The Daily Feather — Texas Two Step
QI has a confession to make: In the wardrobe, there once was a pair of jade green ropers (Google it). What can we say? It was the height of George Strait’s fame and Garth Brooks was just into his own. Urban Cowboy was the stuff of cinematic lore. And many of us (who might or might not have had fake IDs at the time) were incapable of resisting the pull of a sashay around the dance floors of the Blue Bonnet Palace to the Texas Two Step. The dance’s origin dates to 19th-century Europe; it was likely a hybrid of the Foxtrot and the One Step, both of which were rooted in the waltz. As for importing the dance to the land of the Stars & Stripes, we have John Philip Sousa to thank for that. His 1889 “Washington Post March” compelled revelers to drop traditional gliding dances in favor of today’s Two Step. John Travolta’s boogey journeying from the East Coast disco scene to Pasadena, Texas’ Gilley’s in 1980 sealed the deal, forever associating the Two Step with the Lone Star State.
The moves of yesterday’s Texas Two Step were not nearly as smooth as two Texas-based companies filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, for a second time. The long-delayed credit cycle has not only arrived, it’s accelerating, leaving those not deluded by the “no landing” narrative to wonder how ‘higher for longer’ Federal Reserve policy will play out in coming months.