I'd like to say the roller rink where I had my eighth birthday party played one King Coleman tune after another — my friends and I would have loved the nonsensical R&B grooves of "(Do the) Mashed Potato," "Loo-Key Doo-Key," "Do The Hully Gully" and "The Boo Boo Song." Unfortunately, the party was held in Georgia in the mid-'60s in a town where the city fathers closed the swimming pool when blacks had the audacity to ask to swim there.
I don't have anyone telling me what I can play at parties these days, so you can bet several King Coleman tunes will make the playlist when I host a big reunion for some college friends in the fall. My friends are well into middle age now, but I'm betting they'll start dancing and smirking like 8-year-olds when I turn up the volume on "The Boo Boo Song." I know I will.
