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Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2009 > March > 11 > Entry
Behind the SXSW Buzz: Floyd Dakil
Floyd Dakil is about as humble as they come. The 63-year-old Dallas native has generally turned down interview requests from folks writing books on Texas music history in the past, because he felt his contribution did not warrant such attention.
In giving the world “Dance Franny Dance,” one of the greatest garage rock numbers, recorded in Dallas a year before the Beatles played Ed Sullivan, the Floyd Dakil Combo has achieved bar band immortality. The hard-driving tune with the irresistible chord change has been kept alive in Austin by a host of bands, including the Leroi Brothers and Eve and the Exiles. That latter group will back Dakil when he plays the Ponderosa Stomp showcase on Friday, March 20, at the Continental Club.
“So many younger people come up to me or e-mail me and tell me how much they love that song that I’ve started thinking that, you know, maybe my music did have some value,” says Dakil, who runs his own commercial real estate business.
Although he has rarely performed since the mid-‘80s, Dakil says “there’s something that music does when you get older — it rejuvenates you. I’m just rarin’ to play.”
Although a treasured 45 for collectors, “Dance Franny Dance” achieved only regional success, which was not matched by follow-ups “Bad Boy,” “Stronger Than Dirt” and “One Girl.” Dakil is technically one hit short of being a One-Hit Wonder, but in terms of influence “Dance Franny Dance” was a smash.
Dakil wrote the song after a high school pool party, in which the 2-year-old sister of the hostess started shimmying to a song on the jukebox and all the kids started chanting “Dance Franny Dance.” The next day, Dakil started strumming a B chord and singing “Dance Franny Dance” and then he went into the G chord that gives the tune a catchy lift-off.
An accomplished guitarist, Dakil was recruited to join Louis Prima’s band in 1972, but that gig ended after eight months when the band leader was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Dakil stayed in Las Vegas, where he played the lounges and opened for the likes of Bill Cosby and Phyllis Diller.
By 1984, however, Dakil retired from the music business and took a job in finance. “I don’t know how Dr. Ira (Ponderosa founder Padnos) found me, but he did,” Dakil says of his unlikely road to South By Southwest. “I guess I’m gonna go down to Austin and play like I’m 25 again.
“The music has that effect.”
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