The turkey trot was a dance made popular in the early 1900s. The Turkey Trot was done to fast ragtime music popular in the decade from 1900 to 1910 such as Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag.
No licensed photograph yet
Four in five rooms open without one. Add a photograph with a declared licence and your credit sits under it, permanently.
The turkey trot was a dance made popular in the early 1900s.
01 · What it is
Music
Vocal, percussive, or instrumental sound tradition carried by community performers.
02 · Where & name
Geography awaiting source
Add a cited source naming the region or community that carries it.
03 · How it is doing
□□□□ (Not yet assessed)
Documented in open cultural records, but no cited field assessment of its current vitality has been added here yet.
04 · Proof & reuse
2 cited sources
Every claim links to a public record below. Free to quote, teach, and share under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Chapter Takeaways
In popular cultureThe song "Let's Turkey Trot" by "Little Eva" Boyd and the Cookies reached number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1963, fifty years after the dance step's heyday.
Common Questions Answered on Record
What is Turkey trot in plain words?
The turkey trot was a dance made popular in the early 1900s.
Where is Turkey trot practised or documented?
No verified geographic place has been linked on record yet — editors can add a cited place from the edit page.
What is the current condition of Turkey trot today?
□□□□ (Not yet assessed): Documented in open cultural records, but no cited field assessment of its current vitality has been added here yet.
How do I cite or share this Turkey trot entry?
Cite as: "Turkey trot." folkroom, https://folkroom.org/art-forms/turkey-trot, text CC BY-SA, with attribution.
The turkey trot was a dance made popular in the early 1900s. The Turkey Trot was done to fast ragtime music popular in the decade from 1900 to 1910 such as Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag. Driven largely by youth counterculture of the time, the turkey trot fad quickly fell out of favor as the foxtrot, a much more conservative dance step based on the waltz, rose to popularity in 1914.
The basic step consisted of four hopping steps sideways with the feet well apart, first on one leg, then the other with a characteristic rise on the ball of the foot, followed by a drop upon the heel. The dance was embellished with scissor-like flicks of the feet and fast trotting actions with abrupt stops.
It has been said that dancers John Jarrott and Louise Gruenning introduced this dance as well as the Grizzly Bear at Ray Jones Café in Chicago, Illinois around 1909. Another theory states that it originated on the Barbary Coast, San Francisco, California. Joseph M. Daly wrote music for the dance in 1912. Irene and Vernon Castle raised its popularity by dancing the Turkey Trot in the Broadway show The Sunshine Girl.
It achieved popularity chiefly as a result of its being denounced by the Vatican. It was thought that the positions assumed by the dancers were offensively suggestive. 1
In popular culture
The song "Let's Turkey Trot" by "Little Eva" Boyd and the Cookies reached number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1963, fifty years after the dance step's heyday. 1
The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Turkey trot (dance)”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. 1
Turkey trot is early 20th-century dance step, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. 2
The source record links this tradition to 2 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. 2