Country Rhythm

Country Rhythm

 

When you’ve got complete control of the reins and the friends involved are happy go lucky fun loving people, you can have some outlandishly fun times developing, practicing, and competing with show routines for clog dance competitions. Here’s. Some of the stuff we did when we were free to do as we pleased.

 

Country Rhythm

 

Sometime after we left the Trailblazers ( see previous blog ) in 1991, we decided to start our own clogging group in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Some of our clogging friends agreed to join us if we got something started here. So we leased the Lions Club building for Sundays for a year and started “Country Rhythm” cloggers. We gave lessons from 1 to 3 PM and had an experienced dance session from 3 to 5 PM where we danced routines we knew and taught new routines. After several sets of lessons we had quite a few cloggers in the group and we started doing exhibition dances in the area. It was too late to prepare for competition the first year so we threw some routines together and did well with them in competition as Country Rhythm.  On the second year, someone in the group had read where there was going to be a clog competition in Amarillo where they would be giving very large prize money so we decided to choreograph some routines that could be used in competition. Thus, the Country Rhythm competition teams were born. The “Rhythm Aces” were the adult clog competition team and The “Rhythm Masters” were the young peoples clog competition team. My daughter Tamara and I choreographed most the routines used by the adult team and Tamara choreographed all the advanced routines for the kids team. We practiced from 5 to 6 PM on Sundays as many other times as we could all get together. After we learned all the dances and made all our costumes, we found out that the merchants from Amarillo sponsoring and providing the competition prize money had backed out so they just gave us free entry to the regular competition they had moved to Oklahoma City. So we decided just to go ahead and do all the competitions we could find that year. We actually did great in all the competitions for this year. Some of the trophies we won that year are pictured in an earlier blog called Double Moon..

 

The Rhythm Aces kind of decided we would let it all hang out on our show routines. The first year the Rhythm Ace guys did a routine to “Keep Your Hands To Yourself ” where Gary and Ellis dressed up like women and Fred and I as men. Fred and I air pawed at their inflated boobs the whole dance. The women and Rob did a show routine to “Hot Red Sweater” which was quite good even if Rob forgot to wear his clog shoes At Mutton Hollow. They actually beat the Trailblazers show routine “Country Cookin” for the first place trophy at Mutton Hollow competition. The next year our show routine was to “Big Balls In Cowtown”. The men dressed up like bulls (sorry Kay forgot you were a bull) and the women dressed up like cows. I tried hard to get them to let the bulls wear two oranges in a nylon stocking hanging down but they nixed that idea. Kay said “i ain’t wearing no balls” and that was the end of that. A picture of the bulls and cows is given in the earlier blog Double Moon. The next year we did a show routine to “Baby Sittin’ Boogie” where the men all dressed up like babies and the women like baby sitters. The men had bonnets,bibs,bottles,teddy bears and diapers. On the forth year, Pam and I were out of town, but the rest of the Rhythm Aces did a show routine to a 1970’s Disco Song, and they all dressed up like disco dudes and dolls. We got back in town just in time to see them do it at Silver Dollar City’s National Clogging Competition. It was great.

 

We continued with Country Rhythm and the completion teams for about three years. I had to move Houston for six months with my job and Tamara started college. We made many new friends and had many wild and crazy times together. Some of these good times are documented in the following previously issued blogs; Double Moon, The Fred Shuffle, and The Duet.

 

image

Rhythm Aces in their costumes for the open line dance “I like it, i love it, I want some more of it”. L to R Paula, Gary, Pam, Bill, Brenda, Ellis, Kay, Fred, Paulette.

image

Rhythm Masters in their competition costumes. L to R  Brian, Tamara, Casey, April, Justin

image

The Country Rhythm cloggers doing “Walk That Way” in competition at Mutton Hollow

image

Second year Rhythm Masters practicing for competition. L to R. Tamara, Jennifer, April, Casey, Maria, Sarah.

image

“Baby Sittin Boggie” costumes – Rhythm Aces

image

The babies L to R  Ellis, Fred, Bill, Wade, Gary

image

The Rhythm Masters, The Rhythm Aces, and Bob outside Silver Dollar City just before clog competition.

Thanks for reading Country Rhythm,

Hawg Jaw Bill