It's baaack!
Remember the Tumble Inn? Many do, but for those who don't, it was not a place but a gathering.
The dance party of sorts for the high school crowd operated back in the 1940s, '50s and '60s on weekends at the old YMCA, which is now Cubs Hall, on McKean Street. A similar event for the junior high schoolers called Fun-O-Rama was held over at the YWCA on Cunningham Street. After decades, the Tumble Inn dances morphed into the Purple Underground when the new YMCA was built on Washington Street.
Now an evening reminiscent of the Tumble Inn is planned again, for April.
Dave Martin, formerly of Butler and soon returning from Oil City, remembers the dances well. He said he went to his first in 1963.
“(The late) Sam Wimer was DJing. I was friends with him, and he said, 'Would you like to try this?'” Martin said recently.
That started Martin on a lifelong path of spinning records. He'd even D.J. both Tumble Inn and Fun-O-Rama dances on the same night sometimes, he said.
“Dances at Fun-O-Rama were from about 6 to 7:30 p.m., and at the Tumble Inn from 8 to 11 p.m., so I would run over from the YWCA to the YMCA,” said Martin, who recalled being paid $7 for the job. “That was big money back then.”
He remembered, “The janitor would hand us a five-gallon bucket of sawdust and linseed oil. I saw him mix it. We'd sprinkle that on the floor before the dance.
“It got swept up after. It made the floor really shiny and would keep it from getting scuffed up and kept gum and stuff off.”
Butler High School Class of 1970 graduate Carol Sanders Borderud, now of Toccoa, Ga., remembers going in junior high to the Fun-O-Rama and the Tumble Inn for the older kids.
“It was the popular kind of music … When you think of the Beatles' “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” and (The Temptations') “My Girl,” the Beach Boys … real light and real fun,” Borderud said. “Girls would get in a group and fast dance. If a boy asked you to slow dance, that was special. It was very light and very fun, just people getting together and having fun.”
She said parents were supportive of the dances.
“I think there were chaperones, and it wasn't real seedy and there weren't fights or anything,” she recalled. “It wasn't anything you would have to go to with a date. It was fun just to get together and interact in a big group setting that was safe.”
Local musician Randy Roth said he remembers songs like “Wing Tip Shoes” and “High on a Hill.”
The active Butler drummer said he went to the dances occasionally, when live music was featured. “That's why I would have gone there, for the bands,” he said.
With the dedication of a new YMCA building on Washington Street in 1968, the dances moved there and became known as the Purple Underground, continuing through the 1970s.
“Purple Underground was a different crowd,” Roth said. “The generation that made Tumble Inn had changed.”
Eventually those dances at the Y ended (Fun-O-Rama had concluded in the mid-1960s), and with that the legacy of the Tumble Inn faded.Until now.Martin and another area D.J., Ron Marowitz of Butler, will be hosting “Tumble Inn Revisited” on April 14 at the Tanglewood Center in Lyndora.The dance and dinner will begin at 8 p.m. and go until about 10:30 p.m. or maybe a bit later. “We did go 'til 11 at Tumble Inn,” Martin noted.He said the original Tumble Inn often drew a thousand students in a night. “It was wall-to-wall people; it was packed,” he said.The space at Tanglewood can hold about 300 for the dinner with an area for dancing.At the April 14 event, “we're going to play mostly '60s music,” Martin said, “and dip down into the '50s.”“We're going to play whatever gets people up on the floor,” he said. “We have the music.”For the dance, Martin will spin discs from his library of well-maintained vinyl 45s, and Marowitz will play his extensive collection of CDs.No vintage equipment is in play, though: Martin's turntable is new, Marowitz uses a double CD player with mixer, and they have 1,000-watt and 500-watt amplifiers respectively.“Years ago, there were always a hundred people there waiting to help you unload,” Martin said.People who grew up in Butler have long been nostalgic about the Tumble Inn.Several years ago, the Butler County Symphony Orchestra played Vincent Sanzotti's composition “Tumble Inn” during a concert. The Butler Eagle's symphony reviewer Leanne Heaton said of the April 2010 performance: “Sanzotti capably combined the music, the fun and the angst. It was almost possible to hear the “will he ask me” and “will she say yes” questions that hovered in the back of every teenaged heart.”And in the past, the Butler High School Class of 1970 has tried a “Tumble Inn Revisited” event for reunion time.At the end of the evening April 14, maybe Martin will send everyone home by playing his signature 45 recording of “Goodnight Sweetheart, Goodnight” by the Untouchables. Just like at the Tumble Inn.
