This is a short piece I threw together for 48hourmag in about 10 minutes.  I knew it wouldn’t be chosen but, thought it interesting enough to keep and post here.

1975 was the year I was born; it was also the year that the disco hit “The Hustle” hit the charts.  Ahh, disco the bane of many a music snobs existence.  Disco was my mother’s music of choice, she was young when I was born, just 17, and had a teenager’s love of music and dancing.  I remember her scooping me up and dancing around the kitchen and into the dining room with the Soul City Symphony blasting.

When I was just old enough to shake my little butt on my own two feet she taught me the dance that went along with “The Hustle.”  I would shake my booty right along with her loving every beat of the music.  As time went on more and more disco music would invade our little apartment.  My mother and I continued dancing even once she was pregnant with my sister.

Her dancing slowed a bit, but, the disco did not.  Our old record player would spin with the songs of the day, whatever the latest 45 was.  She’d stack them up, put them on, and be off.  Our record player could hold a good 10 records in a stack, songs like “(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty” by KC and The Sunshine Band or “Jive Talking” by the Bee Gees mixed together but, always, always “The Hustle” would be the first song to help us get into our grooving of Mom and Daughter dancing.

My Mom gave birth to my first sister and then there were two daughters and Mom shaking their butts in the next apartment, disco again blasting through the place, just as my sister was getting to the stage where she could stand on her own two feet, Mom was pregnant with my next sister.

By the time my baby sister was born it was the end of the 1970s, music was moving on but our music was not.  The same now worn 45s stacked on the same record player, numerous needles worn down to nothing, speakers that were taller than  a small child, now tinny sounding still blasted “The Hustle” through our apartment.