Dance The
Bop!Dance The
Bop!
Recorded
in February 1957, this was Ray's second album for Columbia Records. Although pulled
from the shelves shortly after it's release in the United States, this album was
released in many countries under various titles. In the 1980s it was reissued
in Brazil with a new cover shown on the right:
In an interview with Serge Elhaïk, Ray had this to say about the album:
I never wanted to record Dance The Bop. ... [Hal Cook of Columbia Records] was wishing me to do an album about a new dance which was possibly starting and was called "The Bop." He called me and he wanted me to record an album for each different step combination of that new dance. So I wrote a song for each different step and we recorded it under the title Dance The Bop, which was kind of more in the Rock'n'Roll sound with a lot of guitars. Everybody was expecting a second Ray Conniff album to be like the 'S Wonderful one. So we realized after a few weeks that we made a terrible mistake, because the sales were not going like those of my first album.
So, Mitch Miller asked me to write arrangements as fast as I could for another album like 'S Wonderful. I worked day and night for that, and the result was 'S Marvelous, and we got a gold album!
Today, the LP and EPs are collector's items. In 1999, Collectables issued a 2-on-1 CD featuring Dance The Bop! and En Español.
Original LP liner notes:
The instruction booklet, "How to Dance the Bop," by Art Silva, is enclosed with this record.
There are two factors to be note about this swinging collection of dance music. First, that "bop" dancing began among teenagers on the Pacific Coast and that it has no connection whatever with the jazz term "bop" or "be-bop." These young people were very young at the time "bop" had its heyday in 1945-6. Here is a case of young people liking the sound of a word and taking it over into their own vocabularies without realizing that it meant something entirely different in another musical field. Actually, the dancing beat here is derived from a country rock-and-roll or rhythm-and-blues.
The second point is that, in Ray Conniff's originals, based on and designed for the specific dance steps within the broad category of "Dance the Bop," the teenagers have instrumental music of the exact kind, tempo and sound they enjoy. Moreover, while the sound is based on the already-familiar concepts, Ray Conniff has added a few electronically-controlled innovations of his own ñ and those who already know his collection 'S Wonderful on Columbia Records will be aware of his inventive and imaginative arranging ñ in combining voices with instruments, so that the collection has a sound that is at once fresh and familiar.
Ray's trombone is heard throughout the arrangements, and at two points he can be heard singing (via tape) along with his own playing, an effect that produces a new and fascinating tonal color.