worser gender
They swung the waltz and they swayed the rhumba
The twist, the hula, the two-step, the samba
Strutting the tango and spinning the contra
With your great grandpas
Vamp something like this:
This next verse is the love verse.
Anybody who?s ever tried rhyming knows that the hardest word in the world to rhyme with is not orange, but love.
Because nobody wants to rhyme with orange, but everybody wants to rhyme with love.
But there?s only a few words that rhyme with love and none of them have anything to do with love.
This verse has every single love rhyme and then some...
Dance like Michael with one white glove
Prince can flutter like the crying dove
The tower of power shining down from above
If you won?t step out they?ll give you a shove
Dancing the dances you?ve never heard of
There?s only five words that rhyme with love
And none of them dances like Mikhail Baryshnikov
And his great grandmas
They danced at the ball, the disco bacchanal
And they danced at the hokey pokey hoedown
Slidin' and a hoppin', thrashin' and a stompin'
At the honky tonk do si do down
Tripped the light fantastic to the bossa nova
The dead can?t dance like John Travolta
While Fred and Ginger are doing the polka
With great grandmas
Ignore applause, don?t ever pause
Just because of menopause
Flap your jaws, shake your claws,
Stamp your paws, break the laws,
There?s no Santa Claus, no Wizard in Oz
Just great grandmas
Note: This listing includes a bonus verse not in the recorded version. When playing live, keep playing as long as people are dancing.
Words and Music: Bruce McKinney, Copyright 2008