Have you ever limboed? Don’t take the album sleeve above as a suggestion—we wouldn’t want anyone to end up in traction. The imagery just struck us as interesting. The limbo originated in Trinidad and Tobago in the late 1800s, but was popularized during the 1950s largely by a single person—Trinidadian dancer Julia Edwards. From being a dance that was originally performed at wakes, it gained popularity until in the U.S. it became a party game.
Its adoption by the suburban masses helped fuel the limbo record craze. There are probably hundreds, most of them hopelessly obscure today. In the U.S. the releases peaked during the 1960s, when even musical luminaries like Chubby Checker got into the act with platters like Limbo Party, Limbo Rock, and Let’s Limbo Some More. We found ten limbo albums from 1962 alone. You really weren’t anybody if you didn’t limbo.
The vogue of the dance and accompanying music (often steel drum and calypso) is especially interesting to us as readers, because in the pulp literature of the time none of the private or and tough guys listened to anything other than jazz bands, classical, or crooners. Wouldn’t it have been great if Mike Hammer had brought a woman to his apartment and said, “Care to listen to a little calypso music? We could limbo.”
We’ve never limboed ourselves, but we’ve seen it happen at a wedding. We stood there bemused, but we’ll admit that the idea of a party where the hosts organize a limbo session is sort of appealing. It falls into the category of good clean fun that’s actually a little dirty due to the whole spread leg aspect. You wouldn’t want to do it in a short skirt. Or maybe you would. To each their own.
Anyway, we’ve shared a small collection of limbo album sleeves today. Take special note of Let’s Limbo!, which had a cover that wasn’t initially authentic enough, so to bring down the white glare the record re-issued the disc and added a clumsily layered in, presumably Trinidadian dancer. Weirdly, he seems to have gone under the limbo bar sideways, which as far as we know is cheating. Our advice: if you limbo, go hard.
