The Lambeth Walk

"The Lambeth Walk" is a song from the 1937 musical Me and My Girl (with book and lyrics by Douglas Furber and L. Arthur Rose and music by Noel Gay). The song takes its name from a local street Lambeth Walk once notable for its street market and working class culture in Lambeth, an area of London.

The tune gave its name to a Cockney dance first made popular in 1937 by Lupino Lane. The story line of Me and My Girl concerns a Cockney barrow boy who inherits an earldom but almost loses his Lambeth girlfriend. It was turned into a 1939 film The Lambeth Walk which starred Lane.

The choreography from the musical, in which the song was a show-stopping Cockney-inspired extravaganza, inspired a popular walking dance, done in a jaunty strutting style. Lane explained the origin of the dance as follows: "I got the idea from my personal experience and from having worked among cockneys. I'm a cockney born and bred myself. The Lambeth Walk is just an exaggerated idea of how the cockney struts."

When the stage show had been running for a few months, C. L. Heimann, managing director of the Locarno Dance Halls, got one of his dancing instructors, Adele England, to elaborate the walk into a dance. "Starting from the Locarno Dance Hall, Streatham, the dance-version of the Lambeth Walk swept the country." The craze reached Buckingham Palace, with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth attending a performance and joining in the shouted "Oi" which ends the chorus." The fad reached the United States in 1938, popularized by Boston-based orchestra-leader Joseph (Joe) Rines, among others. Rines and his band frequently performed in New York, and the dance became especially popular at the "better" night clubs. As with most dance crazes, other well-known orchestras did versions of the song, including Duke Ellington. The dance then spread across America and to Paris and Prague.Mass Observation devoted a chapter of their 1939 book Britain to the craze.

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