A Region in Harmony: Southern Music and the Sound Track of Freedom‪.‬

IT HAD BEEN A SCORCHING DAY ON THE SOUTH CAROLINA COAST IN THE summer of 1949, and it promised to be a steamy evening. Out on the beach the lifeguards had already taken down the umbrellas and stacked the beach chairs. The waves kept up a persistent rhythm, undulating beneath the seductive obligato of a sea breeze. I stood by the jukebox at the Myrtle Beach Pavilion, patting my foot to the hypnotic beat, observing a provocative ballet of poise and sublimated passion called "the shag," with the darkening Atlantic in the background. It was my fourteenth summer. Onlookers pushed in so tightly around the dance floor there was barely room for the shaggers. Good shaggers kept a calm equilibrium, lethargic but suggestive. I stared at the bronzed Adonises of the dance floor and their beautiful female partners, with their long legs and short shorts. I envied their cool graceful steps, moving with elegance and abandon. Visitors called the salacious rhythms and double entendres they heard at the Pavilion "beach music," because they did not find it on the jukeboxes back home. But legendary shaggers such as Chicken Hicks knew its source. "Beach music," he said, "was race music." Big George Lineberry, who had a job installing records on jukeboxes, had persuaded his boss to install race records on jukeboxes at both black and white locations. (1)