Category Archives: Music


Drying my hair and getting dressed this morning. Computer is playing a list of oldies on my really good 'old speakers' with some heft, some bass and some serious presence. The Duke of Earl by Gene Chandler comes on.

 Flashback. 9th grade. In the girls locker room at lunchtime. A small red record player, one of those portable ones that buckles closed like a little suitcase is on one of the benches playing a 45 rpm record. The Duke of Earl sung by Gene Chandler. A group of black girls is dancing to it, we all join in, copying their moves rocking between the lockers. Dirty dancing in the dressing room, back then you couldn't do those kinds of moves in public,  God forbid! But it made so much more sense to dance to rock and roll That Way instead of the white upright uptight way we practiced at heavily chaperoned dances. I've never forgotten that moment and that song, both inextricably linked in a moment of pure animal joy.