In 1958, two tunes that I use for square dancing hit the top of the charts: “All I Have to Do Is Dream” (aka “Dream, Dream, Dream”) by the Everly Brothers and “Johnny B. Goode,” by Chuck Berry. Speaking of Chuck Berry, on May 21, 1955, Chuck recorded “Maybelline,” a rhythm and blues version of a country song, “Ida Red.” (There’s no singing call version of Maybelline.)

I spent the weekend at the New Mexico State Square and Round Dance Festival, held right here in Albuquerque. The featured caller was Marshall Flippo, with state callers doing the honors on Friday afternoon and evening (I led off the whole festival on Friday afternoon at 3 pm…I’m not quite sure how big an honor that was…).

A couple of notes: every time I hear Marshall, I’m impressed by his calling. I think the more I know about calling, the more impressed I am at his ability to call the right mixture of interesting and vanilla choreo for the floor. Unfortunately, Marshall can’t really articulate what he does and how he does it; he just does. So if you’re looking to learn from Marshall, your best bet is to attend his dances whenever you can.

Marshall’s been doing a new number that’s due out on Royal, supposedly in time for the Nationals in Baltimore. Called “It’s Dance Time in Texas,” it’s a perfectly timed combo of square dancing and Cotton Eyed Joe. (Wouldn’t you know it: there’s a cotton-eyedjoe.com domain.) In case you don’t remember the tune, here’s some MIDI music. And it’d certainly be interesting to hear the Nina Simone version.

One state caller called Remake the Thar, another called Triple Scoot, even though both have been off the Plus list since 1997. The sad thing is that the floor barely hiccuped on the calls. That means that virtually none of the dancers learned Plus after 1997…which means that there were virtually no newer dancers there. Many of the dancers have strings of dangles, showing that they’ve been to every state festival for umpteen-zillion years (there’ve been 53 of them). That’s great! But it would have been even greater if there had been a bunch of new dancers, trying out their wings at Mainstream. There weren’t. There were always more couples sitting out during the MS tips (resting, I guess) than there were sitting out during the Plus tips. That’s sad.