Video and Vocals/Instrumentals COPYRIGHT (c) 2020
by CHARLES ELMER SZABO, BMI

"The Charleston" is a jazz composition that was written to accompany the Charleston dance. It was composed in 1923, with lyrics by Cecil Mack and music by James P. Johnson, who first introduced the stride piano method of playing.

The song was featured in the American black Broadway musical comedy show Runnin' Wild, which had its premiere at the New Colonial Theatre in New York on October 29, 1923.[2][3] The music of the dockworkers from South Carolina inspired Johnson to compose the music. The dance known as the Charleston came to characterize the times. Lyrics, though rarely sung (an exception is Chubby Checker's 1961 recording), were penned by Cecil Mack, himself one of the most accomplished songwriters of the early 1900s. The song's driving rhythm, basically the first bar of a 3 2 clave, came to have widespread use in jazz comping and musicians still reference it by name.[4] Harmonically, the song features a five-chord ragtime progression (I-VI7-II7-V7-I).[5]

The Charleston entered the public domain in the United States in 2019.[6]

In popular culture
The song has been used in a number of films set in the 1920s. Ginger Rogers dances to the music in the film Roxie Hart (1942).[7] In the movies Margie (1946) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946), the song is played during school dance scenes.[8] In the movie Tea for Two (1950), with Doris Day and Gordon MacRae, the song is a featured production number.[8][9] The song appears during the end credits of the 1981 film The Evil Dead. A version performed by Enoch Light and the Charleston City All Stars is used in Woody Allen's 2011 film Midnight in Paris, which largely takes place in the 1920s.[10] The track "Bang Bang" from the 2013 film The Great Gatsby, performed by Will.I.Am, samples the song.[11]

One of the most famous covers of the song was by The Golden Gate Orchestra in 1925, which has been inducted into the National Recording Registry.

Charleston, Charleston
Made in Carolina
Some dance, some prance
I’ll say there’s nothing finer
Than the Charleston, Charleston
Lord how you can shuffle
Every step you do
Leads to something new
Man I’m telling you
It’s a lapazoo

Buck dance, wing dance
Will be a back number
But the Charleston
The new Charleston
That dance is surely a comer

Sometime
You’ll dance it
One time
The dance called the Charleston
Made in South Carolina


Charles Szabo is an American singer songwriter and educator who covers old songs to give them new life and performs his originals.

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Charles (Chuck/Chaz) Szabo from Ohio, is an American singer-songwriter and cover artist of public domain songs. He specializes in lyric videos with words for people to sing along with. His recordings are mostly simple, straightforward vocal & piano or guitar arrangements. Szabo’s original songs range from love songs to songs for celebrating each holiday. His music is available on YouTube at the Charles Szabo or Szabo Music channels. On Spotify and all other streaming services (Apple, ITunes, Amazon, Deezer, etc.) he can be searched and found as Charles Szabo Music.

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CHARLES SZABO YouTube Channel: [ Ссылка ]

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