Square Dance History Project
The rich story of North American square dance finally has a home in the digital age.

Browse Items (102 total)

  • Contributor is exactly "Jim Mayo"
Document

Camp Becket - child's view of square dance camp

Camp Becket in western Massachusetts was the regular venue for square dance camps. Caller Herbie Gaudreau, who named many of his dances for locations in his dance universe, created the Becket Reel.… View item
Document

Les Gotcher choreography, 1958

The transcription is shown here; you can hear audio clip under Additional Files. If you open that audio in a separate tab, you can listen while you follow along the text.Jim Mayo: "Les Gotcher was… View item
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Classic Squares of 1960 - CALLERLAB demonstration

This is the handout of a workshop held at CALLERLAB's 2001 convention. The goal was to illustrate square dancing in 1960, a time when modern square dancing was branching off in new directions. This… View item
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Carl Sims - Milestone Award

Other entries in this archive discuss the establishment and early years of American square dancing in Japan. Caller Carl Sims played a significant role in developing modern square dancing there,… View item
Document

Modern Square Dancing Is Different

This is an article published in the Autumn 1966 issue of Mike and Monitor, the newsletter of the National Capital Area Square Dance Leaders Association. Starting with a description of the origins of… View item
Sound

I Only Want a Buddy - Herbie Gaudreau

Singing square, I Only Want a Buddy Not a Gal, by Massachusetts caller Herbie Gaudreau View item
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Hurry, Hurry, Hurry - Herbie Gaudreau

Classic singing square, here in a live recording (1960s?) with caller Herbie Gaudreau. Today's contra callers probably know Gaudreau better than do contemporary square dance callers; his Becket Reel… View item
Document

Square Dancing Standard and Experimental Guidelines

A flood of new calls in the early 1970s led a group called Square Dance Systems to publish a catalogue of calls, an attempt to bring order to an increasingly-complex universe of new figures. Square… View item
Document

New Call Problems in the Mid 1970s

This is an excerpt from the book Step by Step Through Modern Square Dance History by Jim Mayo. It describes the situation that had been created by a flood of new calls in the mid 1970’s. Related… View item
Sound

Red Bates, 2011 City of New Orleans

The 2011 singing call is the same one that he used in 2006, City of New Orleans, Rhythm record #182. The record, as Wade Driver called it, used a CALLERLAB Mainstream Program routine. As we noted in… View item
Sound

Red Bates, 2011 - Patter

The 2011 patter call is probably from a group in Florida where Red now lives in the winter. Two things are notable. One is that he is using a much smaller vocabulary of calls than he has in the tips… View item
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Red Bates, 2006 City Of New Orleans

The 2006 singing call, City of New Orleans, was probably to the Rhythm record #182 originally by Wade Driver with a Mainstream Program figure. By using three different figures in the dance rather… View item