An Indianapolis, Indiana, listener says that his mother-in-law was asked by a child where she was going, would jokingly sing that she was “going to the Turkey trot trot trot, across the lot, lot, lot, feeling fine, fine, fine until Thanksgiving time. Trouble. Trouble trouble. Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble on the double.” Sounds like she was singing a version of the Turkey Trot Blues. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Turkey Trot Blues”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, my name is Phillip Covington. I’m calling from Indianapolis.
Hi, Phillip. Welcome. What can we do for you?
My mother-in-law used to sing a song to my son when he would ask her where she was going. She would sing a little song and she would say, “Turkey trot, trot, trot across the lot, lot, lot, feeling fine, fine, fine until Thanksgiving time. Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble on the double. Turkey trot, but it just goes on and on and on.”
That was marvelous. Grant and I are both holding our bicks up. I’ve never heard that before. And my wife told me that she used to sing it to her also when she was a little girl. So I just never heard that before.
Oh, really? I don’t know that version either. I’m going to turkey trot, trot, trot.
So this is your mother-in-law singing this both to your wife when she was a child and then to your son.
Yes.
How old is your mother-in-law? I mean, I’m just kind of shooting in the dark here.
Roughly 75 now, 76, somewhere in there. 75, 76.
There was a dance trend in the early 1900s where there was a dance called the Turkey Trot. It was part of something, a movement called the Tough Dancing Movement, and these were pretty vigorous dances that involved a lot of body contact. Probably started in the American West and moved east with the performing companies. And it was a big trend for a while, but she’s probably too young for that, I would say.
I’ve seen video of kids singing this song with little turkey at Thanksgiving time. So in your mind, this is like a school performance type of song?
Yeah, like little kids who are wearing construction paper turkey feathers, and they’re singing this song, but I don’t remember it from my past, certainly. So I’m curious whether she picked it up in her own childhood or…
Well, there is a song called Turkey Trot Loose. If you Google that, you’ll come up with a number of uses of it, including an NPR story about Thanksgiving music in 2007. Turkey Trot Loose, and there’s a ton of kids singing this in a variety of different places. And it really has the sound to me of a camp song or a school song or just the kind of thing that a parent might sing to a child, maybe a bath song or bedtime song. And I imagine there probably originally were hand gestures with this, right?
Yeah. That’s the most that I can tell you about that particular Turkey Trot song. But if you want to hear some great old-timey music, go to YouTube and look up Turkey Trot. There’ll be some black and white stuff from the 1920s that does versions of the songs. And people are cutting a rug. They are tearing up the floor in some of these videos. It’s a really, like, you work up a sweat with a dance like that. But I think the relationship between that dance and this song is distant.
Yeah, well, Phillip, what we’ll also do is on our website, we’ll put a link to a bunch of little kids singing the Turkey Trot Blues that sounds a whole lot like her song.
What do kids have to be blue about?
Someone stole my track. I really want a bike.
Philip, now you’ve got Grant singing. I guess I’m next. So maybe we’ll say thanks for calling at this point.
Thank you so much. Take care now. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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