The John Pela Show

 


It started back in 1959...

The first year of me being alive...

I remember my young dancing parents...

Mom in penny loafers and sporting a beehive...


My dad wore khakis and a button-down...

He wasn’t much into Brylcream...

But when John Pela’s ‘Saturday Hop’ came on...

You could hear all the girls start to scream...


It was our local American Bandstand...

All the cool kids watched it for sure...

‘The John Pela Show’ came on every Saturday...

On WWL-TV, the local channel 4...


It’s where the oldies met rock and roll... 

The Beatles and The Beach Boys, too... 

My parents would dance The Twist... 

As young parents often would do...


Sometimes they would dance the Watusi...

Other times they would dance the Hand Jive...

But whatever music was playing on Saturday...

All of New Orleans would quickly come alive...


The John Pela Show is part of our history...

Where we learned to dance until 1972... 

And then we all switched to Soul Train... 

With Don Cornelius and disco, too...


Then we all learned to do the Hustle... 

We did the Bump listening to Motown... 

The Robot and the Funky Chicken... 

Marvin Gay got us all to get down...


The times, they were always a-changin’...

As our music continued to evolve...

But I’ll never forget ‘The John Pela Show’...

And my dancing parents when I was just a child…


© 2022 Jeffrey Pipes Guice

My Wonder Years: A Book

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