Ralph Page on Live Music

Ralph Page was a very influential dance caller who published Northern Junket, a square dance magazine. This was "square dance" in the broad sense, before the club and trad communities divided, and while he came from a strong live music tradition he was living through the transition to recorded music. I looked through the Northern Junket archives to see his perspective on live music, and I came across a few passages that show the wave of the contra dance revival sweeping across New England in the early 1970s. In Vol 9 No 8 (1969), Page is writing about live music as something so rare that most haven't danced to it. An evening dance in Cambridge with live music is an exciting exception: How long has it been since you danced to good live music? I'll imagine that seventy-five percent of the club dancers in this country have never had that pleasure. What a pity! It might be a way of keeping your group interested in dancing. Certainly nothing would be lost if every square dance club started an orchestra to play for their parties. At first perhaps they could play but for one set of dances. So what? It would be a start. And as their repertoire increased I am sure that interest in that particular club would increase in like manner. I had the privilege of calling for a special recently at the Cambridge, Mass. YWCA, sponsored by the Taylors. Live music was the feature of the evening. Elise Nichols and Walter Lob played their fiddles and were more than ably 'seconded' by Marianne Taylor at the piano. What wonderful music they played! As the dance drew to a close they were given a thunderous ovation from the big crowd. They deserved it. The party was worth attending just to listen to such tunes as Massai's Favorite, Cincinnati Hornpipe, Pig Town Fling and Haste To the Wedding. Time is getting short because good fiddlers are getting to be as scarce as hen's teeth. There is little incentive for violinists to learn the old tunes. It would be interesting to learn of any clu