Dancing Shoes 3CD

Teddy & The Tigers
Dancing Shoes – Complete Masters Collection 1977-1980 3CD Set

This three disc collection covers all of the recordings made by Teddy & the Tigers between 1977 and 1980.
The trio played a key role in the mind-blowing change among the Finnish youth, in which the innocent 1950s nostalgia wave inspired by American Graffiti transformed into the short-lived, but all the more aggressive rockabilly boom.
The then newly establised record label Poko Records released the Tigers’ debut LP titled Boppin’ in May 1978.
Revenue from the album was invested also in the second Tigers album Burn It Up which was released before Christmas 1978.
The opening song, Tiger Twist, became the unofficial theme song not only for The Tigers but also for the whole 1950s rock ‘n’ roll craze in Finland, and sent the LP to the homes of more than 35.000 enthusiastic Finnish rockabilly youngsters.
The band made a trip to London in the fall of 1978 to take a look at the British teddy boy bands of the time and they were impressed.
The trip tremendously broadened their vision and the next album Rock-A-Billy Rebel included cover songs from original rockabilly artists who had even in their own time remained completely unknown to the general public.
This primitive rockin' music derived from the 1950s was totally new not only to the Tigers but also to the band’s Finnish audience.
The Rock-A-Billy Rebel LP was released in May 1979, and the compilation album Tiger Tracks was released in the autumn of the same year.
The fourth and last album was White Hot Rock (1980) released under the shortened name The Tigers.
These albums have over decades vanished to the shadows of history, but listened from the current perspective, Rock-A-Billy Rebel stands out as a lost gem.
In the history of Finnish popular music, it is the first complete album on which a dedicated band aims to play rockabilly more or less as it was played for more than 20 years earlier during the 1950s in the deep south of the US, without any filters and without relying on the sounds and production ideals of 1970s pop.
Dancing Shoes – The Complete Masters Collection 1977-1980 is not a journey in time either into American or Finnish years of fictional innocence.
Instead, these recordings offer a nostalgic or bizarre peek into one of era’s few alternative teenage lifestyles in Finland.