From Rap to Ritual
On the first coeducational freshman trip, a woman danced a Tennessee two-step into a Green institution.
Pack up your troubles in the old kit bagAnd dance all night to the "Salty Dog Rag"
LOVERS OF DARTMOUTH MUSIC, please read the above verse again. Does it strike you as something the Glee Club might sing during Reunion Week? Obviously not! And yet—surprise, surprise for most of you that verse, and its accompanying music, is a song cherished by 20,000 Dartmouth students and former students strong. How to explain it? Because the "Salty Dog Rag" dares strangers—literally, first-hour, first-year students on campus to dance with each other. And 90 percent of them do so, merrily and without inhibition.
An exaggeration? Not for Elizabeth Gerber '98, last year's director of the DOC's freshman trips, it isn't. According to Liz, "The 'Salty Dog Rag' is the best ice-breaker the College has. As our trip leaders teach the 'Salty Dog' steps to the freshmen, on the afternoon before they're off on their three-day ad-; venture, you can just see the ice melt between the newly arrived students from every state and beyond. Which is the idea, exactly."
On their third day out a hundred trippers gather in the Moosilauke Ravine Lodge for a festive meal and celebration. After dinner and the customary "Welcome to Dartmouth" speeches by a dean and other officials (sometimes the College president himself), it's time for young legs tired or not to dance, including, by tradition, the "Salty Dog Rag." And when 40 couples, or more, dance together, the great old pine beams of the Lodge vibrate to the ragtime beat.
For those members of the Dartmouth family whose experience did not include the "Salty Dog Rag," some little known but important facts are in order: (a) What is a rag, anyway? (Forthe purist): A rag is a musical composition in three or four sections, containing 16 measures of syncopated melody, having a multiple of two beats a measure. (For the rest of us): A rag is a popular dance form— the two-step, exuberant in spirit and execution, (b) Who wrote the "Salty Dog Rag"? Where? And When? John Gordy (famed ragtime pianist) composed the music. Elward Crew wrote the lyrics. The place: Nashville, Tennessee. The year: 1955. (c) Who lured the "Salty Dog Rag" north to New Hampshire? Everett Blake did, via a 45 RPM record he bought in Lebanon. Everett, the Upper Valley's master square-dance caller, first played it at the opening ofMcLane Hall in 1962, where it was mildly applauded, but failed to catch on. Ten years later, in September of 1972 (month of destiny in Dartmouth annals), he played it again for freshman trippers in the Ravine Lodge where—thanks to a nimble tripper and her partner the "Salty Dog Rag" was a big hit. It's grown bigger in the Dartmouth scene ever since, (d) And who was the nimble tripper? Enter Mary Heller '76, the unintentional heroine of this tale.
Of the 987 students enrolled in the class of 1976, 177 were women. Mary Heller, a nationally-ranked junior cross-country skier from the Putney School, was one of them. She'd chosen Dartmouth because its coeducation was in Year One, and because the transition years of coeducation would be challenging for a woman.
Her freshman trip was a hiking tour of the high Presidentials. She shared it with another daring woman, four male classmates, and a leader Lon Cross '75 whom Mary remembers as a "great guy, who helped us all and was really at home in mountain country." Their third night out was spent in the Ravine Lodge, along with 80 other fellow trippers, their leaders, the DOC lodge crew, several welcoming officials and Everett Blake, making his initial appearance at the Lodge.
Everett had been recruited to add a new dimension to the festivities, a little dancing after the dinner and speeches, although the male trippers outnumbered their female counterparts that year five to one. Aware of their youth and rugged hiking attire, Everett chose to play the least sedate, most uninhibited dance in his repertoire the "Salty Dog Rag." He played the record through once, to familiarize his audience with the ragtime beat and melody. Then he asked for volunteers: "Can anyone show us how it's done? It's a barrel of fun, if you're with it." In the crowd, Mary Heller was smiling. At Putney School the "Salty Dog Rag" was a much-loved happy relief dance after folklore class and choral rehearsal. She'd danced it five times a week for four years, and knew it by heart. "I can," she said, "if I have a partner." Brief silence, followed in a moment by a California volunteer who had danced it once or twice, some time ago. A California woman, at that. But no matter. Two Scotsmen can dance the Highland Fling. Just as the two women danced that evening—once, twice, and once again the "Salty Dog Rag." Each time to increasing cheers and applause from the crowd. No one else dared give the Salty Dog a try that night. But an irresistible beat had been sounded that would, in a very short time, captivate future trippers.
A year later almost to the day Mary led a freshman trip herself to the Presidentials. Hers was the first group to leave Hanover that September and the first to return. Upon which she was off at once for Moosilauke to join the crew. To a man and woman, the crew wanted to learn the dance that had brought the house down the previous season. They had bought a record to supply the music; Mary would supply everything else. Which she did, every day with pleasure, for a week. That week the Dartmouth "Salty Dog Rag" devotees increased ten-fold. Everett Blake never had to ask again for volunteers to demonstrate his Tennessee two-step; he has been a fixture at the Ravine Lodge ever since.
In the eighties the Outing Club began teaching first-year students how to dance the rag the day before their departure for the hills. To bounce to that beat, most freshmen (if not all) toss caution to the wind, choose partners right and left, and start dancing. After an hour's demonstration, many of the just-arrived can dance the "Salty Dog Rag" with style and abandon. The Senior Fence, in front of Robinson Hall, is the best location for visitors to enjoy the action. Large numbers do so, and applaud the show, between 3:30 and 4:30 each afternoon of the DOC trip fortnight.
overnight accommodations. As they were being advised, a burst of loud music was heard from across the Green. At the same time, eight couples, then ten or more, started to swing and whirl to the "Salty Dog Rag." First at regular tempo, then double tempo, and both played at maximum volume. To the Germans it must have seemed a scene from Walpurgis Nacht, minus the darkness, the witches, and the wine. "What goes on over there?" the German gentleman asked. "Students dancing to loud music in front of a lecture hall?" When informed it was a Dartmouth custom to teach all first-year students to dance to that song before they went on a three-day outing where they would dance it again, in a Lodge owned by On such an afternoon last September, a German tourist and his wife stopped at the information booth to inquire about
Germans found it hard to believe. "I can tell you, my first student days were nothing like that!" the gentleman said. Still, they were soon caught in the spirit of the occasion. Before they left (only when the music had stopped), they pronounced what they had seen and heard as "charming" and "very American." the College, both
Meanwhile, time passes, and where is Mary Heller today? Today she is Mary Heller Osgood, living in the town where she went to school Putney, Vermont. For the record, her husband, Chris Osgood '75, was a varsity cross-country skier at Dartmouth. Again, for the record (this equally happy note), Mary was captain of Nordic skiers on the women's team she had hoped would be founded by Dartmouth—and was—in her sophomore
year. Mary reported that, sadly, the "Salty Dog Rag is no longer played at the Putney School. On the other hand, she was delighted to hear what's happened to the rag since she first danced it and taught it to others in the Ravine Lodge a quarter-century ago.
Everett Blake (left) called Dartmouth's first Salty Dog in 1962. It didn't stick until Mary Heller '76 (right), the Arthur Murray of the DOC, showed the steps.
EVERETT WOOD '38 an authority on Hanover history, has been "the man in the information booth"for close to 20 summers. This year's DOC trips take place from September 3 through 16.
