Guest post by Nathan Arizona
After the Gentrys recorded what became the first part of “Keep on Dancing,” they apparently couldn’t figure out how to keep on singing. Not even the vocalist who became the celebrity wrestling manager known as the Mouth of the South.
No radio station was going to play a song roughly 40 seconds long, not even when a typical Top 40 tune clocked in at just 2:30. So they made the exact track they’d just laid down the next part of the record, with an organ riff and drum fill in between.
That brief track was worth hearing twice. “Keep on Dancing” is one of the great garage-pop songs of the ‘60s.
The Gentrys started out playing high school dances, won a Memphis Battle of the Bands and soon reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 with 1965’s ”Keep on Dancing.”
“Keep on dancin’ and a-prancin’” they urged teens gyrating at sock hops or with ears glued to transistor radios. Keep on “doin’ the jerk right now, shake it, shake it, baby.”
They sang it on TV’s “Hullabaloo” and other programs and toured with the Beach Boys and the Dick Clark shows. They followed up with a few songs that failed to chart then split up in 1967, but not before appearing in the movie “It’s a Bikini World.”
Singer Jimmy Hart, the future wrestling manager and Mouth of the South, re-formed the band briefly with a different lineup. He went on to write theme music for pro wrestling events and joined a band fronted by Hulk Hogan, whom he managed for a time. That music was more heavy metal than garage pop. He sometimes entered the ring, like when he partnered with Andy Kaufman in a two-against-one “battle” vs. Jerry Lawler, Hart’s mentor in the wrestling biz.
Here are the Gentry’s doing “Keep on Dancing” amid a gaggle of go-go girls.
Here they are with “Spread It on Thick” in “It’s a Bikini World,” which looks like a bad movie but a good pop culture artifact. Jimmy Hart is the singer on the left.
“Keep on Dancing” was actually a cover. The first recording was by a Memphis R&B group called the Avantis in 1963. The dance that year was the twist, not the Gentrys’ jerk. You had to keep up in those days. This version failed to chart.
