Origin of Truckin’

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Karen from La Mirada.

Well, welcome to the show. What are you calling about?

Well, I have a question on the expression trucking.

I’ve been listening to some Jack Benny radio shows, and in a 1936 episode, I’m quite sure that I heard one of the characters say that she needed to take care of her father because the night before he had sprained his ankle trucking. And when I heard it, I did a double take because I was so surprised because I thought that was a 1970s expression.

Yeah, I’m picturing the R. Crumb guy spraining his ankle while he’s trucking. Trucking. T-R-U-C-K-I-N-G. Trucking. That’s what I think I heard.

Okay. Trucking. Here’s the thing. Trucking was a dance craze.

Oh, okay.

So who was the character? Was it Dennis or?

It was Mary Livingston.

Right. So Jack Benny’s female partner on the air. So she’s taking care of her father because he’s been trucking. And so the joke is that he was out doing the hip new dance craze. And so obviously we’re imagining a kind of senior person who doesn’t have any agility and probably doesn’t have the legs for it anymore. That just makes me laugh there.

Yeah, exactly.

So trucking has a really interesting backstory. I won’t get too far into it, but it started in 1935, probably in Harlem, most people agree, although the person who came up with it has long been in dispute. You can read the black newspapers of the day all arguing endlessly about who deserves the credit for starting this dance craze.

The trucking dance craze was so popular that by the end of 1935 and early 1936, some form of trucking was being done in all of the Broadway reviews. It would be the kind of thing that dance instructors would be hired to teach young girls in Park Avenue so they could do it at their debutante balls. It was just, you know, who knew? Who knew that? But, I mean, this was a period at which, you know, dance crazes were a way that you sold albums, or sold songs, actually, because you sold them by the singles.

Interesting.

And it was a way that you packed the clubs when your band toured. So you would try to start a dance craze. You’d have a song to go along with it. And then you’d hope there’d be some kind of synergy there, reinforcement, and people would buy your music and come to your shows.

Oh, man. Now I’m trying to know what trucking looks like.

Right. That’s my question. I dug a description up here while we’re talking here. Listen to this. Tell me if this makes any sense. One journalist described it as a fast-moving, shoulder-lifting, knee-action dance that makes the performer resemble a jumping jack. He called it a highly jazzical strut. And this is in 1935.

More specifically, you hold your head high. Do this while I’m talking about it.

I am.

I am. Hold your head high, kind of look up. Lift your left shoulder above the right, and then put the right one down as if there’s a heavy load on the right. Sway your back so that your torso is further back than your legs. And then do, as he puts it, a merry shuffling of the arms and legs and feet. And so you keep this tilted position, kind of shuffle along. And then some versions of it say that you point your right index finger upward. I’m just reporting. I’m just reporting what was in the newspapers at the time.

And the interesting thing is not only were there a lot of – there was a lot of argument about who came up with it, but there were a lot of false origin stories. Maybe one of them was true. I don’t know. But one of them, which was published in Esquire magazine in 1936, claims that the trucking dance came from watching the stevedores pushing heavy luggage on the trucks, you know, the wheeled dollies on the wharves of New York.

But trucking, that’s what Mary Livingston was talking about. He was talking about her aged father out there doing a crazy dance on the floor.

Oh, that’s so interesting.

Well, thank you so much.

You’re welcome. And I’m glad to have another old-time radio listener come on the air with us.

Oh, I recommend them to everybody. It makes me laugh every day. It’s a goldmine of stuff when you realize that there are decades and decades of this stuff just waiting for you.

Mm—

But you listen to A Way with Words, too.

Right.

Oh, definitely. Same genre, huh?

Well, it’s maybe more interesting.

Maybe.

There we go. Way with words is more interesting.

Oh, yes. Well, I don’t know about Jack B. I can’t compete with that kind of talent.

Well, you’ve got good writing, too.

Aw, thanks. You guys do a good job.

Thank you.

Thanks for calling, Karen.

Bye-bye, Karen.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you’ve got a question about something you heard in an old radio show, a movie, book, or whatever, and you can’t make a sense of it, give us a call, 1-877-929-9673, or put it in an email to words@waywordradio.org.