So this past weekend the Penn State Swing dance club threw a unique event, Shagception a full two days of Collegiate Shag workshops taught by David and Chelsea Lee from Washington D.C.

It was a fun weekend which I intend to write a more in depth post about later, but for now I wanted to write about a problem I seriously had to deal with with preparing for this event. How do I DJ for a Collegiate Shag event?

Preconceived Notions

Before I started contacting people my only preconceived notion for what to DJ for a Collegiate Shag event was from Camp Hollywood Shag division competitions I witnessed personally. Namely 2009 where they played Everybody Loves My Baby by Glen Miller and 2010 where they played Oh Lady Be Good! by Artie Shaw. In addition to that I had the All The Cats Join In, Disney short featuring music by Benny Goodman [1] and the song Mr. Ghost Goes to Town from the classic Arthur Murry Shag clip.

Yehoodi Lends a Hand

First thing I did was as usual use the search function in Yehoodi which come up with the topic: “Balboa-Collegiate Shag Music for Practice?“. One useful quote from the topic was,

You need a narrower range of tempos for shag. For shag, on the low end 180 and up. There are some songs that I particularly associate with shag. “All the Cats Join In” Benny Gooodman, “Lady Be Good” Artie Shaw. These are good ones to practice to because they aren’t too fast. As you get more comfortable try practicing to a version of Bugle Call Rag which is on the higher side of the tempo range. – Lamar

So from this I gleaned that for songs that are danceable for Collegiate Shag its probably more comfortable to go 180 BPM. As I have learned personally through trial and error, it is awkward to try to dance Collegiate Shag to slower tempos. Another useful quote was,

I feel shag in songs that have a strong “bounce” rhythm, although you shouldn’t have a huge bounce in your shag basic. – Capt Morgan

I’ve heard this described by different dancers as a “chug” rhythm, a solid four beat or in this case a strong “bounce” rhythm.  For me what this meant was stay away from small group combos and songs that have long periods of dragging out or solos with the rest of the band not coming back in.

SwingDJs.com Helps Out As Well

Another useful resource was a thread titled “Collegiate Shag Please?” on swingdjs.com. One thing I noticed is Artie Shaw’s music is mentioned several times in the thread with recommendations such as “The Carioca”, “The Man From Mars”, “Diga Diga Doo”, “Back Bay Shuffle”, “Free Wheeling”, and “Bird Calls”. What I inferred from this is Shaw tunes are considered a safe bet and will get people out on the floor for Collegiate Shag, similar to how Lavender Coffin will put life back into a dead room at Lindy events (in spite of it being overplayed at times).

An interesting comment from Capt Morgan was,

Collegiate Shag is a dance from the 30’s, and is inherently connected to the music of this era (more so than Lindy Hop). Dancing to Neo-Swing, or Rockabilly, or Bebop just doesn’t fit.

Lorenzo, a Los Angeles swing band musician notes,

I picked some of the songs listed below for the preliminaries of a Collegiate Shag contest, after a discussion with Sailor Mike Mizgalski (two time NJC Shag Champion). The general guideline to pick a good Shag is to look for a bouncy feeling.

Cheers,
Lorenzo

Steamboat Bill, Mora’s Modern Rhythmists (1996) – 200 bpm
Darktown Strutter’s Ball, Sidney Bechet (1945) – 220 bpm
Too Wet To Plow, Cliff Bruner (1944) – 230 bpm
You Just Take Her, Bob Wills (Tiffany Transcriptions 1947) – 210 bpm

Again I notice the pattern of staying above the 180 BPM mark and a consistent rhythm through out most or all of the songs listed.

With a Little Help From my Friends

Unfortunately I did not save the exact transcriptions of the advice (with the exception of Morgan), but Augie Freeman, Morgan Day, and David Lee all helped to provide insightful advice that I shaped my playlist around.

Something that Augie mentioned that was particularly useful was not to keep the tempos blazingly fast the whole night. Which I did try to keep that piece of advice in mind for my playlist.

Morgan wrote,

The most important thing is to have a really strong “chug” on every single beat.  Personally I stick with music by Jonathan Stout.  A good range is 170 – 200 bpm for lessons.  If you teach too slow, people won’t get the feeling of shag.

Again the reinforcement of two concepts covered previously in Yehoodi and swingDJs.com.

Difficulty of the Crowd

One big issue I had was I had three very different type of attendees to please for this event:

1. Ridiclously good Collegiate Shag dancers who were all in this competition.
2. Newbie Collegiate Shag dancers who in many cases had 1-4 hours of instruction that day.
3. Random dancers who showed up to the dance who have no knowledge of Collegiate Shag.

So my compromise was play tunes with a really solid “chug” rhythm but try to hug around the 180 BPM range. I threw a few faster ones in the for the advanced dancers like Rigamarole by Mora’s Modern Rhythmists and Digga Digga Doo by Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five.  I also threw in Eddie Lang’s Dinah for those who may have been intimidated by the consistent 180+ range at I stayed at for my set. In addition I included Django Reinhart’s I’se A Muggin because of its laid back feel and the fact I knew there were a few Balboa dancers in the room.

Overall

While in retrospect I would have tweaked a few things with my set, I think it went over fairly well. Two songs that worked fairly well I think that I haven’t seen recommended for Collegiate Shag in the past was Caprice XXIV Paganini and King Porter Stomp, both by Benny Goodman.

If you have DJ’ed for a Collegiate Shag event or have opinions on the matter as a Collegiate Shag dancer I would love to hear them, the more resources we have on the topic the better.

Footnote:

[1] If you DJ All the Cats Join In, unless if you have a ton of newbies my personal opinion is stick with the non Disney-version. The reason why is the Disney sound effects cover up a very beautiful piano solo.