Do the UT

When the U-T Ruled the Dance Floor

In 1961, the top 40 was dominated by Elvis, Chubby Checker, and the Shirelles. The Beatles were still playing small clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg, and here in Tennessee “Rocky Top” wouldn’t be written for another six years. But a dance fad, and the song it inspired, gave UT a moment on the musical map.

Harry Middlebrooks was a senior at Georgia Tech, playing dances and fraternity parties in Georgia and Alabama with his band, the Collegians, when he noticed people doing a new dance. “I asked somebody, ‘What’s that?’” Middlebrooks remembers, “and they said it started in Tennessee.” It was the U-T.

Middlebrooks was eager to launch a music career and had been encouraged by record producer Bill Lowery. Late that summer, he wrote the song “The U-T” and recorded it and a few other songs at NRC Recording Studio in Atlanta. He was backed by a group of musicians that included a couple of his former bandmates as well as Chet Atkins’s nephew Jimmy Atkins on guitar, using the hastily improvised name Harry M. and the Marvels.

Felton Jarvis, who engineered the recording, had introduced Middlebrooks to Lowery and was so enthused about “The U-T” that he called Lowery right away.

“The next day—the next day!—I was driving back down to my hometown, Thomaston, down below Atlanta, and had on WQXI radio. And there was my song on the radio!” says Middlebrooks, whose joy in the moment easily spans the 60 years that have passed. “They played a tape—it wasn’t even on a record yet.”

Compounding his surprise, Middlebrooks was hearing a different version of “The U-T.” Jarvis and Lowery, thinking the song could use more excitement, had brought Lowery’s teenage daughters into the studio the night before to add the excited screams that make the record sound like a live performance.

“It hit immediately, and it was number one on that Atlanta station for five weeks,” says Middlebrooks. The record’s popularity quickly spread. An appearance on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand—a sure route to a hit in those days—was in the works, but negotiations stalled over Clark’s demand for half the publishing rights. The group was booked instead on another teen dance broadcast, The Buddy Deane Show.

They played radio shows and concert dates across the country, including a big KBOX radio show in Dallas, where audiences assumed the song was about the University of Texas. “I didn’t tell them any different,” Middlebrooks laughs.

The group never played in Knoxville, though. “I don’t know why,” he says. “We should have, but they never booked me there.”

In Chicago, he recalls, the label sent professional dancers to teach the U-T. Middlebrooks didn’t know it himself until after the record came out. “My younger sister had to teach it to me,” he says. He remembers the steps as being fairly simple: “You just kind of popped your knees back and forth, left and right—it was pretty easy.” A November 1961 story in the Knoxville News Sentinel describes the dance as having “short, jerky steps . . . and arms moved front and back at shoulder level.”

The same story reported that the U-T was already being eclipsed by a new fad, the Hoss. But its influence lived on musically, in the form of several more songs with confusingly similar names. There was “The U.T.” by the Sparkles and “Do the U.T.” by the Campus Queens, both released in 1962, and four years later, “The U.T.” by Lee Washington.

The spoken-word “UT Party” had been released by famed Memphis deejay George Klein on Sun Records in March 1961 but got little play. It features a confusing reference to “the boys in blue,” likely originating in Klein’s well-known love of the Memphis Tigers.

Middlebrooks went on to a wide-ranging career as an entertainer: he cowrote the 1967 top 10 hit “Spooky,” released a dozen of his own albums and recorded with artists including Glen Campbell and Johnny Mathis, toured with Elvis Presley, headlined a variety show on ABC, and appeared in a long list of shows and films. He even voiced two of the original characters in Disney’s Country Bears Jamboree—“I was Shaker and Zeke,” he says. Now mostly retired, he lives in Los Angeles.

Dance crazes kept going, too, through the disco era to the Macarena and the Cupid Shuffle and now the latest TikTok dances—done by teenagers who likely have no idea their great-grandparents once tore up the dance floor doing the U-T.

Do you remember these songs or did you do the U-T on the dance floor? Tell us all about it! Comment below or email your memories to torch@utk.edu.

Update, November 1, 2021: So many readers responded to this story that we compiled their emails and comments in a follow-up post, “Your Memories of Dancing the U-T.”


Feature illustration by Susanne Morton with image from Knoxville News Sentinel

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11 comments

Bethel (B0) Thomas June 11, 2021 - 4:22 pm

Hey there UT. This is Bethel (Bo) Thomas, ’62 graduate. I remember the UT dance extremely well and still remember the two young women who many thought were the top two women dancers of the UT, both Tennessee graduates of 1962: Emily Birchfield from Gatlinburg and Rubye Lynn Dobbins from Memphis. The dancing the UT is one of my favorite memories. Glad to see the story and appreciate the Torchbearer.

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Donna Spencer June 16, 2021 - 6:28 pm

That must have been a wonderful time! I’m glad we were able to help bring such great memories to light.

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Jerre Haskew June 12, 2021 - 12:23 am

Yes I did the UT in Knoxville in 1961. It was dancing improv apart from each other to a rock beat. It spread everywhere like wildfire mostly through fraternities and sororities.

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Donna Spencer June 16, 2021 - 6:32 pm

That was a great era for dances! Thanks for adding your memories.

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Jerry Scott June 12, 2021 - 7:24 pm

I have a very special memory of dancing “The UT”. I am a 1963 graduate of UT but attended Wofford College in Spartanburg, SC my freshman and sophomore years. I was attending a dance one night at Winthrop College in Rock Hill SC. I had learned to dance “ The UT “ the previous summer while home in Knoxville for summer vacation. I noticed a young lady on the dance floor that was a great dancer and asked her to dance the UT with me. She agreed and as we were really getting in to the dance, everyone in the place formed a circle around us to watch us dance. A few minutes in to the dance, I felt someone tapping the back of my shoulder. I turned around to see who it was. The band stopped playing and the room got very quiet. Turns out, the lady that tapped my shoulder was the Dean of Students at the college. She said” young man, what do you think you are doing with those nasty moves here on our dance floor?” Before I could answer her, she grabbed me by the arm and escorted me to the exit door . On the way, she informed me that she was banning me from ever coming back to the Winthrop College campus. I never went back to Winthrop but continued to dance “The UT “ many more times in many more places.

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Erica Scott Kennison June 15, 2021 - 2:51 am

That’s my Daddy
Best dancer around!
I love to tell this story

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Donna Spencer June 16, 2021 - 6:34 pm

What a great story—and how good to hear that it’s being passed down in your family. Thanks to both of you for sharing it with us!

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Susan Gilbert Barnes June 13, 2021 - 3:37 pm

Not quite old enough to remember the U-T (66-70), but I do remember when “U-T” was the News Sentinel’s style on second reference. Great story.

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Donna Spencer June 16, 2021 - 6:34 pm

Thanks so much!

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Amber Williams August 3, 2021 - 2:29 pm

Maybe someone who was there will post a video of what this dance looks like! I’m curious for sure!

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Rodger Castleberry May 26, 2023 - 8:59 pm

The second dance I mastered after the Twist. So simple and easy. Plus, the Rhythm was a natural. I can still “Do The U.T.” Do the U T with me Baby. Well, it started in Tennessee

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