As always, click on the pictures to see full size where available…
Bob Mayer, 1947
Bob Mayor with the 1942 Hanes High School band
Bob Mayer arrived on the campus of the R.J. Reynolds High School in the fall of 1942. He worked all day at RJRHS, but was also responsible for the Hanes High School marching band. He hardly had time to get his feet wet before he was in the Navy, where he would attain the rank of lieutenant commander during WW II. In the fall of 1946, he returned to the campus. He threw himself into his work as director of instrumental music at the school. By the end of that year, he was one of the most popular teachers at Reynolds. And other members of his family had made a hit as well.
Nancy Mayer, age 3, was the official mascot of the RJRHS class of ’47…Nancy would later perform with the RJRHS band, orchestra, choir, majorettes and Dancing Boots…
RJRHS marching band, 1946-47
Bob inherited a band of about 45 instruments and eight majorettes. He knew what made a great band…that both groups needed to get bigger, the majorettes more so than the instrumentalists…because a band is a show. By 1950, he had about 100 instruments and fifteen majorettes. By 1956, there were nearly 30 majorettes, with several specialized twirlers.
RJRHS band, 1950
1956- 57 majorettes…front, l-r: Ann Vance, choreographer; Kay Currin; Kay Wall; Binnie Pulliam, chief; Carol Smith; Ruth Thomas; Julie Blackwood, asst chief. At left and right of the back row are the Hanks sisters, Frances and Joann, master twirlers. At center of the back row are Mary Jane Allen, “demon”, who wore a black cape, and next to her Helen Newport, the other master twirler.
Bob also realized that some sort of feeder system was necessary, so he established an eighth grade band and a “B” band, to nurture those who were not quite ready for the big time “Black & Gold” band. Both of those bands were bigger and better than most area high school ensembles.
My 8th grade band at RJRHS, 1956. In front is chief majorette Carol Howell. Directly behind her is drum major Alex Surratt. Flanking Alex are my future sisters-in-law, the amazing twirling Gardner twins, Nancy, left and Barbara, right. The majorettes in white at left are, l-r, Anne Davis, Kay Cook, and Nita Cox. At right, l-r, Donna Steiffel, Barbara Lineberger and Sweet Sue Airy. Oh, and up in back, next to Bob Mayer, is the one and only Robert Pulliam, baritone horn player extraordinaire…we didn’t perform at varsity football games, but we did march in our share of parades…
Bob was a natural innovator. In those days, most bands moved to a drum cadence, stopped to play, then moved to a drum cadence. The RJRHS band learned to play while moving. Most bands had lyres on their instruments to hold copies of the music. Bob thought that looked tatty, so the RJRHS band had to memorize the music for a new program every week…no lyres, no flapping paper. Most bands’ repertoires were made up of John Philip Sousa, with maybe a show tune thrown in here and there. RJRHS reached far higher.
No one who was there will ever forget the night at the big band festival in Bristol. The other bands came on the field to drum cadences, did their formations and tunes, came off the field to drum cadences. When it was time for RJRHS, not a drum tap was heard. The band split into two halves and walked silently out along the endlines of the football field, half at the south end, half at the north. When all were in place, drum major Bobby Mayer strutted out along the fifty yard line, executed an about face, raised his baton above his head and brought it smartly down, and the band began playing the Eastern Orthodox hymn of the Holy Cross, the opening notes of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture”. Then the two long lines began moving down the field toward the 50 yard line, passed through each other and moved into the first formation, playing all the way. When the show was done, the audience went wild.
But events happening elsewhere would change things at RJRHS forever. In 1940, the Kilgore, Texas Community College introduced the first ever college football dance team, the Kilgore Rangerettes. They achieved immediate fame across the nation.
Kilgore Rangerettes, c. 1940
But in 1954, the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, seeking to emerge from the shadow of their better known neighbors, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Tulane and LSU, created their own dance team, based on the Rangerettes and the fabulous Rockefeller Center Rockettes.
USM “Dixie Darlings”, 1954
The USM “Dixie Darlings” premiered at the 1954 USM-Alabama football game. Within a couple of years, performing at major college bowl games, on national prime time TV, in a layout in Life magazine, and touring everywhere, they had become a worldwide sensation.
Vinni Likely Frederick, 1942
Back home, Bob Mayer was watching. He knew a couple of big time dancers who had founded the Academy of Dance Arts in Winston-Salem in 1947. Helen Leitch Stanley had been one of George Balanchine’s first stars at his school of American Ballet. And Vinni Likely Frederick had been a Rockette, the toughest and best dance team ever. Bob had more than one conversation with them.
In the spring of 1959, the RJ Reynolds High School held tryouts for the state’s first high school dance team. Once the selection process was over, the girls chose a name for the group, the Dancing Boots, and elected Meriel Mitchell as their first chief, Nancy Dunham, assistant chief and Betty Ward, choreographer.
Then boot camp began. Sixty girls spent the summer sweating…learning steps, learning how to stay in synch with each other, learning how to kick higher than they ever could have imagined.
First Boots, 1959
The Dancing Boots made their debut on September 11, 1959, at a Reynolds vs Lexington football game at Bowman Gray Stadium. The very next night, they performed at the annual Piedmont Bowl, an NFL exhibition game between the Washington Redskins and the Green Bay Packers. The Redskins had won three of the first four Piedmont Bowls, but that night they lost. Some explain that by pointing out that it was Vince Lombardi’s first appearance at the Piedmont Bowl as coach of the Packers. But others have suggested that the Redskins were distracted by the Dancing Boots.
Roy Thompson, the Winston-Salem Journal’s star reporter, wrote:
“The halftime show had everything from the bands and Sally (Miss Winston-Salem) Weston to horses and four beautiful floats decorated with a passel of beautiful dolls.
But the biggest halftime thrill of many a football season in these parts came from a group from Reynolds High called the Dancing Boots.
Sixty pretty girls in identical outfits and dancing in such perfect precision that you’d have thought they had one girl and 59 mirrors.”
That was the first ever mention in print of the Dancing Boots. Certainly, Redskins owner and president George Preston Marshall was mightily impressed. He immediately issued, from his seat in the VIP box, an invitation for the RJRHS band, majorettes and Dancing Boots to appear at halftime of the game between his team and the Philadelphia Eagles at Griffith Stadium on Sunday, December 6 of that year. It would be one of the first televised performances of a high school band at an NFL game.
That led to the first ever full article about the Boots, written by Journal reporter J.D. Alexander and published on December 4, 1959.
The above article appeared in the Winston-Salem Journal on Friday, December 4, 1959
At lunch time that Sunday, some of the Boots told J.D. Alexander that their morning dress rehearsal had been a disaster. They were afraid that they would embarrass themselves on TV that afternoon. But when they came off the field at Griffith Stadium in midafternoon after a near perfect performance, they were greeted with wild applause. Many NC dignitaries, from governor Luther Hodges to Piedmont Bowl officials were present. Twin City mayor Marshall Kurfees admitted that he shed a few tears of joy and pride. Ironically, the only picture of the day published by the Winston-Salem Journal showed the band on the field, minus the Dancing Boots. Since they were the reason that the band was invited, one wonders who was making the editorial decisions on Marshall Street that morning.
This photograph appeared in the Winston-Salem Journal on Monday, December 7, 1959
From there on, the success of the Boots was assured. In the spring of 1960, the second edition of the Boots elected Anne Davis as chief and Patricia Walker as assistant chief and choreographer. As was standard practice at RJRHS, the students were tasked with running their own organizations. There were official faculty sponsors and sometimes outside advisers, but the students made the final decisions…every new routine was designed by the Boots’ choreographer and her helpers, which was the key to a very long running success.
Fall, 1960
In 1962, Bob Mayer left Reynolds to become supervisor of music for the local school system. After retirement in 1969, he taught college classes and helped establish a number of bands and orchestras, including one at Wilkes Community College, and locally, the Society Swing Band and the Wachovia Community Symphony Orchestra.
The 1962/63 Boots work out at Hanes Park
But he never quite escaped the orbit of Reynolds High School. He remained close to the Boots for many years. And when the charge began to renovate the high school auditorium, he was one of the leaders of that successful effort. He died in 2005 at 88.
1963-64 Boots practice at Hanes Park
1963-64 chief and co-coreographers
The Boots would return to the nation’s capitol for another Redskins game. A few years later, they would travel to Toronto for an international festival. For decades, they have been spreading the word far and wide that Winston-Salem and R.J. Reynolds High School are a cut above the others. In 2019, the Boots will celebrate their 60th anniversary.
1964-65 Boots practice at the amphitheater behind the auditorium…and perform on the field at Bowman Gray Stadium…
1959
The Dixie Debs
The Dixie Debs, a sixty strong dance team, was formed in 1962 at the James A. Gray High School. That year, on September 29, they did a joint performance with the Dancing Boots at halftime of the Piedmont Bowl game at Bowman Gray Stadium between Wake Forest and Maryland. The first picture here, showing the Boots performing and the Debs waiting their turn, ran on the front page of the Winston-Salem Journal that Sunday. The joint performance ran so long that Wake Forest was assessed a penalty to open the second half for delay of game. When Gray High closed in 1965, the Debs moved to Parkland High School, where they continue to operate, without the “Dixie” part of their name.
The Rockettes
Missouri Rockets, 1925
Russell Markert established a revolutionary new precision dance team, the Missouri Rockets, in St. Louis in 1925. In 1928 they traveled to New York to appear in the Broadway musical “Rain or Shine”. There, theater impresario “Roxy” Rothafel persuaded Markert to remain in the city and produce a bigger and better dance line. On December 27, 1932, Markert’s “Roxyettes” debuted at the brand new Radio City Music Hall. The box office received over 100,000 ticket requests, but the Hall, the world’s largest, only seated 6,240, so 94,000 potential attendees were disappointed. By 1934, Markert’s Roxyettes had officially become the “Radio City Music Hall Rockettes”.
Being a Rockette, which required total fitness, durability, athleticism and skills in tap, modern, jazz and ballet, was probably the most demanding job in America. First was getting in. There were only 36 spots open on the first line. Compare that to the number of openings in professional sports. Then there was staying in, because there was always some young new hotshot gunning for your job. The Rockettes put on up to five performances daily, six days a week. And there were daily workouts and practices for which they were not paid. To accommodate their exhausting schedule, there was a 26 bed dormitory at Rockefeller Center, with its own cafeteria, recreation area, tailor shop and medical staff.
The Rockettes would become the most famous dance line in history. But they were much more than just dancers. They set the standards for all dance lines that came after them. In the 1960s, they went on strike, leading the battle for better pay and working conditions for all dancers in New York City. And later, when the Rockefeller heirs announced plans to demolish Radio City Music Hall for other development, it was the Rockettes who led the charge to have the hall declared a historic monument, thus saving it from the wrecking ball.
