Talking Feet: Solo Southern Dance: Buck, Flatfoot, and Tap

by Mike Seeger

Compiled by musician/folklorist Mike Seeger and dancer Ruth Pershing, Talking Feet introduces us to dancers from the Appalachian, Piedmont, and Blue Ridge Mountain regions of the South. In its various forms—flatfooting, buckdancing, hoedown, rural tap or clogging—Southern dancing involves a great deal of personal style and innovation as dancers create the rhythm of old-time country music—talking blues, bluegrass, hand-patting and western swing. Traditionally, people have danced at corn shuckings, apron hemmings, weddings, and house parties. Nowadays, clog dancers compete at festivals and competitions. Talking Feet is a precious record of the experience of old-timers and an inspiration to younger enthusiasts who want to absorb the tradition and make it their own.

152 pages, Paperback

First published January 29, 1993

About the author

American folk musician and folklorist, Mike Seeger was the brother of folk musicians Peggy and Penny Seeger and half-brother of Pete Seeger, another iconic American folk musician and song-writer.

Mike Seeger was born in New York and grew up in the Washington D.C. area. His father, Charles Louis Seeger was an ehtno-musicologist and composer, and his mother was a composer who worked with Joh and Alan Lomax on the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress.

Mike Seeger taught himself to play several instruments, including the autoharp, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, guitar, mouth harp, mandolin, and dobro. At 20, he followed in his parent's footsteps and began collecting recordings of folk musicians around the US, including Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, and John Jacob Niles.

In 1958, Seeger co-founded the old-time band the New Lost City Ramblers in New York City with John Cohen and Tom Paley. Seeger received six Grammy nominations and was the recipient of four grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Seeger died of cancer at his home in Lexington, Virginia on August 7, 2009.