Hey, Everybody! Do The Freddie! (On second thought, please don't)

Previously: There's a Sequel to Big Bad John and it's Awful

When the British Invasion hit America's shores in 1964, Freddie and the Dreamers were front and center. Billed as part of the Mersey Beat, the Dreamers were actually from Manchester, England, but that wasn't the only secret they were keeping from their fans.  While every other member of the group was 20 or 21, Freddie himself was almost 27, too close to the dreaded age of 30 that someone had determined was the line between grownups and everyone who was cool.  26 was way too old to be a teen idol, so Fred Garrity simply lied to reporters, claiming he was 21, the same age as the other members of his band. At 5'4 inches tall with nerdy young looks, he could pull it off. Plus, he was just the right size to attract young female fans, who have always been more apt to ogle non-threatening "boys" from the pages of 16 and Tiger Beat than manly-man types who didn't fit the androgynous look the typical 13 year-old teenybopper went for. 

What made Freddie and the Dreamers stand out from the pack was they had a gimmick. The band members flailed their arms and legs in unison as they performed. One day a reporter asked Fred Garrity what the name of that dance was they were doing, and right off the top of his head he came up with "it's called the Freddie."  Not long after that, the Dreamers cut a single kids could dance to called "Do The Freddie" and it started selling immediately  No fools, they.

Freddie's Shtick also included letting out with annoying, high-pitched giggles in the middle of his songs, accompanied by surprisingly high leaps into the air. According to the entry in The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, those leaps resulted in Freddie twisting an ankle on more than one occasion. 

Freddie also liked to mime using the microphone as if it was an electric shaver.  He did this at every live performance, so if you happen to watch Youtube videos of the Dreamers' appearances one after the other on Merv Griffin, Hullaballo, and other shows of the time, that bit gets old really fast. Sometimes he even mimed shaving his arm pits.  Oh, and one more thing: for some reason whenever Freddie gives the audience a surreptitious glance at his suspenders, the girls go crazy. I have no idea how that bit originated, or what it even means.

Although teenage girls couldn't get enough of Freddie's antics, those bits don't age very well today.  I cringe when I watch these videos   But the music holds up really well, particularly their biggest hit, "I'm Telling You Now." Here they are performing that hit on the Ed Sullivan show: 

When I mentioned to my wife I was writing a piece featuring The Freddie, she told me something I had not known.  In the film "Troop Beverly Hills," Shelly Long teaches The Wilderness Girls how to do a bunch of sixties dances, including The Freddie.  Connie would know about this because, like a lot of women, she has watched that movie countless times, while most men have only seen it once -if at all. Connie is now up for another viewing, so I guess she and I will be watching "Troop Beverly Hills" together real soon.

I came across the video below of Freddie Garrity just two years before he died of Emphysema.  He seems to be trying to hide his right hand from the camera which looks like it has signs of palsy.  I learned a lot about Freddie and the Dreamers I hadn't previously known from this short interview, and I would not have recognized the man if I wasn't told this was him.

Allow me a last word of advice: If you're ever dancing at a wedding and you start doing The Freddie, you will be the only person there who gets the joke.  

Trust me on this. 

Next: I Just Wanted to Be Davy Jones