50 Aniversary Grand Old Opry.MP4

50 Aniversary Grand Old Opry Square Dance Portion of the show, taped live 1975.
The Rutherford County Square Dancers, Ralph Sloan Dancers, and The Smokey Mountain Cloggers. I am up on the Riser Stage right..
Yeee Haaaa!

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Entertainment

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• CloggingSquare Dance

[TheStoneyMtn]

STONEY Mountain Cloggers, Not smokey mountain cloggers. It's called Applachian square dance clogging. The Melvin Sloan dancers were flat footers, not cloggers.The Stoney Mountain Cloggers retired after 35 years as members of the Grand Ole Opry, numerous movies, 180 network tv shows, Carnegie Hall twice and 5 years touring with Charlie Daniels all over the world. They are in the Clogging Hall of Fame in Maggie Valley.

[trvlace]

@TheStoneyMtn Sorry sounded like Smokey Mountain to me. I just got the whole show tape back and it brings back a lot of memories for me. The Rutherford County Square Dancers are now in our 45th year of production, still traveling the world over each summer and holding our Folkfest in Murfreesboro, TN which itself this year celebrates it's 30th Anniversary. I can never see ANY difference in Flat Foot vs. clogging, just a bunch of made up rules about what I call having fun. If you ask me.

[trvlace]

@glencoe6305 Hmm, it is maybe 45 mins long. But we have the entire tape pre-production like you see here. Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, Freddy Fender, Dolly, all of the greats are on it. A treasure. I will try to snag it next time I am at the directors home, I think it is worth the money to have it transferred to DVD too, so will do that too.

[warehambr]

I like the way the Tennessee Travelers seemed to float along. They were very smooth and gliding in their step. Back in those days the better cloggers were very smooth, and that is something that has been lost in modern clogging.

[trvlace]

@warehambr We still do the same act we did back then and use the exact same clogging step. They had to teach us to dance like you see us here, taking some elements from our routine and adding some from their idea of what they wanted this to look like, the adult groups were not asked to do this. We practiced for a week at night to pull this Live show off. I am uploading a show we did last summer here in town, will be up shortly on my page. Enjoy.

[glencoe6305]

I'd like to see this whole Video of the 50th anniversary. I was a kid,and remember watching this,and always watched every 5 years when CBS,w'd Televise a Opry Anniversary. Don't know why they quit. Hope you put this whole show,on youtube.

[soulierinvestments]

I remember a live Grand Ole Opry PBS broadcast c 1980 when Roy Acuff said of Ralph Sloan, who was recovering from an illness, that he was very light. 0:40 > :47 Big guy yes, but very light on his feet for sur

[warehambr]

@trvlace That must have been exciting. I think everyone in this video has a good step. Modern cloggers have lost the smoothness. They also dance much slower, around 120 bpm so they can get about 4-8 taps into a beat of music, so it no longer has a "clogging rhythm", which has a certain syncopation. It is now tap dance and should be called something else, such as American Step Dance, rather than clogging, so true traditional clogging can reclaim its heritage. It's good dance but not clogging.

[trvlace]

@warehambr I have not heard of them, sorry. We pretty much stayed away from competition. I know at one time we did over 300 shows a year. We had several teams and could appear in more than one place at the exact same time, and often had a team on the road and teams at home doing shows all at the same time. Those are days long gone by. The art as I know it is going away it seems. Sad. I got to see the country dancing my way across it, was in 42 states before I hit 15 years old.

[trvlace]

@warehambr Yes, Thanks! I started back in 2009. The group has been together since 1967 under the same director and been in numerous foreign nations.