Dancin’ Texas Style: The Origin of the Texas Two-Step (Jan 19, 2025)
by Scott Sosebee
Generally, much of the popularity of music—of any genre—is that it can be danced to, and perhaps no other form is as perfect for dancing, at least with a partner to live music, as country. There are a number of different forms and types of dancing to country music, but by far the most popular—and if you ask me the best fit—are the moves that are most often referred to as “The Texas Two-Step.” As Jerry Jeff Walker once sang in his song “I got Lucky Last Night,” “Ain’t nothing to learn, one slide or a turn/With a big move over to the side,” or as Zach Meadows crooned, “Well I don’t mind a little waltzing, a little rhythm for my blues. . ./I ain’t ever learned to Two step, but it ain’t too late to try.” If you have ever gathered in a Texas honky-tonk, or even just a backyard cookout with a patio and music from a speaker, I can guarantee that you have seen people doing the Texas Two-Step.
I cannot recall when I first saw anyone doing the two-step, but it was probably somewhere in San Angelo during my youth, probably at a Beer Garden restaurant I faintly recall on the Concho River, or maybe it was at the Pavillion at Garner State Park where there was the best country jukebox I had ever heard, and a concession stand that sold the best tasting Dr Pepper’s I have still tasted to this day. I do remember that I two-stepped for the first time in my life on that pavilion before I was even a teenager with a young girl whose name has left my memory, and it was an activity that became more frequent when I regularly visited the legendary “Coldwater Country” nightspot in Lubbock during college. I was never more than a fair (maybe less) two-stepper, unlike my brother, who was in such high demand on those nights that he hardly ever left the floor. The pace, the rhythm, and the notes of that music still make me want to at least tap my foot whenever I hear a song that I used to dance to.
Conclusively nailing down the origins of the Texas Two-step is not as simple as I thought it would be when I began to explore how it developed. Generally, most researchers into the steps agree that it originated with European dances, but how it evolved into the one Texans so love gets a little murky. What does become clear is that its origins are likely in the waltz, combined with other folk dances that European immigrants brought with them to the United States. However, how it became a “step move” was likely created by the famous composer John Phillip Sousa’s music. One of his most famous compositions was the 1889 “Washington Post March.” Waltzing is a “gliding” form of music, something Sousa’s marches were not: To dance to it, partners had to move much differently, so it became a “step” dance style.
The two-step, however, had not finished its evolution. The waltz and the “step move” combined once more at the turn of the twentieth century to create two distinct types of dancing: The Foxtrot and the One Step. Those two dances were most popular in urban areas, and the music associated with them was more orchestral with complex arrangements. Such forms, while certainly melodic, were quite often beyond the means and instrumentation of many rural venues, particularly in Texas, where much of the dancing in the state took place in “dance halls,” a sort of Texas tradition that combined the “juke joints” of the South and the “beer halls” so familiar in the homeland of Germany, where many Texas immigrants called home. Also, part of those elements were polkas, a distinctively Central European style of music and dance. When all those elements were swirled together, you had a style of music that was very danceable, had a surely “country twang”—also from the polka—and a style of dancing that was, for a while, called “Valse a deux temps,” French that roughly translates to “waltz two times.” That’s a cumbersome name, so by the early 1900s, it became known as the “two-step,” and because it was most frequently played and danced to in those Texas dance halls, it evolved into the “Texas Two-Step.”
The style of music we call “country” followed many of the similar evolutions I just described, a form that began to take its shape in Appalachia, the rural American South, and also in those Texas Dance Halls. As the music began to spread, and people got up and danced to its beats, the “Texas Two-Step” became the preferred method of moves. A dance that required two partners and was simple to learn appealed to the rural working class who frequented those dance halls. They were looking for a place to escape their worries of work and making a life, and dancing to music they recognized and loved, with dance steps that everyone from the youngest child to the oldest patron could perform and commit to memory, certainly attracted all who took to the floor.
It really “ain’t nothing to learn,” as Jerry Jeff sang. The lead dancer steps forward with his/her left foot, while the follower—who is facing the leader—steps back with his/her right foot, then they both bring their right feet forward to meet their left foot. Then, you repeat it all as you move around the dance floor in a circular pattern. If you want to try an “overhead spin” to make your turn, the dancers let go of their hand on their partner’s body, and the leader raises his/her left arm while holding the follower’s hand. The follower then dips his/her head and steps “under the rainbow,” and then the partners come back together in the correct position to restart the steps. It’s not just a “Texas thing,” but I have never seen anyone dance the Two-Step better than Texans. I’m not sure I did those exact steps way back on the pavilion at Garner State Park, but I sure would like to go back and repeat it again.
The East Texas Historical Association provides this column as a public service. Scott Sosebee is a Professor of History at Stephen F. Austin State University and the Executive Director of the Association. He can be contacted at sosebeem@sfasu.edu or via www.easttexashistorical.org.