Sneak of the Week: “The Girl Can’t Dance”

A gospel-singing boxer invented punk in 1962 but nobody knew it.

The very existence of “The Girl Can’t Dance” demands the rejiggering of some basic assumptions about music history. For one thing, it stands to prove that punk rock began in 1962. It also insists that there was a first-wave rock ‘n’ roller more unhinged than Little Richard and more feral-sounding than Captain Beefheart. And the kicker is that the guy started out as a gospel singer.

David Walker was a Washington, DC area singer who worked with gospel legends The Mighty Clouds of Joy in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, appearing on several of their recordings. But there was a fiercer part of his makeup. He was moonlighting as a heavyweight boxer, and Walker’s pugilistic impulse would soon find a musical outlet. Local producer Vernon Wray, aka Ray Vernon, was the brother of Link Wray of “Rumble” fame, and in 1962 he sprouted the idea of connecting his guitar-slinging bro with Walker to see what happened.

What happened was a rock ‘n’ roll explosion wilder than anything that preceded it. In a quick session, Walker cut several tunes with Link Wray and The Wraymen. With Walker adopting the strange pseudonym Bunker Hill so he wouldn’t be drummed out of The Mighty Clouds for singing the devil’s music, the single “Hide and Go Seek” was released as a single on Mala Records. It became a national Top 40 hit, but in the Baltimore/DC area it was Top 10. More than a quarter-century later, it was included in local boy John Waters’ Hairspray, and it’s been recorded by Joan Jett, The Fleshtones, and others.

But after the second single from the session, “Red Ridin’ Hood and the Wolf,” failed to gain much (or any) traction, Walker went back to his gospel gig. The following year, almost as an afterthought, Mala put out a 45 with the remaining two songs from the session, dooming them to obscurity by not even bothering to promote them. One of those tracks turned out to be the most savage sonic attack to be found not only among the Bunker Hill recordings but anywhere in rock ‘n’ roll at the time.

On “The Girl Can’t Dance,” Walker, who was only about 21, comes rampaging out of the gate, sounding like he’s been on a steady diet of fireballs with razorblade chasers since birth. If the pearl-clutching protectors of America’s innocence who got their drawers in an uproar over Elvis and Jerry Lee in the ‘50s had ever heard this, they would have spontaneously combusted. Meanwhile, Wray and company match the singer step for step, powering out an unrelenting blast of pure energy that helps propel the tune out of the proverbial park.

Walker never made another record as Bunker Hill or under his own name. Trying to find a copy of the original 45 today is a fool’s errand. But the maniacal mojo of “The Girl Can’t Dance” was just too strong for it to completely fall through the cracks of history. It’s been recorded over the years by a handful of garage-rock revivalists, and it was reissued a couple of times, by a Japanese label and by stalwart US rock ‘n’ roll flame-keepers Norton Records, though even the reissues have gotten pricey these days. David “Bunker Hill” Walker is no longer with us, but “The Girl Can’t Dance” burned his name forever into the annals of American music.

-Jim Allen

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