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Something in the Way He Moves

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This is where he served his apprenticeship. This is where Beatle Bob received his minstrel degree, his doctorate of dance. Behind the pop-culture mask, he is a shaman who can conjure up a primordial spirit world long suppressed. Before the Moon Walk or the Funky Chicken, the Charleston or the Eagle Rock, there were other dances with more exotic names: the calenda, the chica, the juba, the jumba, the counjaille. They originated in West Africa and came here with the slaves. Over time, these rhythms have been integrated into modern Western music. Beatle Bob, by his own admission, has been captivated by these beats since childhood. Eventually, moving to these rhythms became an emotional and physical imperative.

"It's a combination of different styles," he says of his dancing. " It's just a mixture of stuff. It's really not one move. I really can't program it ahead of time." It is a dance with no program. A dance with no partner. A dance with no name. The Twist, the Hully-Gully, the Mashed Potato and the Pony, too. Anarchy in motion. A one-man costume party. Archaic and timeless at once. It's whatever he wants it to be. Beatle Bob is doing his thing. And it has now been well over 1,100 days since he has taken a hiatus. By his own count, the last time he sat out was Christmas Eve 1996. In essence, Beatle Bob is participating in a marathon of his own invention and claims to be chronicling his progress in a dance diary, noting each performance he attends in a spiral-bound notebook. For many Beatle Bob watchers, it is an obsession that defies explanation. They wonder whether something other than his genuine love of music is motivating him to continue pursuing his uninterrupted dancing streak.

"He is devoted to it way beyond anything I've ever seen," says Pick. "At the point where you go three years without missing a night, somewhere in there you stop actually caring what you're seeing very much. Somewhere along the line it became more important for him to actually be there than it was to experience whatever music was giving him.

"Although I suspect that whatever joy he gets in life comes from the dancing."

On one of his flings, Beatle Bob attends the Gateway City Bluegrass Music Festival at the Henry VIII Hotel on North Lindbergh Boulevard. He has been going to the annual event for several years now. During breaks in the entertainment, he eagerly seeks out the performers to have his photograph taken with them. He does the same thing wherever he goes. Among all the cowboy hats and denim, he seems to stand out more than usual, but it doesn't appear to make him feel self-conscious. He mingles and makes small talk with acquaintances. The lobby of the hotel is crowded with amateur musicians playing fiddles and mandolins. At the ticket table, he announces that he is a correspondent for Night Times, a music magazine, and receives complimentary tickets for himself and a guest. Beatle Bob the dancer has assumed the role of journalist. As a member of the "free" press, he walks to the front row and sits down. By the third act, he can no longer contain himself. The Lewis Family, a gospel group, is performing. The women wear purple gowns that resemble choir robes. Next to them, an old man, stoop-shouldered and carrying a cane, sings feebly through a microphone as a frantic five-string-banjo player picks out the melody. And there is Beatle Bob, on the far side of the stage, bop-bop-bopping along. Although he has positioned himself far to the side of the stage, behind the bank of speakers, the festival organizer finally asks him to sit down. Despite the rebuke, Beatle Bob has scored another free dance session. Night Times magazine no longer exists. But as a "correspondent" for the defunct publication, he has saved $50.

Beatle Bob has been accused of using this method in the past. Last year, for instance, he got backstage passes to the New Orleans Jazz Fest by identifying himself with KDHX, the St. Louis community-radio station. This prompted Beverly Hacker, the station's manager, to write a letter to a New Orleans-based music publication, disavowing any association with him. "He tells clubs that he's one of our on-air programmers so that he can get free tickets," says Hacker. "I just find it very annoying that he does this affiliation with us when he hasn't put in the time."

When such questions arise, Beatle Bob usually attributes the problem to a misunderstanding, a simple mistake. The flap over last year's Jazz Fest is a good example: Beatle Bob informed the festival staff by fax that he was interested in doing a radio special for KDHX on New Orleans rhythm & blues and, as a part of his project, would need a backstage pass to conduct interviews. "Maybe I could have been more clear, but never did I use the words 'volunteer' or 'paid worker.' I have done several radio specials since the station opened up," he says, "long before Beverly was ever with the station."

Tony Renner, another KDHX staff member, recalls seeing Beatle Bob at the South by Southwest music conference in Austin last year, wearing a name tag that affiliated him with Jet Lag magazine, which hasn't been published in several years. Renner didn't say anything about the misrepresentation at the time because, he says, Beatle Bob "was introducing me to a very attractive young woman."

Beatle Bob's love of music is so great that he has been prohibited from entering more than one St. Louis record store. But retailers refuse to comment on the record about their allegations. Beatle Bob, who has no conviction records in either St. Louis or St. Louis County, maintains that the shoplifting accusations against him are false, the product of yet another misunderstanding. "One time I tried to exchange something at a store and there was an argument over the exchange," he says. "That's how it started."

Beatle Bob has made it his life's calling to circumvent the obstacles that the music establishment has placed in his way. He snubs authority and bends rules with a combination of guile and innocence. A central part of his ethos equates music with the purest form of unconditional liberty. By identifying himself as a member of the professional class who profit from the system, Beatle Bob is simply gaining some of the same advantages of his critics, who are themselves members of the music industry.

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