Save The Last Dance

In January 2002 a new era of my life began - I became hooked on the reality competition show known as American Idol.  American Idol is not my first experience with a televised talent competition I spent many hours in the late 1980's watching Star Search, hosted by Ed McMahon. 

With this new wave of competition reality shows my obsession started off slowly, first it was American Idol, then I became a fan of Dancing With the Stars but swore I would never watch any others.  Right - last year I waited breathlessly each week for Cat Deeley and the crew of So You Think You Can Dance.  I really thought that was it - but oh no - now I'm a closet watcher of America's Got Talent...what's next?

Well, tonight I found the next chapter - The Sing-Off.  I justify this new obsession by telling my friends this is a show of TRUE talent.  There are 10 A Capella singing groups from all walks of life competing for $100,000 and a Sony recording contract.  Here are a couple of my favorites from tonight's show - The Whiffenpoofs are a group of young men from Yale University that was originally formed in 1909; Jerry Larson & Talk of the Town is a group of 6 men performing in the irresistible Motown style of the of the Platters & the Supremes.  Jerry Larson was a member of the group The Persuasions for 40 years before joining Talk of the Town. Then there are the ones I didn't care for so much, mostly the young GLEE wanna be groups...

The point of all of this is - if you watch enough junk TV, every once in a while you find an information gem.  On tonight's show Jerry Larson & Talk of the Town performed one of my all time favorite songs - "Save The Last Dance for Me".  This song has been recorded by many, many artists the first of which was Ben E. with The Drifters - you can pick your favorite artist..

.After tonight's performance I learned the song was written by two artists, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman.  Ben Folds, one of the shows judges, shared this information with the crowd.  Along with their names he shard the story behind the song - It seems that Doc Pomus was a polio victim and the song was a message to his wife to go to the party, have fun and dance.  The magic of the story is in the message of love he was sending to her - he did not want his handicap to prevent her from enjoying life but he wanted her to know that he loved her more than any of her other dance partners and that if a miracle should happen and he should get to dance one more time, he wanted her to - you guessed it - "save the last dance for him".