February 21
"The Gaby Glide," Music by Louis A. Hirsch, Words by Harry Pilcer (1911)
Lest you think dance trends inspired by songs (or in this case, songs inspired by dance trends) are strictly a recent phenomenon, this week I’m showcasing “The Gaby Glide.” The song was named for a popular French actress, dancer, and singer, Gaby Deslys, and written for Deslys and her dancing partner, Harry Pilcer (who you mighte note was the lyricist, if you're reading closely). It was part of an operetta, called Vera Violetta in which Deslys and Pilcer both starred. If you click on the link to the PDF of the sheet music, you can see a drawing of how the couple would have performed the dance on the front page. Unfortunately, Deslys became a victim of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. She contracted the flu, which then led to a severe throat infection. Though she had several operations to try to fix the problem, she eventually died from the complications of the infection, at the relatively young age of 38.
The song itself is honestly not really anything to write home about, but I thought it was interesting that it was named not after the character in the operetta (presumably Vera or Violetta) but after the star dancer. This is also the only song I’m highlighting this month that features a male singer. I’m sharing a video of a recording attributed to 1912, but I would also recommend clicking the “kickery.com” link below for a more recent video that’s got a quicker, more rowdy beat. I truly don’t know a ton about ballroom style dancing (which is what I believe this dance falls under), but I think the original version is supposed to be more suited to actually performing the dance, while the modern version is more about making the song exciting. Do you know of any other songs that were written specifically for a dancer and his/her famous dance?
Information about Gaby Deslys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaby_Deslys
Information about the dance: https://www.kickery.com/2020/03/gaby-glide.html
PDF of the sheet music: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/sharris_c/29/
Top 40 of 1912: https://playback.fm/charts/top-100-songs/1912
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