Slow Drag

The slow drag is the oldest continuously documented dance in the blues family and the root from which most later idioms are usually traced. It existed as both a dance and a musical form by the late 1800s; the composition known as The Dream, dated around 1880 and associated with a New Orleans brothel, is among the earliest slow drags and drew rhythmic material from tango and habanera. Partners embrace closely, sway to the beat and move their hips with little travel around the floor — one contemporary account described couples hanging onto each other and grinding back and forth in one spot all night. It was most at home in semi-rural juke joints, danced to the blues. Ragtime and jazz composers wrote for it: Scott Joplin included the dance in The Ragtime Dance in 1899 and wrote Sun Flower Slow Drag with Scott Hayden in 1901, and Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller both produced slow drags. Its intimacy carried social weight, sometimes marking a particular relationship between a couple, and when the 1929 Broadway play Harlem put it in front of white audiences its frank sensuality caused a scandal. The bassist Alcide Pavageau was nicknamed Slow Drag for his prize-winning dancing on Basin Street.