Nostalgia: Step up to make a move

Published on Saturday 1 May 2010 12:02

Back in the 1940s and 50s, Frank Ferri, now 74 and a retired billing manager from Newhaven, was one of the city's many dance hall aficionados. Here Frank, who then lived on Ballantyne Road, recalls a vanished world of music, dance and hormones

IN MY youth, the early 1950s, kids liked to dance so much, that they would attend their local dance hall at least three times a week. No solo dancing then, it was all contact with your partner, a waltz, quickstep or a cha, cha, cha and jive, etc.

But back in the 1940s, pre-pubescent kids either went to the local YMCA for a dance which in Leith was Junction Place, or church halls. On a Sunday night, I used to go to St Mary's Star of the Sea church halls in Constitution Street and on occasion would take a friend with me.

If he was a non-Catholic, I had to brief him before going in as the priest would ask the test question: "What colour of vestments was the priest wearing at mass this morning?"

Most young kids used Stewart's dance hall at Abbey Mount as a dancing nursery. Age 15, I'd go there every Saturday morning feeling quite grown up. The dance hall was a long rectangular shape; boys would sit to one side, the girls on the other. Stewart, the owner, and his wife would start up the music and give a demonstration. This done, the music started up again and those who could dance, in a fashion, got up and did their thing, leaving the male and female wallflowers standing on.

At this point, Stewart and his wife would go around the hall matching up the wallflowers and force you to get up. After a few weeks of standing on toes, you became more confident, even indulging in immature chat-up lines such as: "Do you come here often?"

After the kindergarten dancing phase was over, you moved on; in Leith, that would be to the Assembly Rooms or just the Rooms to us. This dance hall was located at the bottom of Constitution Street just opposite Nobles Bar (now sadly converted into flats) and in its time most Leithers held their wedding receptions there.

The Rooms were open six days a week. If you attended on the Monday, you got a free ticket to come back on the Tuesday. No rock 'n' roll bands, you danced to Alexander and his Band, a seven-piece unit with not a guitar in sight. Jiving was banned, primarily because it interrupted those who wanted to dance traditionally.

Nevertheless, if an appropriate tune was played you'd do a wee jive in one of the corners, keeping your eye out for one of the bouncers.

However, if you were good at it, you would attract a wee crowd, clapping with encouragement, thus drawing the attention of the stewards who asked you to leave and barred you for an indeterminate time.

It happened to me once and it broke my heart getting turned away every time for about three months.

Aged 17, I was in the Merchant Navy and my ship sailed from Leith to Rotterdam every week. We would return to Leith on the Sunday and on the Monday night would go straight to the Rooms and back again on a Tuesday, regardless of the fact my ship always sailed at 11pm.

I remember on one occasion almost missing my ship and having to do a pier-head jump – a nautical term for getting on your ship by leaping from the dock just as she was pulling in her last rope and moving out.

I'd asked a girl that had taken my eye if I could see her home, having carefully checked out her geography. Not her figure, I'd already done that. But where she lived, making sure she did not live as far away as Granton for example. I was in luck; it was only a few hundred yards from the dance hall.

But after a bit of innocent necking, I realised I'd left myself little time to get home, get my kit and get down to my ship. Making a quick farewell gesture, I ran all the way from Bernard Street to my house in Ballantyne Road, grabbed my gear and then ran all the way down to the docks where the ship could not have been berthed further away – the coal berth at the Imperial dock, a total distance, I reckon, of at least a mile from my house.

When I entered the dock gates, I heard my ship blowing off her horn. Heart about to burst, I saw she was bow out and about to release her after-spring. Throwing my wee case aboard to a deck hand, I made a jump of about five feet. If I'd mistimed I'd have ended up being chewed up the propeller. Praying that the skipper had not seen this manoeuvre, I went straight to my cabin and hit the sack. Ah, young love!

As you matured, the Rooms seemed a bit juvenile, so I decided to move on to a more sophisticated environment – the Palais de Danse in Fountainbridge, the university you might say and final qualifying stage of your dancing years.

Compared to the Assembly Rooms, the Palais (Sean Connery's haunt in my time) was a huge dance hall, elegantly decorated and could probably hold well in excess of 2,000 people, a rectangle auditorium with an all-surrounding balcony.

The hall at the far end had a revolving stage – as one band finished their set, another band would come around playing on the other side.

The balcony in the Palais was a very strategic place where you could reconnoitre the talent on the dance floor. Alcohol was never sold, only coffee, coke and other soft drinks. There were three coffee bars. On the left of the stage was Cupid's bar, decorated with hearts etc, on the other was the Knight's bar with suits of armour and such like. On the balcony was the stucco-plastered Spanish bar.

Lady usherettes were in attendance, almost dressed like Playboy bunny girls of their time, short skirts and fishnet stockings.

Dancers would locate different positions of the hall for personal reasons.

The wallflowers (generally ladies) were mostly those with less confidence so they stood just inside the hall at the edge of the dance floor.

Down the left-hand side were tables and chairs that couples occupied, on the right were your standard confident dancers, until you got up to the right-hand side of the stage which was known as Yanks' Corner, so-called because American airmen stationed at Kirknewton occupied this area surrounded by ambitious girls.

The Americans had more cash to spend than your average Joe which caused some friction with the local lads.

In the Palais, if you asked a young lady up to dance, and she refused, she had to sit that dance out and not get up to dance with another partner until the next dance. If she broke that rule, the rejected male was entitled to report this to a steward and the lady could be thrown out.

Dress standards then were very high – at most dance halls a necktie was a must. Most men would never think of buying a suit off the peg It had to be bespoke, made to measure and the favourite tailor of the day was Jackson's in Leith Street – you had to wait six to eight weeks to have it made.

The only downside of going to the Palais was meeting girls from all corners of the city, so one of your first inquiries whilst dancing was to say, in a matter-of-fact, way: "And where do you live?" If she said Sighthill, Broomhouse or Newington, for example, you had to give it careful consideration because trams and buses stopped running at 11pm, it meant a long walk home.

Needless to say that question was cast aside if you fancied her a lot. You were totally at the mercy of your hormones.

&#149 Frank met his wife Mae at the Palais – she lived nearby in Albert Street

FROM THIS WEEK IN THE PAST

IT WAS barely a decade later but a world away from the teenage entertainment that Frank Ferri is describing in his piece on dance halls on these pages.

On 29 April, 1964, the Beatles hit Edinburgh – and made quite an impact. The two half-hour concerts, at the ABC on Lothian Road, were covered at the time by the News' John Gibson, who wrote: "You think it looked bad outside the ABC last night? You should have been INSIDE! With your earplugs, tranquilisers and sedatives, for this was Edinburgh's craziest, noisiest audience ever."

The Fab Four, Paul, John, George and Ringo, dressed in neat silver-grey suits played while a storm of missiles, including jelly babies, were hurled at them, while a first-aid station in the foyer, pictured, was kept busy with those overcome with emotion.

Our correspondent wrote: "Midway through, the makeshift casualty station took on a quite realistic look as four first aid women and a man pinned down one weeping, hysterical girl. The ambulance men handed over to the police two girls who couldn't be calmed. They were taken to a restaurant for coffee. When the father of one of the girls turned up to collect his daughter, both girls locked themselves in the restaurant toilet.

"Midway through the Beatles' second performance two elderly ladies left their seats 16 rows from the front and walked out. Said one: 'The Beatles seem nice boys but we couldn't hear them. They'd have been as well miming to their records. We couldn't fathom the girls' behaviour at all.'"

Date with History: Aussies started coronation fervour

THE city had its "first real surge" of coronation fervour when crowds lined the streets on 3 May, 1937, to cheer the Australian Coronation contingent of sailors, soldiers and airmen as they marched through Edinburgh.

Nine days later King George VI would be crowned at Westminster and the city would celebrate with a 14-hour programme of entertainment. But on this Monday, it was the Australians who were the focus of all the attention. Headed by the band of the 1st Battalion Gordon Highlanders, they marched from Atholl Crescent to the Castle where a wreath was laid at the National War Memorial. Businesses along the route were deserted and windows and balconies in Princes Street were crowded with shop assistants who had been "allowed to leave their counter duties to cheer and wave the handsomely-bronzed Australians", as the Evening News reported. Stepladders and chairs were also brought out to give those at the back of the crowd a better chance of glimpsing the troops, who were later given lunch by the Corporation before visiting the Forth Bridge.

Celebrations mounted over the following days with services for 70,000 schoolchildren, who sang the National Anthem and were given commemorative chocolate. On the day of the coronation itself, people queued for more than hour to attend a special service at St Giles' Cathedral.