August 8, 2020 • 41 mins
When Michael Jackson debuted the moonwalk in 1983 the world was enrapt. The dance goes back farther, to the 1930s, and pops up again in the 50s, before reappearing via mimes and West Coast poppers in the 70s. Follow the circuitous route of an iconic move in this classic episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everybody, Are you moonwalking right now? Well, it's Saturday,
so you know I'm moonwalking and this is my Saturday
select PI from July one, two thousand sixteen. How the
Moonwalk Works. Give it a listen right now. Welcome to
Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radios.
(00:21):
How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. So
it's just moonwalk right in this joint. Can you moonwalk? Now?
I think everybody at the Bellhouse on June knows I
(00:43):
can moonwalk. Okaynot I didn't moonwalk, but I think you
could just based based on my moves, you could. You
could make the assumption that I'm an awesome moonwalker. I've
seen your moonwalk. It's you know, herky jerky, you know.
It's that kind of moonwalk that guys like us do.
I don't understand, you know, he kind of it kind
(01:05):
of simulates the moonwalk. I see, you know what I mean.
It's a it's an echo of a moonwalk. I wouldn't
call it smooth and floaty, oh I would. Yeah, now
I know, And it's not a great moonwalk. It's right.
I never learned the moonwalk because I didn't try to
practice the moonwalk more than like once, and I was like,
(01:26):
I can't do that. Oh yeah, I just bailed on
it like my brother practiced and got okay at it.
I'm surprised he didn't, like, Yes, teach it as a
class for free to children in need. No, he got uh,
he got okay at it. Um. But I just I
don't know if I think I bail on things that
aren't easy for me. Well, that's definitely a candidate for that. Um. Yeah,
(01:51):
I think that's a trait I have. I don't like
to spend a lot of time on something that I
don't think i'm good at. I'm not one of those like, no, man,
I'm gonna try the moonwalk until I learned it. I see.
I was like, maybe I just im not a moonwalker.
Didn't you? Didn't you say you bail on books too
that don't like capture your attention at this point in
your life? Was that you? I don't think I said that,
but I I didn't say that. Okay, but will you
(02:14):
work your way through a book? Well, I'll give it
a fair shot. It's been a while since I bailed
on a book though, because I usually just pick good
books like that. I know we're really good. Uh. I
don't know how long I give a book. How long
do you give a book? I will give a book
(02:35):
two pages, yeah, but like three or four times? Right? Like,
what am I missing? Let me try that again. Yeah, yeah,
that's fair. I just write a book called Headful of Ghosts,
which is pretty neat. It's like a psychological thriller. Huh.
I haven't read a fiction booking forever, and then right
now either I'm reading the right stuff, the classic and
(03:00):
it's so that I think Tom Wolf might be the
greatest reporter of all time. Oh yeah, oh yeah, I
don't think there's anybody better our buddy Joe Randazzoh oh yeah.
Of at midnight Fame people are like, wait a minute,
I thought he was at the Onion. Now he's at
at midnight. He used to work at the Onion. Uh.
(03:23):
He just recommended a book which I'm really interested in
that I wanted to tell you about because it sounds
like it's right up your alley, called Sapiens, A Brief
History of Humankind by you've all Noah Harari and the
it has has a pretty remarkable thesis, which is that
(03:48):
humans can Humans didn't kill each other off because they
can cooperate in large numbers because we have an ability,
a unique ability animals don't have two believe in things
that exist only in our imagination, huh, like government and
(04:10):
money and god. And he said, all of these things
allow us to cooperate. Like we talked about in our
money episode, it's like money has that paper has no value.
We just all agreed. So it's essentially fiction, the cold
concept of money. It's just something we've all agreed on.
And he said, is it's this cooperation by believing in
these fictional things that is the only reason that humans
(04:32):
didn't kill each other off like you know, any other
weird species. Yeah, I've got to check that out. They said,
it sounds super interesting, and he said it was amazing,
So and thank you for relating that. Yeah, I want to.
Maybe you should read it and just tell me about it,
because I'm still have never read four Man. I'm a
fiction reader. I try to. I try to read nonfiction
in it. I don't know, I just like a good
(04:54):
fictional yarn more. I'm I'm quite the opposite. Like I
told you, I want to be a civil War buff.
I got one of those huge books that's supposed to
be great and I just can't do it. Like The Moonwalk,
you don't like fiction. I do like it, it's just
for the so much of the time I'm reading for
(05:15):
work that see. I think he would enjoy fiction as
a break. Well, that's why I read Headfellow Ghosts. I
was like, I'm reading a fiction book. I need to
just like read something different and use my imagination again.
And um it worked. It was like it had an
effect on me. What was that? What was it? Yeah?
(05:35):
What was it about? It was about a girl who
may or may not be possessed and like how our
family unravels around her. Is it like poplit? I don't
know that. It's you know, like easy to read. Dean
Kountz and oh no, no it was. It was a
little more literary than that, and I wish I'm sorry
to the author who who wrote the book. I don't
(05:57):
remember the dude's name, but yeah, he does a good job.
I'm sorry to Dean Koons and John Grisham. All of
a sudden, Uh, they know, they know what they are.
Let's guys know what they are. Oh, Dean Kontz Man,
that guy's imagination is fantastic. Jan I always assumed that
he was better than Stephen King because he could finish
the story. I've never read a Stephen King book, Chuck, what,
(06:22):
I don't read a lot of that stuff. Okay. I
read one Dean Kunt's book in my early twenties and
one night. That's the only time I've ever done that. Well, yeah,
that was a good thing about it. Kuon's bookcase. You
can go through it like crazy. Started reading it like
eight or nine and I stopped at like five in
the morning. But each one is way different than the others,
I mean, really differently. The guy's got a great imagination.
(06:45):
You should read some of Stephen King's work, Like I
know he is. He's he's so unfairly I was actually
talking to Hodgman about this the other day. He's like,
very unfairly criticized as a hack, but he's actually, oh yeah,
a lot of people are student could sucks. But if
you just because he's so prolific and because he very
famously has trouble finishing a story, yeah, but he's like
(07:11):
nobody can get inside the mind, like the dark side
of a person's the average person's mind better than Stephen King.
He's just a he's a great storyteller, aside from the
ending part. So what's the Shining is probably the one
I should read? Probably not because you're so used to
Kubrick's shining and it's just so radically that's the big one, right,
(07:32):
that's a big one. I've never read the stand I
would start with the short stories. They're fantastic. Those he
can finish. It's the largest what do you mean not finish?
Like just amazing build up, and then the resolutions, like,
so he finishes, you just mean it's okay, right, it's
it's not left unfinished. It's the resolution is um the
payoff is not so great. Yeah, interesting, and it's still fine,
(07:56):
but it's he's so good at building things up that
it's almost it would be almost impossible to finish it.
I don't know if we should call this beginning book
talk with Josh and Chuck or patting the episode you
want to talk a moonwalk? Yeah, we needed a little something.
This is a short one. Well, you were saying that
(08:16):
you were like you just couldn't do it because this
is Let me let me tell you how I approached
the moonwalk. All right, my left hand was covered in
a white glove was sequence sewn on that my mom
made for me. Did you really wearing the thriller jacket
a little black pants. Yeah, that's how my moon walked.
(08:38):
I was still not that great at it. You were,
you were in man, this is so in my wheelhouse. Yeah, yeah,
I wasn't. I mean I listened to pop music, but
I was also the influenced by my well he's now
my brother in law, but the General. The General started
dating my sister when I was twelve, okay, so like
he was always around and he was like, you're twelve
(08:59):
years old old. You need to listen to the Almond
Brothers and Leonard Skinnered and Molly Hatchett and Blackfoot in
the Atlanta Rhythm section back the Doobie Brothers, like heck yeah.
But I also listened to the American Top forty every week. So,
I mean I was an MTV. I was glued to
So you can't be glued to MTV and not like
digest ing some of that stuff. But I was never
(09:22):
never owned parachute pants or anything. But so that was
the only sequence thing I ever owned. But that's very
sweet that your mom did that. I think so too.
It was a very sweet gesture. Um. But I think
one of the other reasons the moonwalk spoke to me
and I didn't realize it until researching this article chuck
(09:43):
that I was also super into break dancing at the time,
and the moonwalk is actually not a breaking move. It's
a popping move. But for all but actual breaking and
popping dancers, it was the same thing. Yeah, I don't
I don't see how it's a popping move. I saw
that in the article and I couldn't put it together.
(10:04):
Becoming is so herky jerky, and a good moonwalk is
so smooth and buttery. Well, so locking is herky jerky? Right, Well, no,
popping is too popping? Is that? Like? Yeah, but it's
also I wish this is really not good for audio,
but it's also so you know, the one where you
hold out one hand and make a wave the wave
(10:25):
goes through your body to the other hand. The class
of popping is it? Yeah? And I was like, okay,
all but the worms popping wrong? The worms are breaking move.
I clearly don't know, but the average person who's who's
doing these dances is probably popping, locking and breaking. Yeah,
it all kind of worked out at the same time. Yeah.
And and I know we covered breakdancing some in the
(10:48):
hip hop episode, but we should do it total breakdance,
like give it its full do okay, and we're gonna
call it the total Breakdance episode. But we I mean,
we gotta cover some of it here because there's there's
there's such a basis of it in the Moonwalk, or
the Moonwalk cast such a basis in it. But the
(11:08):
Moonwalk goes even further back then popping and locking, which
we'll talk about in a minute. It goes all the
way back to the thirties. Should we take a break?
Oh man? Yes, you know, stop all right. Josh just
(11:37):
taught me how a moonwalking. Now I'm great at it. Yeah.
And this I can't remember what that's called. The wave
the waves where you stand up at a baseball game.
So what is this? I don't know. I mean, people
that don't know what Josh is doing right now are
probably frustrated. But it's that you know that move you
do where you wave the one arm and it goes
(11:57):
to your body and the other arm waves and then
you to your friend. Yes, that's a popping move. Is
it body popping? Clearly doesn't. I don't know what popping means.
I think the name is a bit of a misnomer. Yeah,
probably all right, And by the way, people, you might
(12:18):
as well get to this. I'm not gonna be able
to gush much about Michael Jackson because I'm one of
the people who thinks he'd did bad things in his
private life. So if you don't hear me talking about
how awesome he is, that's why I have a hard
time separating the art from the artist. Well you want
to throw it out there, man, if you believe that,
(12:38):
how could you? I'm unconvinced at this point. All right,
But I mean seeing my own a. Yeah, that's a
good one, good one. A bunch of people are like,
that's what c o am covering my own a. Speaking
for myself anyway, if you hear a little bit of
like callousness in my voice, that's that's why. So uh,
(13:02):
going back in time, Uh, it was not invented by
that man. It was like you said, it goes back
to the nineteen thirties. If you look on the YouTube's
they're like history of the Moonwalk, you will see a
nice video that shows the evolution of this dance, starting
with Cab Callaway in the nineteen thirties doing something called
(13:24):
the Buzz. The Great band Leader Jazz big band Leader.
He remains unaccused of anything. He was also awesome in
the Blues Brothers. Oh yeah, wow, he was still around
for that. That's right. I forgot about that about fifty
years on. Yeah. Uh so in the nineteen thirties he
did something called the Buzz and it was a little
more herky jerky and not as smooth. Then there was
(13:46):
something that this article mentions called the camel walk, which
I looked into, or the collegiate walk that like Sammy
Davis Jr. Did in this video. I don't think it
looks anything like the moonwalk, not really. I think going
forward first of all, right, which is a big one,
and it's cool. It's a cool move. Sure, James Brown
dares Sammy to do it. Sam He's like, all right,
(14:08):
I'll do it and awesome. So, boy, could you imagine
being in that audience, man, Sammy Davis Jr. And James
Brown on the same stage. I know, who do we
have now? Bieber and whoever else? I don't even know
him Bieber and Bieber it's a nightmare group. Yeah, so uh, sorry, man,
(14:32):
we saw old. You're you're not old because we're trash
and Justin Bieber, you're just saying it's a jerk. You know,
he really has done a lot of stuff to say
to earn that. Yeah, it's not like he's some like
super nice guy. People are just unfair to like look
at some of the videos and like peeing in a
bucket in a restaurant. Did you ever see that one? No?
(14:53):
I heard about that one though. That's wrong with Well.
I think he's just too much wealth and not enough
guidance end and probably too much booze and stuff. I
think maybe he might be somewhat reformed now, but really
I think he's grown up a little bit. But I
don't follow it that closely. I see just the p
and the bucket thing. Yeah, I mean that was enough
to turn me off forever. Win him back, Justin went
(15:17):
him back, good luck. So we're talking about the walk
or the camel walk, right, so, um, you were saying
it doesn't look like a moonwalk. In fact, it looks
kind of like a reverse moonwalk sort of. But the
point is it was it's somebody Sammy Davis Jr. Floating.
Their feet are floating a little bit. They appear to
(15:37):
be floating while they move. All right, So it's related
to the moonwalk, right, I'll give you that. The one
that's like dead on though, is Bill Bailey in nineteen
fifty five full on moonwalks off the stage. Yeah, in
nineteen at the Apollo. Yeah. And there's a great video,
and it's at the very end of the video, but
I urge you to not just skip to the end,
(16:00):
because you've got two or three minutes of some sweet,
sweet tap dancing, which I didn't realize how much I
loved until I saw this guy and he was supposedly
trained by Mr bo Jangles himself. Really, Ye, that was
a real person. Yeah. I don't remember his name, but
it was bow Jangles. Yeah. I love tap dancing. I
didn't know it, and I watched this sounds like, Man,
(16:21):
that's amazing. You should go see Gregory Hines. Is he
still doing it? Probably there's no way. He's just like
I'm done tapping. Yeah, tap was life for that guy. Yeah,
I mean that stuff is amazing. And what's the guy's name?
I can't remember? Well, I did see that movie. Um,
(16:42):
there was a guy uh savvyon Glover. Oh I know
you're talking about like much more recent Yeah, like mean
mean tap dancer. Yeah, like he just shouted insults while
he was He looks stupid. But watch me dance. So
(17:02):
Bill Bailey in nineteen fifty five, like legit moonwalked, and um,
it's hard to say like he's the guy that invented it,
because dance, like any art form, is just borrowed and
changed and morphs along the years to where I don't
know that anyone can specifically say, like Bill Bailey might
have seen it from someone else. I've been like, that's
(17:23):
a hot move. Yeah, he seems like the type of
um talent that he could have come up within himself. Yeah. Sure.
But what's weird, Chuck, is that that's apparently where it
went and died. Like he created the moonwalk and it's
stopped with him for a while. Sure. No, if you
(17:44):
go back in the history of it, the people who
popularized the moonwalk didn't know that he had done that.
Oh yeah, yeah, I see what you mean. So simultaneously,
there's also some movement that's similar called the air walk,
but it's mine. Yeah, like Marcel mars I was walking
against the wind, very famous mime routine where his feet
are floating. It's called air walking, and it's strictly mine, right. Yeah.
(18:08):
The difference between that and the moonwalk is that they're
stationary and acting like they're walking forward and the wind
is blowing them, but they're not going backwards. It's but
it's also not part of a dance either, correct, some
don't dance. This is but this is a weird little
thing that I didn't realize. There was apparently a mime.
(18:29):
There's a period of the seventies where mimes were cool.
Did you know that? Yeah, I mean that was I
remember watching Childs and Yarnell as a kid on television
on major network TV. I was all brainstem at the
time because I was totally unaware of that. Yeah, miming
was a big deal and that like I would practice that. Okay,
okay a little bit so not for years, but yeah,
(18:51):
I practice miming. Well, a bizarre period of American pop culture.
Oh yeah, Shields and Yard. Now this mime couple had
a or they two dudes are a man and a woman.
I think they were married. Um that they they had
their own TV show. Yeah, Shields and Yardell was watched
apparently by a lot of people, including you. It was
(19:12):
also watched by a dude named Jeffrey Daniel. Yeah, man,
Jeffrey Daniel was a great dancer, probably still is he is? Uh.
Not only was he on Solid Gold, he was in
the band Shalomar with Jody Whatley. Yeah, Jody Whatley and um.
Shalomar was created by the great Don Cornelius of Soul
(19:33):
Train h R I P I believe did he die
a few years ago? And uh, Gary Mumford was the
original singer and then on album number two, Gerald Brown
took over, like you said, with Jody Whatley of Shaalomar
Fame I guess and then later on her own Fame.
Yeah she was. She had her own solo career, right
and uh and this guy Jeffrey Daniel, Right, So Jeffrey
(19:57):
Danielson in the Sheets remember that hit, Yes, this great
Footloose soundtrack song Dancing in the Sheets, dude, dude, and
that that was the eighties. The eighties stuff they you know,
came around in the seventies with more disco. It was
super disco e to start with. Um, but this dude
Jeffrey Daniels, who was in Shelamore, who's also a solid
(20:17):
Gold dancer. He had a pretty awesome move called the backslide,
and when you watch him backslide, uh, he's he's moonwalking.
It's total total moonwalk. It totally is and um. Later
on he was interviewed like where did you get this?
Where you know where? Where you know where did you
come up with the idea? He's like, I was super
(20:37):
into Shields and Yarnelle at the time, So miming influenced
the backslide, which, as we'll find out in a second,
directly led to the moonwalk. And we'll get to that
finally after this. Alright, Chuck, we're back. Yes, Jeffrey daniel
(21:08):
I watched that interview that's on the YouTube. It was
on a British talk show called Soccer a m of
the two thousand seven Things. Yeah, they had him on
Soccer Am. Apparently it's not just about sports, but they
have like comedy bits and pop culture stuff. Uh. So
he was surprised. On that show. They showed the clip
(21:28):
of of Bailey in the in the fifties and he
was like, what's that. He's like, I've never even seen
that he was surprised to see that someone was legit moonwalking,
you know whatever, fifties something years earlier. Yeah, the same move.
It's not like, oh, that's kind of close, like maybe
the camel walk or um, the buzz like Cab calloway.
(21:50):
It was a moonwalk. It was the moonwalk. But that's
what I'm saying, That's what's so bizarre is that this
guy invented the moonwalk in ve and it began and
ended with him. Um, and it took mimes getting a
TV show to create the moonwalk as we understand it today,
different about it. Talk about chaos theory, you know what
(22:12):
I'm saying though, like other people could have influenced the
mimes that knew about Bill Bailey like it. Guess, I
guess that's entirely possible. But Marcel Marceau was doing the
air walk as far back as the thirties before Bill Bailey.
Was he around in the thirties from what I understand, Okay,
which is weird because well, he was pretty old when
in the seventies when he hit it big. So yeah,
(22:33):
I think then he was doing it in the thirties
because that's what this article says in it. I didn't
find anything. I didn't find any footage of him from
the thirties, like all of it seemed to be from
the seventies or early eighties, well, the heyday of mimes. Also,
I was curious why people hate mimes and did little
research and of course there's no no like definitive thing.
(22:54):
It's not like a phobia now. But everything I saw
I came down to a few things. They look like
clowns in clowns. We did a whole episode on that,
and uh, the silent thing seems to bug people. And
then just the notion that there, you know, they'll get
up all in your face in the park. You're out
(23:14):
just enjoying your day and a mom will come up
and be like, you know, to start doing their like
intruding upon you to do their act, which I don't
even know is I don't even know if that's the
case over there. Oh it is, believe me. Yeah, mine's
very intrusive, like to start static and finish it. Uh
(23:35):
So back to Jeffrey Daniel, He's dancing on Soul Train,
He's dancing on Solid Gold. There's another couple of dancers
name Jeron Casper, candidate Great name and Derek Cooley Jackson
j A X s O N another cool name, and
they were moon walking around or backsliding around, and so
all these dudes were basically kind of laying the foundation
(24:00):
for what the moonwalk would come to be. It got
real like even if you watch Bailey's it's a legit moonwalk,
but it's not as smooth as Daniel ended up doing it.
You know, like when you see him on Solid Gold,
he like, that's one of the smoother moonwalks you'll ever see.
And he probably debuted it for the first time in
(24:20):
American history on TV on Top of the Pops. That's
what I was talking about. Yeah, yeah, that's so smooth.
So um people thought he was cheating. Yeah, They're like,
this is the floor oiled or something like what is
that kind of witchcraft? Are we watching? Right? It blew
everybody away, right, but everybody's no one knew who this
(24:42):
guy was really it was a Solid Gold dancer at
the time, everybody knew who Michael Jackson was. So in
about a year later, almost exactly a year later, UM
NBC broadcast this special called Motown Big Retrospective, and it
was a huge, huge thing. Um Diana Ross did her
(25:04):
first appearance with the Supreme since nineteen sixty nine. Marvin
Gaye played um that there was a battle of the
bands between the Temptations and the Four Tops Stevie Wonder, Um,
I'm sure everybody wanted like a soccer game. Um, And
Michael Jackson comes out right, and people like, who's he?
(25:25):
I mean, he was pretty big at the time. Of
course he was. He was huge, but so was Marvin
Gaye and the Four Tops and Stevie Wonder. Right, Michael
Jackson comes out and brings the house down. And one
of the reasons he brought the house down was because
he was doing Billy Jean, which when the thing came out,
was the number one song in America. But during the
dance he did the moonwalk, and it was the first
(25:47):
time basically anybody who had seen uh had ever seen
the moonwalk. Yeah, like, like no one in America watching
this NBC special had been watching Top of the Pops.
They made a scene stuff on solid gold here and there,
But it was definitely like a mind blower for because
it was such a widely watched special for sure. Um, well,
(26:13):
here's the deal. He was taught the moonwalk depends on
who you asked. Some people say he sought out Daniel
said you teach me. Other people say no, it was
Casper Candidate or Coolie Jackson. But from what I gather it,
it sounds like all those guys eventually worked with him
over the years as like either choreographers or choreographer slash
(26:37):
backup dancers. So he he learned it from some or
all of those people. Yeah, Like um Daniel choreographed like
his Smooth Criminal video, and Coolie and Casper are the
dudes who like lean with him on other that very
famous like crazy side lean that did in the video.
(27:01):
Does he do one of those the lean move? Yes,
the crazy side lean, I think is what it's called.
Can I say what happened to me yesterday? What did
you do a lean? Well? I was looking at videos
on how to moonwalk tutorials, uh to see if I
could get it, And when you watch it slowed down
and broken down, it's like, oh, well, I get it.
It's not that complex, but it's hard to master. And
(27:24):
we'll get to all that coming up. Like I'm sure
we're gonna bumble our way through a description about a moonwalk.
We always do, but we're gonna try. But then I
started following into that local YouTube vortex of videos, and
I saw this guy saying, here's how you do the lean,
and I was like, I want to know how to
do that because it's cool. It is it's like an illusion.
(27:46):
It is like at the obviously, well it's not. It's
real strong ankles, right, And there's a guy that well,
I don't And there's a guy named Robert Hoffman who
it turns out this guy is great. He does He's
day It's tutorials, and he's kind of funny and and
does it in such a way that it's interesting to watch.
(28:06):
And so I encourage everyone to go watch Robert Hoffman's
tutorial on how to do the lean, and he kind
of explains, He fully explains the illusion and how to
how to do it well, and I look at it
and I'm like, oh man, you're about to fall over.
And then he pulls it back, and I thought, I'm
gonna practice the lean because that'll be like I've always
wanted to know how to dance, but I'm just not
good at it. But I want to get like the
(28:28):
lean down at least so I can bust that out
at the party. Just like standing in place. Yeah, but
you know you shouldn't even do it on a dance
floors while you're having a conversation with somebody, like slowly, slowly,
just start to leave, so they you're about to go over,
snap back into place and be like, what if You're
totally right? Because I don't go to dance parties anymore anyway,
(28:49):
what am I talking about? Yeah, I would be in
the office one day in the kitchen and I'll just
do my lean. He's gonna go, oh my god, you
didn't go over? He stood back up. Oh man, um,
all right, So where are we? So we were talking
about how there's a there's a discrepancy over who taught
Michael Jackson the moonwalk. Correct. The thing is is Michael
(29:09):
Jackson never claimed to have invented the moonwalk. People just
assumed he had because he was huge at the time.
And he also later said that he didn't know what
he what his dance routine was going to be for
Billy Jean for this Motown special. I don't know if
I buy that. So a lot of people say, well,
obviously he just did the spur of the moment or whatever. No,
(29:30):
totally untrue. He employed choreographers and including those three guys,
like you said, all three of them worked with him
as choreographers. And he also, as far as his sister
Janet I think, says, they went to see Shalamar at
Disneyland before this and saw um Jeffrey Daniel doing the
(29:51):
backslide and said, dude, you gotta teach me that. Here's
some money. Teach me the moonwalk. Oh wait, it's not
called the moonwalk yet. And he also said that he
he called it the moonwalk, that it was actually the
media that came up with that, but he adopted name.
Surely some I mean obviously someone named it some Yeah,
some ap reporters. Yeah, there's me, uh, for what it's worth,
(30:14):
Daniel said, besides she Shields and Yard now that the
the Electric Boogaloos, yes, is who inspired him as well.
And I looked up those guys. They're the ones who
originated body popping. Yeah, And they were a dance group
and I was looking at one of them and I
was like, let's rerun. Okay, you're talking about locking, Yes,
(30:34):
it is rerun. Yes, he was huge. He was a
member of the Lockers, which was at one point the
Electric boogaloos. No, those are two different well, no, at
one point they were. They were merged, okay, and then
then that's where popping and locking came from, because popping
and lock and are two different types of day. Originally
they were the electric boogaloo lockers and then I guess
(30:55):
they diverged at one point. Okay, maybe they were like
I want to lock, I want to pop. Well they
dude who invented locking. It was good Friends with Rerun
and like, if you think of Rerun dancing, like those
wrist twists and the jumps and the suspender stuff, that's
lock and it totally and they were on that dance squad,
the Lockers. It was Don Campbell who invented locking Rerun
(31:17):
and then Tony Basil, the girl who sang Mickey. So
if you don't know who rerun as, you're like, what
in the world are you guys talking about? What? You oldsters? Um?
Oh yeah, it's a It was a TV show called
What's Happening About These Three Friends in South Central l
A In the seventies, great show, very funny, uh and
(31:40):
Rerun was one of the characters played by the Great
Fred Barry, who was in the lockers in the electric
googlue lockers and just go watch go type rerun dancing.
What's happening and uh, what you're watching is pure locking
one of the great TV theme songs of all time too.
Now if you throw what he's really is what instrument
(32:01):
was that like a klesmer or something? I have no idea,
So it's weird, but it's a great one. Um. The
if you throw in that that our movement, that wave
and the worm, you've got popping locking and breaking. Yeah,
what people think of as breakdancing, that's right. Like we've
(32:23):
I was thinking the other day about how how in
our lifetime is people our age and there's a range,
but we've seen like a complete like two complete at
least two new complete art forms created in hip hop
music and that and breakdancing created out of whole cloth.
(32:44):
It's amazing. And the new sports like what like you
know X games and snowboarding and skateboarding, Like we've like
seen these new things created and you always think that, well,
music is what else can you do well under this time?
I guess techno and all that stuff that was created
as well, Um, jazz, well that was before us a
(33:08):
little but no it's true. I just think it's pretty
neat to look around. No, I know what you're talking about.
Two you you're like, well, there's grunge. Well grunge is
an offshoot of like rock and roll or whatever. But yeah, no,
I mean these were completely new art forms that some
people still think are a fad, which is funny. Really well,
you know, you hear like older mudgeons like rap is
going to be a fad. No, wrap is a brand
(33:29):
new art form and he's here forever, and it changes
in morphs and is you know, it's amazing, it's neat.
So we did a hip hop episode. You mentioned that, Yeah,
it was good. I thought for you know, a couple
of shamos like us. I think we did a pretty
decent job. Agreed. Um, all right, so do we need
to explain how to break dance? I want to hear
you explain it? No, I can't you mean moonwalk? Yea,
(33:52):
I want to say break dance break? Yeah, yeah, we
need to say how to moonwalk? Okay, so go ahead
take it away. Well you're the one who does it
so well. Alright, alright, are you ready? So you start?
First of all, you want to take off your shoes
and put on some socks on a nice slick floor.
Don't try to do it on like um uh pine bark. No.
(34:14):
Maybe pour yourself a vodka gimlet. Yeah, well that's the
that's the drink of the moonwalker. So um. You you
are on a slick floor, wearing socks, and you stand
straight up and down right, and you take your right
foot and you put it out in front of you
with your foot flat on the floor. Okay, bend your
(34:37):
left knee and go up on the ball of your
left foot. Okay, now holding yourself in place with just
your the ball of your foot. All of everything is
on whatever foot you have up, the ball of whatever
foot you have up. Take a sip of that gimlet, right,
maybe another one too, I need one now, And then
(34:58):
you drag your foot back the foot that's on the floor.
And as you drag your right foot back past your left,
you drop your left and you drop your left heel
and raise your right that's right, and then you repeat
the same process and you're floating. There's the moonwalk, a
k the backslide. You're pretty square if you call it
(35:19):
the moonwalk. These days, we had to title this episode
moonwalk because we wanted everybody to know what we were
talking about. But it's called the backslide. Okay, that is correct.
And I watched the tutorial which the guy who did
the tutorial actually wasn't great at it. Um, like he
he had it down like how to teach you. But
when he did it, I was going, yeah, it's not great.
(35:40):
Was Steve Brule? No, God, that would be great. I
just think the guy had the wrong shoes on personally,
but um, I'll bet that's what he blames it onto.
The thing he stressed for a good moonwalk is a
long stride, which is where you're lacking. If I can
be honest. Oh am I doing it to you? Short? Yeah? Okay,
(36:01):
long stride, Josh, Okay, Um, I didn't realize you've had
so many formed opinions about my moon wall. Uh. That
foot that you're keeping flat needs to be so so
flat to create the illusion. Right, What what am I doing?
I'm not talking about you know your foot was pretty
(36:22):
good and flat. That's your stride. I pretend like it's dead,
like my foot is dead when I drag it. Uh.
And then when you when you go to switch feet,
he said, you really just snap them both real hard
to create that illusion like a good completely synchronized simultaneous
snap up and down with those two feet. You're long stride,
(36:43):
keep that foot flat, keep that vodka gimlet flowing, and
you're gonna be moonwalking in no time. And then you
can also because what you're doing is it's supposed to
look like you're walking while you're moving backward. You're walking
forward but moving backwards. That's the definition of the moonwald.
So you can um, you can like add your arms swinging,
lean like your till till your body forward a little
(37:06):
bit if you're real good. Michael Jackson used to like
move his head up and down in rhythm to his
walking or whatever, and it adds to the effect. Totes Shalamar,
I feel like I kind of should try it, try
it right now. Well, I'm not gonna do it now.
You don't have a vodka gimlet, Nope, Are you got
anything else? And you go get some cocktail onions. Those
(37:28):
are great Gibson onions. Oh is that a Gibson and
I'm thinking of yeah, but that's it. It is the
lime juice, yes, roses lime, yeah, yeah. Uh. If you
want to know more, about vodka gimlets. You can type
that word in the search part how stuff works dot com.
And since I said gimlet, it's time for listener mail.
(37:49):
Before listener mail, this is ah, I'm gonna call this
correction time. Okay, we need like a Lila by music.
We do so you know, we have corrections on the
show from time to time. This was sort of a
big one because we really goofed on the Gettysburg Address episode. Um,
and boy did we hear about it. Remember how I
(38:11):
said I wanted to be a civil war buff. I
don't anymore. You know, you had to start to your
career as a civil war buff. They're not nice people,
as it turns out, no one on the internet it's
a nice person. No I was. I was just very
surprised if people got angry that we messed something up?
Did I just like, so, what did we mess up?
We said fifty thou dead. It was fifty total casualties.
(38:31):
Is that what it was? So we messed up and
said mistaked casualties for dead, when in fact casualties is dead,
missing or wounded. Um. And then we also said that
what we were talking about the percentage of the army
like it was this much a percentage of of the
Union army and a third of Lee's army. But it
(38:53):
was just for the army fighting in that battle, not
the total Union army and the total confess or An army.
And we very specifically were like, this is for the
entire army. So we got a little excited and a
little ahead of ourselves. Well, clearly we're the most evil
people of the century. Yeah, so very sorry about that.
(39:15):
Civil War buffs you know, now, don't have a contact
Chuck again. Please all right, listener mail now. Yeah, um,
I'm just gonna read this one. Hey, guys, great podcast,
especially like how you pointed out, uh, here's some about
the bogus studies, how to do good research, especially like
how you guys pointed out the pressure when you're an
(39:37):
understudy to do studies that support the current theories of
your employer without getting into a ton of detail. I've
been there, and I left research altogether because I became
pretty disillusioned with it all. One thing you did not
mention is that entire industries get erected based on the
results of a few initial studies. Uh, the sexiness of
the studies aside, which is what you talked about the
(39:59):
research or does a good job and does not show
anything or has a negative study, their funding is often
at stake. For my personal experiences, is the largest basis
for bias. WHOA, that was a mouthful. It's hard to
say when you're missing the tooth um research. Researchers become
heavily vested and being right from a face perspective if
(40:20):
a c in a monetary perspective. We don't really recognize
realize this because the scope of the impact of the
studies are usually small. But that researcher who suddenly lost
all their grants is a pretty high price to pay
for being ethical. I don't really have any answers to
how clean it up, but science is contrarian and by
nature anti consensus. Instead, we have a system that rewards
(40:43):
only rewards reinforcement. Good researchers have to be allowed to
say you did this great study and found nothing without
the fear of losing grant money. Amen. That's from Trevor.
Thanks Trevor. That was very illuminating. Yeah, an enlightening, very
very aditt Can you say that, Rudy, really, I don't know. Okay,
(41:06):
if you want to get in touch with us. You
can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook, dot com slash Stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and as always,
join us at our home on the web. Stuff you
Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a
production of iHeart Radios. How stuff Works for more podcasts
(41:27):
for my Heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hi, everybody, Are you moonwalking right now? Well, it's Saturday,
so you know I'm moonwalking and this is my Saturday
select PI from July one, two thousand sixteen. How the
Moonwalk Works. Give it a listen right now. Welcome to
Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radios.
(00:21):
How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. So
it's just moonwalk right in this joint. Can you moonwalk? Now?
I think everybody at the Bellhouse on June knows I
(00:43):
can moonwalk. Okaynot I didn't moonwalk, but I think you
could just based based on my moves, you could. You
could make the assumption that I'm an awesome moonwalker. I've
seen your moonwalk. It's you know, herky jerky, you know.
It's that kind of moonwalk that guys like us do.
I don't understand, you know, he kind of it kind
(01:05):
of simulates the moonwalk. I see, you know what I mean.
It's a it's an echo of a moonwalk. I wouldn't
call it smooth and floaty, oh I would. Yeah, now
I know, And it's not a great moonwalk. It's right.
I never learned the moonwalk because I didn't try to
practice the moonwalk more than like once, and I was like,
(01:26):
I can't do that. Oh yeah, I just bailed on
it like my brother practiced and got okay at it.
I'm surprised he didn't, like, Yes, teach it as a
class for free to children in need. No, he got uh,
he got okay at it. Um. But I just I
don't know if I think I bail on things that
aren't easy for me. Well, that's definitely a candidate for that. Um. Yeah,
(01:51):
I think that's a trait I have. I don't like
to spend a lot of time on something that I
don't think i'm good at. I'm not one of those like, no, man,
I'm gonna try the moonwalk until I learned it. I see.
I was like, maybe I just im not a moonwalker.
Didn't you? Didn't you say you bail on books too
that don't like capture your attention at this point in
your life? Was that you? I don't think I said that,
but I I didn't say that. Okay, but will you
(02:14):
work your way through a book? Well, I'll give it
a fair shot. It's been a while since I bailed
on a book though, because I usually just pick good
books like that. I know we're really good. Uh. I
don't know how long I give a book. How long
do you give a book? I will give a book
(02:35):
two pages, yeah, but like three or four times? Right? Like,
what am I missing? Let me try that again. Yeah, yeah,
that's fair. I just write a book called Headful of Ghosts,
which is pretty neat. It's like a psychological thriller. Huh.
I haven't read a fiction booking forever, and then right
now either I'm reading the right stuff, the classic and
(03:00):
it's so that I think Tom Wolf might be the
greatest reporter of all time. Oh yeah, oh yeah, I
don't think there's anybody better our buddy Joe Randazzoh oh yeah.
Of at midnight Fame people are like, wait a minute,
I thought he was at the Onion. Now he's at
at midnight. He used to work at the Onion. Uh.
(03:23):
He just recommended a book which I'm really interested in
that I wanted to tell you about because it sounds
like it's right up your alley, called Sapiens, A Brief
History of Humankind by you've all Noah Harari and the
it has has a pretty remarkable thesis, which is that
(03:48):
humans can Humans didn't kill each other off because they
can cooperate in large numbers because we have an ability,
a unique ability animals don't have two believe in things
that exist only in our imagination, huh, like government and
(04:10):
money and god. And he said, all of these things
allow us to cooperate. Like we talked about in our
money episode, it's like money has that paper has no value.
We just all agreed. So it's essentially fiction, the cold
concept of money. It's just something we've all agreed on.
And he said, is it's this cooperation by believing in
these fictional things that is the only reason that humans
(04:32):
didn't kill each other off like you know, any other
weird species. Yeah, I've got to check that out. They said,
it sounds super interesting, and he said it was amazing,
So and thank you for relating that. Yeah, I want to.
Maybe you should read it and just tell me about it,
because I'm still have never read four Man. I'm a
fiction reader. I try to. I try to read nonfiction
in it. I don't know, I just like a good
(04:54):
fictional yarn more. I'm I'm quite the opposite. Like I
told you, I want to be a civil War buff.
I got one of those huge books that's supposed to
be great and I just can't do it. Like The Moonwalk,
you don't like fiction. I do like it, it's just
for the so much of the time I'm reading for
(05:15):
work that see. I think he would enjoy fiction as
a break. Well, that's why I read Headfellow Ghosts. I
was like, I'm reading a fiction book. I need to
just like read something different and use my imagination again.
And um it worked. It was like it had an
effect on me. What was that? What was it? Yeah?
(05:35):
What was it about? It was about a girl who
may or may not be possessed and like how our
family unravels around her. Is it like poplit? I don't
know that. It's you know, like easy to read. Dean
Kountz and oh no, no it was. It was a
little more literary than that, and I wish I'm sorry
to the author who who wrote the book. I don't
(05:57):
remember the dude's name, but yeah, he does a good job.
I'm sorry to Dean Koons and John Grisham. All of
a sudden, Uh, they know, they know what they are.
Let's guys know what they are. Oh, Dean Kontz Man,
that guy's imagination is fantastic. Jan I always assumed that
he was better than Stephen King because he could finish
the story. I've never read a Stephen King book, Chuck, what,
(06:22):
I don't read a lot of that stuff. Okay. I
read one Dean Kunt's book in my early twenties and
one night. That's the only time I've ever done that. Well, yeah,
that was a good thing about it. Kuon's bookcase. You
can go through it like crazy. Started reading it like
eight or nine and I stopped at like five in
the morning. But each one is way different than the others,
I mean, really differently. The guy's got a great imagination.
(06:45):
You should read some of Stephen King's work, Like I
know he is. He's he's so unfairly I was actually
talking to Hodgman about this the other day. He's like,
very unfairly criticized as a hack, but he's actually, oh yeah,
a lot of people are student could sucks. But if
you just because he's so prolific and because he very
famously has trouble finishing a story, yeah, but he's like
(07:11):
nobody can get inside the mind, like the dark side
of a person's the average person's mind better than Stephen King.
He's just a he's a great storyteller, aside from the
ending part. So what's the Shining is probably the one
I should read? Probably not because you're so used to
Kubrick's shining and it's just so radically that's the big one, right,
(07:32):
that's a big one. I've never read the stand I
would start with the short stories. They're fantastic. Those he
can finish. It's the largest what do you mean not finish?
Like just amazing build up, and then the resolutions, like,
so he finishes, you just mean it's okay, right, it's
it's not left unfinished. It's the resolution is um the
payoff is not so great. Yeah, interesting, and it's still fine,
(07:56):
but it's he's so good at building things up that
it's almost it would be almost impossible to finish it.
I don't know if we should call this beginning book
talk with Josh and Chuck or patting the episode you
want to talk a moonwalk? Yeah, we needed a little something.
This is a short one. Well, you were saying that
(08:16):
you were like you just couldn't do it because this
is Let me let me tell you how I approached
the moonwalk. All right, my left hand was covered in
a white glove was sequence sewn on that my mom
made for me. Did you really wearing the thriller jacket
a little black pants. Yeah, that's how my moon walked.
(08:38):
I was still not that great at it. You were,
you were in man, this is so in my wheelhouse. Yeah, yeah,
I wasn't. I mean I listened to pop music, but
I was also the influenced by my well he's now
my brother in law, but the General. The General started
dating my sister when I was twelve, okay, so like
he was always around and he was like, you're twelve
(08:59):
years old old. You need to listen to the Almond
Brothers and Leonard Skinnered and Molly Hatchett and Blackfoot in
the Atlanta Rhythm section back the Doobie Brothers, like heck yeah.
But I also listened to the American Top forty every week. So,
I mean I was an MTV. I was glued to
So you can't be glued to MTV and not like
digest ing some of that stuff. But I was never
(09:22):
never owned parachute pants or anything. But so that was
the only sequence thing I ever owned. But that's very
sweet that your mom did that. I think so too.
It was a very sweet gesture. Um. But I think
one of the other reasons the moonwalk spoke to me
and I didn't realize it until researching this article chuck
(09:43):
that I was also super into break dancing at the time,
and the moonwalk is actually not a breaking move. It's
a popping move. But for all but actual breaking and
popping dancers, it was the same thing. Yeah, I don't
I don't see how it's a popping move. I saw
that in the article and I couldn't put it together.
(10:04):
Becoming is so herky jerky, and a good moonwalk is
so smooth and buttery. Well, so locking is herky jerky? Right, Well, no,
popping is too popping? Is that? Like? Yeah, but it's
also I wish this is really not good for audio,
but it's also so you know, the one where you
hold out one hand and make a wave the wave
(10:25):
goes through your body to the other hand. The class
of popping is it? Yeah? And I was like, okay,
all but the worms popping wrong? The worms are breaking move.
I clearly don't know, but the average person who's who's
doing these dances is probably popping, locking and breaking. Yeah,
it all kind of worked out at the same time. Yeah.
And and I know we covered breakdancing some in the
(10:48):
hip hop episode, but we should do it total breakdance,
like give it its full do okay, and we're gonna
call it the total Breakdance episode. But we I mean,
we gotta cover some of it here because there's there's
there's such a basis of it in the Moonwalk, or
the Moonwalk cast such a basis in it. But the
(11:08):
Moonwalk goes even further back then popping and locking, which
we'll talk about in a minute. It goes all the
way back to the thirties. Should we take a break?
Oh man? Yes, you know, stop all right. Josh just
(11:37):
taught me how a moonwalking. Now I'm great at it. Yeah.
And this I can't remember what that's called. The wave
the waves where you stand up at a baseball game.
So what is this? I don't know. I mean, people
that don't know what Josh is doing right now are
probably frustrated. But it's that you know that move you
do where you wave the one arm and it goes
(11:57):
to your body and the other arm waves and then
you to your friend. Yes, that's a popping move. Is
it body popping? Clearly doesn't. I don't know what popping means.
I think the name is a bit of a misnomer. Yeah,
probably all right, And by the way, people, you might
(12:18):
as well get to this. I'm not gonna be able
to gush much about Michael Jackson because I'm one of
the people who thinks he'd did bad things in his
private life. So if you don't hear me talking about
how awesome he is, that's why I have a hard
time separating the art from the artist. Well you want
to throw it out there, man, if you believe that,
(12:38):
how could you? I'm unconvinced at this point. All right,
But I mean seeing my own a. Yeah, that's a
good one, good one. A bunch of people are like,
that's what c o am covering my own a. Speaking
for myself anyway, if you hear a little bit of
like callousness in my voice, that's that's why. So uh,
(13:02):
going back in time, Uh, it was not invented by
that man. It was like you said, it goes back
to the nineteen thirties. If you look on the YouTube's
they're like history of the Moonwalk, you will see a
nice video that shows the evolution of this dance, starting
with Cab Callaway in the nineteen thirties doing something called
(13:24):
the Buzz. The Great band Leader Jazz big band Leader.
He remains unaccused of anything. He was also awesome in
the Blues Brothers. Oh yeah, wow, he was still around
for that. That's right. I forgot about that about fifty
years on. Yeah. Uh so in the nineteen thirties he
did something called the Buzz and it was a little
more herky jerky and not as smooth. Then there was
(13:46):
something that this article mentions called the camel walk, which
I looked into, or the collegiate walk that like Sammy
Davis Jr. Did in this video. I don't think it
looks anything like the moonwalk, not really. I think going
forward first of all, right, which is a big one,
and it's cool. It's a cool move. Sure, James Brown
dares Sammy to do it. Sam He's like, all right,
(14:08):
I'll do it and awesome. So, boy, could you imagine
being in that audience, man, Sammy Davis Jr. And James
Brown on the same stage. I know, who do we
have now? Bieber and whoever else? I don't even know
him Bieber and Bieber it's a nightmare group. Yeah, so uh, sorry, man,
(14:32):
we saw old. You're you're not old because we're trash
and Justin Bieber, you're just saying it's a jerk. You know,
he really has done a lot of stuff to say
to earn that. Yeah, it's not like he's some like
super nice guy. People are just unfair to like look
at some of the videos and like peeing in a
bucket in a restaurant. Did you ever see that one? No?
(14:53):
I heard about that one though. That's wrong with Well.
I think he's just too much wealth and not enough
guidance end and probably too much booze and stuff. I
think maybe he might be somewhat reformed now, but really
I think he's grown up a little bit. But I
don't follow it that closely. I see just the p
and the bucket thing. Yeah, I mean that was enough
to turn me off forever. Win him back, Justin went
(15:17):
him back, good luck. So we're talking about the walk
or the camel walk, right, so, um, you were saying
it doesn't look like a moonwalk. In fact, it looks
kind of like a reverse moonwalk sort of. But the
point is it was it's somebody Sammy Davis Jr. Floating.
Their feet are floating a little bit. They appear to
(15:37):
be floating while they move. All right, So it's related
to the moonwalk, right, I'll give you that. The one
that's like dead on though, is Bill Bailey in nineteen
fifty five full on moonwalks off the stage. Yeah, in
nineteen at the Apollo. Yeah. And there's a great video,
and it's at the very end of the video, but
I urge you to not just skip to the end,
(16:00):
because you've got two or three minutes of some sweet,
sweet tap dancing, which I didn't realize how much I
loved until I saw this guy and he was supposedly
trained by Mr bo Jangles himself. Really, Ye, that was
a real person. Yeah. I don't remember his name, but
it was bow Jangles. Yeah. I love tap dancing. I
didn't know it, and I watched this sounds like, Man,
(16:21):
that's amazing. You should go see Gregory Hines. Is he
still doing it? Probably there's no way. He's just like
I'm done tapping. Yeah, tap was life for that guy. Yeah,
I mean that stuff is amazing. And what's the guy's name?
I can't remember? Well, I did see that movie. Um,
(16:42):
there was a guy uh savvyon Glover. Oh I know
you're talking about like much more recent Yeah, like mean
mean tap dancer. Yeah, like he just shouted insults while
he was He looks stupid. But watch me dance. So
(17:02):
Bill Bailey in nineteen fifty five, like legit moonwalked, and um,
it's hard to say like he's the guy that invented it,
because dance, like any art form, is just borrowed and
changed and morphs along the years to where I don't
know that anyone can specifically say, like Bill Bailey might
have seen it from someone else. I've been like, that's
(17:23):
a hot move. Yeah, he seems like the type of
um talent that he could have come up within himself. Yeah. Sure.
But what's weird, Chuck, is that that's apparently where it
went and died. Like he created the moonwalk and it's
stopped with him for a while. Sure. No, if you
(17:44):
go back in the history of it, the people who
popularized the moonwalk didn't know that he had done that.
Oh yeah, yeah, I see what you mean. So simultaneously,
there's also some movement that's similar called the air walk,
but it's mine. Yeah, like Marcel mars I was walking
against the wind, very famous mime routine where his feet
are floating. It's called air walking, and it's strictly mine, right. Yeah.
(18:08):
The difference between that and the moonwalk is that they're
stationary and acting like they're walking forward and the wind
is blowing them, but they're not going backwards. It's but
it's also not part of a dance either, correct, some
don't dance. This is but this is a weird little
thing that I didn't realize. There was apparently a mime.
(18:29):
There's a period of the seventies where mimes were cool.
Did you know that? Yeah, I mean that was I
remember watching Childs and Yarnell as a kid on television
on major network TV. I was all brainstem at the
time because I was totally unaware of that. Yeah, miming
was a big deal and that like I would practice that. Okay,
okay a little bit so not for years, but yeah,
(18:51):
I practice miming. Well, a bizarre period of American pop culture.
Oh yeah, Shields and Yard. Now this mime couple had
a or they two dudes are a man and a woman.
I think they were married. Um that they they had
their own TV show. Yeah, Shields and Yardell was watched
apparently by a lot of people, including you. It was
(19:12):
also watched by a dude named Jeffrey Daniel. Yeah, man,
Jeffrey Daniel was a great dancer, probably still is he is? Uh.
Not only was he on Solid Gold, he was in
the band Shalomar with Jody Whatley. Yeah, Jody Whatley and um.
Shalomar was created by the great Don Cornelius of Soul
(19:33):
Train h R I P I believe did he die
a few years ago? And uh, Gary Mumford was the
original singer and then on album number two, Gerald Brown
took over, like you said, with Jody Whatley of Shaalomar
Fame I guess and then later on her own Fame.
Yeah she was. She had her own solo career, right
and uh and this guy Jeffrey Daniel, Right, So Jeffrey
(19:57):
Danielson in the Sheets remember that hit, Yes, this great
Footloose soundtrack song Dancing in the Sheets, dude, dude, and
that that was the eighties. The eighties stuff they you know,
came around in the seventies with more disco. It was
super disco e to start with. Um, but this dude
Jeffrey Daniels, who was in Shelamore, who's also a solid
(20:17):
Gold dancer. He had a pretty awesome move called the backslide,
and when you watch him backslide, uh, he's he's moonwalking.
It's total total moonwalk. It totally is and um. Later
on he was interviewed like where did you get this?
Where you know where? Where you know where did you
come up with the idea? He's like, I was super
(20:37):
into Shields and Yarnelle at the time, So miming influenced
the backslide, which, as we'll find out in a second,
directly led to the moonwalk. And we'll get to that
finally after this. Alright, Chuck, we're back. Yes, Jeffrey daniel
(21:08):
I watched that interview that's on the YouTube. It was
on a British talk show called Soccer a m of
the two thousand seven Things. Yeah, they had him on
Soccer Am. Apparently it's not just about sports, but they
have like comedy bits and pop culture stuff. Uh. So
he was surprised. On that show. They showed the clip
(21:28):
of of Bailey in the in the fifties and he
was like, what's that. He's like, I've never even seen
that he was surprised to see that someone was legit moonwalking,
you know whatever, fifties something years earlier. Yeah, the same move.
It's not like, oh, that's kind of close, like maybe
the camel walk or um, the buzz like Cab calloway.
(21:50):
It was a moonwalk. It was the moonwalk. But that's
what I'm saying, That's what's so bizarre is that this
guy invented the moonwalk in ve and it began and
ended with him. Um, and it took mimes getting a
TV show to create the moonwalk as we understand it today,
different about it. Talk about chaos theory, you know what
(22:12):
I'm saying though, like other people could have influenced the
mimes that knew about Bill Bailey like it. Guess, I
guess that's entirely possible. But Marcel Marceau was doing the
air walk as far back as the thirties before Bill Bailey.
Was he around in the thirties from what I understand, Okay,
which is weird because well, he was pretty old when
in the seventies when he hit it big. So yeah,
(22:33):
I think then he was doing it in the thirties
because that's what this article says in it. I didn't
find anything. I didn't find any footage of him from
the thirties, like all of it seemed to be from
the seventies or early eighties, well, the heyday of mimes. Also,
I was curious why people hate mimes and did little
research and of course there's no no like definitive thing.
(22:54):
It's not like a phobia now. But everything I saw
I came down to a few things. They look like
clowns in clowns. We did a whole episode on that,
and uh, the silent thing seems to bug people. And
then just the notion that there, you know, they'll get
up all in your face in the park. You're out
(23:14):
just enjoying your day and a mom will come up
and be like, you know, to start doing their like
intruding upon you to do their act, which I don't
even know is I don't even know if that's the
case over there. Oh it is, believe me. Yeah, mine's
very intrusive, like to start static and finish it. Uh
(23:35):
So back to Jeffrey Daniel, He's dancing on Soul Train,
He's dancing on Solid Gold. There's another couple of dancers
name Jeron Casper, candidate Great name and Derek Cooley Jackson
j A X s O N another cool name, and
they were moon walking around or backsliding around, and so
all these dudes were basically kind of laying the foundation
(24:00):
for what the moonwalk would come to be. It got
real like even if you watch Bailey's it's a legit moonwalk,
but it's not as smooth as Daniel ended up doing it.
You know, like when you see him on Solid Gold,
he like, that's one of the smoother moonwalks you'll ever see.
And he probably debuted it for the first time in
(24:20):
American history on TV on Top of the Pops. That's
what I was talking about. Yeah, yeah, that's so smooth.
So um people thought he was cheating. Yeah, They're like,
this is the floor oiled or something like what is
that kind of witchcraft? Are we watching? Right? It blew
everybody away, right, but everybody's no one knew who this
(24:42):
guy was really it was a Solid Gold dancer at
the time, everybody knew who Michael Jackson was. So in
about a year later, almost exactly a year later, UM
NBC broadcast this special called Motown Big Retrospective, and it
was a huge, huge thing. Um Diana Ross did her
(25:04):
first appearance with the Supreme since nineteen sixty nine. Marvin
Gaye played um that there was a battle of the
bands between the Temptations and the Four Tops Stevie Wonder, Um,
I'm sure everybody wanted like a soccer game. Um, And
Michael Jackson comes out right, and people like, who's he?
(25:25):
I mean, he was pretty big at the time. Of
course he was. He was huge, but so was Marvin
Gaye and the Four Tops and Stevie Wonder. Right, Michael
Jackson comes out and brings the house down. And one
of the reasons he brought the house down was because
he was doing Billy Jean, which when the thing came out,
was the number one song in America. But during the
dance he did the moonwalk, and it was the first
(25:47):
time basically anybody who had seen uh had ever seen
the moonwalk. Yeah, like, like no one in America watching
this NBC special had been watching Top of the Pops.
They made a scene stuff on solid gold here and there,
But it was definitely like a mind blower for because
it was such a widely watched special for sure. Um, well,
(26:13):
here's the deal. He was taught the moonwalk depends on
who you asked. Some people say he sought out Daniel
said you teach me. Other people say no, it was
Casper Candidate or Coolie Jackson. But from what I gather it,
it sounds like all those guys eventually worked with him
over the years as like either choreographers or choreographer slash
(26:37):
backup dancers. So he he learned it from some or
all of those people. Yeah, Like um Daniel choreographed like
his Smooth Criminal video, and Coolie and Casper are the
dudes who like lean with him on other that very
famous like crazy side lean that did in the video.
(27:01):
Does he do one of those the lean move? Yes,
the crazy side lean, I think is what it's called.
Can I say what happened to me yesterday? What did
you do a lean? Well? I was looking at videos
on how to moonwalk tutorials, uh to see if I
could get it, And when you watch it slowed down
and broken down, it's like, oh, well, I get it.
It's not that complex, but it's hard to master. And
(27:24):
we'll get to all that coming up. Like I'm sure
we're gonna bumble our way through a description about a moonwalk.
We always do, but we're gonna try. But then I
started following into that local YouTube vortex of videos, and
I saw this guy saying, here's how you do the lean,
and I was like, I want to know how to
do that because it's cool. It is it's like an illusion.
(27:46):
It is like at the obviously, well it's not. It's
real strong ankles, right, And there's a guy that well,
I don't And there's a guy named Robert Hoffman who
it turns out this guy is great. He does He's
day It's tutorials, and he's kind of funny and and
does it in such a way that it's interesting to watch.
(28:06):
And so I encourage everyone to go watch Robert Hoffman's
tutorial on how to do the lean, and he kind
of explains, He fully explains the illusion and how to
how to do it well, and I look at it
and I'm like, oh man, you're about to fall over.
And then he pulls it back, and I thought, I'm
gonna practice the lean because that'll be like I've always
wanted to know how to dance, but I'm just not
good at it. But I want to get like the
(28:28):
lean down at least so I can bust that out
at the party. Just like standing in place. Yeah, but
you know you shouldn't even do it on a dance
floors while you're having a conversation with somebody, like slowly, slowly,
just start to leave, so they you're about to go over,
snap back into place and be like, what if You're
totally right? Because I don't go to dance parties anymore anyway,
(28:49):
what am I talking about? Yeah, I would be in
the office one day in the kitchen and I'll just
do my lean. He's gonna go, oh my god, you
didn't go over? He stood back up. Oh man, um,
all right, So where are we? So we were talking
about how there's a there's a discrepancy over who taught
Michael Jackson the moonwalk. Correct. The thing is is Michael
(29:09):
Jackson never claimed to have invented the moonwalk. People just
assumed he had because he was huge at the time.
And he also later said that he didn't know what
he what his dance routine was going to be for
Billy Jean for this Motown special. I don't know if
I buy that. So a lot of people say, well,
obviously he just did the spur of the moment or whatever. No,
(29:30):
totally untrue. He employed choreographers and including those three guys,
like you said, all three of them worked with him
as choreographers. And he also, as far as his sister
Janet I think, says, they went to see Shalamar at
Disneyland before this and saw um Jeffrey Daniel doing the
(29:51):
backslide and said, dude, you gotta teach me that. Here's
some money. Teach me the moonwalk. Oh wait, it's not
called the moonwalk yet. And he also said that he
he called it the moonwalk, that it was actually the
media that came up with that, but he adopted name.
Surely some I mean obviously someone named it some Yeah,
some ap reporters. Yeah, there's me, uh, for what it's worth,
(30:14):
Daniel said, besides she Shields and Yard now that the
the Electric Boogaloos, yes, is who inspired him as well.
And I looked up those guys. They're the ones who
originated body popping. Yeah, And they were a dance group
and I was looking at one of them and I
was like, let's rerun. Okay, you're talking about locking, Yes,
(30:34):
it is rerun. Yes, he was huge. He was a
member of the Lockers, which was at one point the
Electric boogaloos. No, those are two different well, no, at
one point they were. They were merged, okay, and then
then that's where popping and locking came from, because popping
and lock and are two different types of day. Originally
they were the electric boogaloo lockers and then I guess
(30:55):
they diverged at one point. Okay, maybe they were like
I want to lock, I want to pop. Well they
dude who invented locking. It was good Friends with Rerun
and like, if you think of Rerun dancing, like those
wrist twists and the jumps and the suspender stuff, that's
lock and it totally and they were on that dance squad,
the Lockers. It was Don Campbell who invented locking Rerun
(31:17):
and then Tony Basil, the girl who sang Mickey. So
if you don't know who rerun as, you're like, what
in the world are you guys talking about? What? You oldsters? Um?
Oh yeah, it's a It was a TV show called
What's Happening About These Three Friends in South Central l
A In the seventies, great show, very funny, uh and
(31:40):
Rerun was one of the characters played by the Great
Fred Barry, who was in the lockers in the electric
googlue lockers and just go watch go type rerun dancing.
What's happening and uh, what you're watching is pure locking
one of the great TV theme songs of all time too.
Now if you throw what he's really is what instrument
(32:01):
was that like a klesmer or something? I have no idea,
So it's weird, but it's a great one. Um. The
if you throw in that that our movement, that wave
and the worm, you've got popping locking and breaking. Yeah,
what people think of as breakdancing, that's right. Like we've
(32:23):
I was thinking the other day about how how in
our lifetime is people our age and there's a range,
but we've seen like a complete like two complete at
least two new complete art forms created in hip hop
music and that and breakdancing created out of whole cloth.
(32:44):
It's amazing. And the new sports like what like you
know X games and snowboarding and skateboarding, Like we've like
seen these new things created and you always think that, well,
music is what else can you do well under this time?
I guess techno and all that stuff that was created
as well, Um, jazz, well that was before us a
(33:08):
little but no it's true. I just think it's pretty
neat to look around. No, I know what you're talking about.
Two you you're like, well, there's grunge. Well grunge is
an offshoot of like rock and roll or whatever. But yeah, no,
I mean these were completely new art forms that some
people still think are a fad, which is funny. Really well,
you know, you hear like older mudgeons like rap is
going to be a fad. No, wrap is a brand
(33:29):
new art form and he's here forever, and it changes
in morphs and is you know, it's amazing, it's neat.
So we did a hip hop episode. You mentioned that, Yeah,
it was good. I thought for you know, a couple
of shamos like us. I think we did a pretty
decent job. Agreed. Um, all right, so do we need
to explain how to break dance? I want to hear
you explain it? No, I can't you mean moonwalk? Yea,
(33:52):
I want to say break dance break? Yeah, yeah, we
need to say how to moonwalk? Okay, so go ahead
take it away. Well you're the one who does it
so well. Alright, alright, are you ready? So you start?
First of all, you want to take off your shoes
and put on some socks on a nice slick floor.
Don't try to do it on like um uh pine bark. No.
(34:14):
Maybe pour yourself a vodka gimlet. Yeah, well that's the
that's the drink of the moonwalker. So um. You you
are on a slick floor, wearing socks, and you stand
straight up and down right, and you take your right
foot and you put it out in front of you
with your foot flat on the floor. Okay, bend your
(34:37):
left knee and go up on the ball of your
left foot. Okay, now holding yourself in place with just
your the ball of your foot. All of everything is
on whatever foot you have up, the ball of whatever
foot you have up. Take a sip of that gimlet, right,
maybe another one too, I need one now, And then
(34:58):
you drag your foot back the foot that's on the floor.
And as you drag your right foot back past your left,
you drop your left and you drop your left heel
and raise your right that's right, and then you repeat
the same process and you're floating. There's the moonwalk, a
k the backslide. You're pretty square if you call it
(35:19):
the moonwalk. These days, we had to title this episode
moonwalk because we wanted everybody to know what we were
talking about. But it's called the backslide. Okay, that is correct.
And I watched the tutorial which the guy who did
the tutorial actually wasn't great at it. Um, like he
he had it down like how to teach you. But
when he did it, I was going, yeah, it's not great.
(35:40):
Was Steve Brule? No, God, that would be great. I
just think the guy had the wrong shoes on personally,
but um, I'll bet that's what he blames it onto.
The thing he stressed for a good moonwalk is a
long stride, which is where you're lacking. If I can
be honest. Oh am I doing it to you? Short? Yeah? Okay,
(36:01):
long stride, Josh, Okay, Um, I didn't realize you've had
so many formed opinions about my moon wall. Uh. That
foot that you're keeping flat needs to be so so
flat to create the illusion. Right, What what am I doing?
I'm not talking about you know your foot was pretty
(36:22):
good and flat. That's your stride. I pretend like it's dead,
like my foot is dead when I drag it. Uh.
And then when you when you go to switch feet,
he said, you really just snap them both real hard
to create that illusion like a good completely synchronized simultaneous
snap up and down with those two feet. You're long stride,
(36:43):
keep that foot flat, keep that vodka gimlet flowing, and
you're gonna be moonwalking in no time. And then you
can also because what you're doing is it's supposed to
look like you're walking while you're moving backward. You're walking
forward but moving backwards. That's the definition of the moonwald.
So you can um, you can like add your arms swinging,
lean like your till till your body forward a little
(37:06):
bit if you're real good. Michael Jackson used to like
move his head up and down in rhythm to his
walking or whatever, and it adds to the effect. Totes Shalamar,
I feel like I kind of should try it, try
it right now. Well, I'm not gonna do it now.
You don't have a vodka gimlet, Nope, Are you got
anything else? And you go get some cocktail onions. Those
(37:28):
are great Gibson onions. Oh is that a Gibson and
I'm thinking of yeah, but that's it. It is the
lime juice, yes, roses lime, yeah, yeah. Uh. If you
want to know more, about vodka gimlets. You can type
that word in the search part how stuff works dot com.
And since I said gimlet, it's time for listener mail.
(37:49):
Before listener mail, this is ah, I'm gonna call this
correction time. Okay, we need like a Lila by music.
We do so you know, we have corrections on the
show from time to time. This was sort of a
big one because we really goofed on the Gettysburg Address episode. Um,
and boy did we hear about it. Remember how I
(38:11):
said I wanted to be a civil war buff. I
don't anymore. You know, you had to start to your
career as a civil war buff. They're not nice people,
as it turns out, no one on the internet it's
a nice person. No I was. I was just very
surprised if people got angry that we messed something up?
Did I just like, so, what did we mess up?
We said fifty thou dead. It was fifty total casualties.
(38:31):
Is that what it was? So we messed up and
said mistaked casualties for dead, when in fact casualties is dead,
missing or wounded. Um. And then we also said that
what we were talking about the percentage of the army
like it was this much a percentage of of the
Union army and a third of Lee's army. But it
(38:53):
was just for the army fighting in that battle, not
the total Union army and the total confess or An army.
And we very specifically were like, this is for the
entire army. So we got a little excited and a
little ahead of ourselves. Well, clearly we're the most evil
people of the century. Yeah, so very sorry about that.
(39:15):
Civil War buffs you know, now, don't have a contact
Chuck again. Please all right, listener mail now. Yeah, um,
I'm just gonna read this one. Hey, guys, great podcast,
especially like how you pointed out, uh, here's some about
the bogus studies, how to do good research, especially like
how you guys pointed out the pressure when you're an
(39:37):
understudy to do studies that support the current theories of
your employer without getting into a ton of detail. I've
been there, and I left research altogether because I became
pretty disillusioned with it all. One thing you did not
mention is that entire industries get erected based on the
results of a few initial studies. Uh, the sexiness of
the studies aside, which is what you talked about the
(39:59):
research or does a good job and does not show
anything or has a negative study, their funding is often
at stake. For my personal experiences, is the largest basis
for bias. WHOA, that was a mouthful. It's hard to
say when you're missing the tooth um research. Researchers become
heavily vested and being right from a face perspective if
(40:20):
a c in a monetary perspective. We don't really recognize
realize this because the scope of the impact of the
studies are usually small. But that researcher who suddenly lost
all their grants is a pretty high price to pay
for being ethical. I don't really have any answers to
how clean it up, but science is contrarian and by
nature anti consensus. Instead, we have a system that rewards
(40:43):
only rewards reinforcement. Good researchers have to be allowed to
say you did this great study and found nothing without
the fear of losing grant money. Amen. That's from Trevor.
Thanks Trevor. That was very illuminating. Yeah, an enlightening, very
very aditt Can you say that, Rudy, really, I don't know. Okay,
(41:06):
if you want to get in touch with us. You
can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
You can join us on Facebook, dot com slash Stuff
you Should Know. You can send us an email to
stuff Podcast at how stuff Works dot com, and as always,
join us at our home on the web. Stuff you
Should Know dot Com. Stuff you Should Know is a
production of iHeart Radios. How stuff Works for more podcasts
(41:27):
for my Heart Radio because at the iHeart Radio app,
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