If you grew up in South Carolina in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s or 1970s, it is unlikely that you made it through puberty without learning how to learn how to shag to South Carolina Beach Music. Had my family not had to move to a new town, I’d have started my shag lessons at the tender age of twelve. Too bad the new town we moved to didn't have a shag teacher who taught children.

No Avedon, I’m not talking about the kind of shagging folks on the island where you live are famous for, but the kind of that every enlightened child in South Carolina had to learn before puberty. Learning to shag to South Carolina Beach Music was a rite of passage. And the dance and the music were both made famous at a place that what was once better than Coney Island, every beach on the California Coast and anything and everything Florida ever had to offer combined — The Grand Strand of the Carolina Coast. That was before the big corporations came in and trashed the place. So why am I mentioning Shagging lessons?

One of the last of the great shag men is dead. Rest in Peace, Bill Pinckney of The Drifters. The world is never going to be the same without you.