The first record I ever owned was a 45 rpm single of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” the infectious whistling, bones-clacking jazz instrumental originally recorded by Brother Bones and His Shadows in 1949. We’re not talking with-my-own-money owned: I was six years old at the time, so the single was delivered overnight by the Easter Bunny, of all things, the vinyl record nestled into my Easter basket amid shredded-plastic grass and jelly beans.
Not that I was a kindergartner particularly taken with Truman-era jazz standards. No, like millions of other kids, I was drawn to “Sweet Georgia Brown” for its repopularization throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s as the official theme song of the Harlem Globetrotters. The legendary comic exhibition basketball squad started using “Sweet Georgia Brown” as its theme song back in 1952, but by the 1970s, the Globetrotters were all over television, and with a monoculture of just three network channels, the team and their theme song were inescapable.
The Globetrotters showed up on variety shows like Donnie & Marie in 1976, playing keepaway from Donny Osmond while his sister Marie looked on laughing. The team cameoed on The White Shadow in ’79, doing Coach Reed a favor by showing up at practice to kick the asses of his too-cocky Carver High players. The Globetrotters landed on Gilligan’s Island in ’81 and set sail on The Love Boat in ’84.
As with any kid-friendly sensation in the ’70s, the Globetrotters also got their own animated series. It’s impossible to explain to today’s kids the cripplingly crucial importance of Saturday morning cartoons in the time before cable television when the networks dedicated just one five-hour block per week to airing cartoons. The Trotters got their turn with Harlem Globetrotters in 1970-71 (repeated in ’78) featuring the voice of Scatman Crothers, explaining why head Trotter Meadowlark Lemon sounded exactly like Hong Kong Phooey. The live action Harlem Globetrotters Popcorn Machine in ’74-’75 featured bizarre comedy skits of the Trotters acting out spoofs of fairy tales. My favorite was The Super Globetrotters, which ran for a single season in 1979 and featured the Trotters as superheroes, including Sweet Lou Dunbar, who could pull gadgets out of his massive afro, and Twiggy Sanders, whose appendages were made of spaghetti.
Most important to me were their annual spots on ABC’s Wide World of Sports starting in 1973. Between other sports segments depicting various thrills of victory and the agonies of defeat, we’d get live performances of the Globetrotters on the court in all of their star-spangled, ball-twirling, alley-ooping, trick-shot wizardry, whipping up on the Washington Generals with three-man weaves, acrobatic ball-handling stunts and comical hijinks, performed, for instance, at Attica prison in ’76, Walt Disney World in ’82 and Kansas City (!) in ’86.
My parents took me to see the Globetrotters live when I was five in Springfield, Missouri, and while these days the Globetrotters split into two or three different squads that perform in multiple cities on the same day, back in the old days you were guaranteed to get the team’s superstars — Meadowlark Lemon, Curly Neal, Geese Ausbie, Nate Branch and others. The affably bald Neal was the fan favorite with his knee-sliding dribbling routines, but the charismatic Lemon was the indisputable leader, the “Clown Prince” of the Globetrotters, who sank his trademark half-court hookshot the night we saw him.
By the time I was 11, I was obsessed. I had the posters, the red-white-and-blue basketball, the sweatbands and the headband, which I wore around my neck like Billy Ray Hobley. I ran dunks on my Nerf hoop pretending I was Robert “Baby Face” Paige. I tried to roll the ball down my arms and over my shoulders like Osborne Lockhart. I spun the ball on my finger, slapping it to keep it going like Gator Rivers. So of course I needed my own copy of “Sweet Georgia Brown.” How else was I to effectively practice the amazing ball-handling skills the Trotters displayed during their famous Magic Circle routines as the song played?
Moments after the Easter basket surprise, I put “Sweet Georgia Brown” on the family stereo console, grabbed my Globetrotters basketball and formed a two-man Magic Circle with my older brother Shane in the living room. When the song started, I flew into action, slapping the ball from palm to palm, back and forth, as fast as I could, at which point Shane informed me that I wasn’t really doing anything with the basketball. I told him that he wasn’t doing anything with his own stupid balls because he was a big stupidhead, which left me with my basketball and my new record as a solitary Magic Circle of one.
Later that year, the Globetrotters returned to Springfield. In the days ahead of the game, I bragged to my friend Keith at school that I had front row seats. Courtside for the Globetrotters! Some of us are just special. I’m practically part of the team! The night of the event, as my family climbed and climbed up hundreds of steps to the rafters of the 300 level of the arena, I came humiliatingly face to face with Keith, sitting with his dad in the same nosebleed section that I was.
This past Saturday, in a full magic circle moment, I took my own son to see the Globetrotters at Enterprise Center in downtown St. Louis, the first time I’d seen them in almost four decades. And this time, thanks to my media credentials, I really was courtside for the game. What has not changed is that a Globetrotters game is still a ridiculously entertaining affair — funny, exciting, sweet, athletically impressive—with more charmingly silly comedy routines and high-flying action than ever.
The Magic Circle was a thrill — especially the work of tricksters Jet Rivers and Too Tall Winston — performed to a remixed, hip-hop-modulated version of “Sweet Georgia Brown.” I had a Pavlovian response to the song and found myself breaking out my old moves at my seat with a phantom basketball. The old water bucket and confetti gag is still going, you’ll be glad to know, this time with Rivers chasing X-Over (pronounced “Crossover”), one of two dwarf members of the current squad, around the arena. Spider Sharpless had one of the day’s most crowd-pleasing bits, slipping on a Spiderman mask and climbing to the top of one of the backboards before somersaulting back down to earth.
Much of the actual game play takes place above the rim — nearly every Trotters basket is a dazzling alleyoop although the team has also registered a trademark for its four-point line, a full 30-feet from the rim, and Winston drained a few of them throughout the game. Bulldog Mack hit a two-handed over-the-shoulder shot from past half-court. Torch George, one of three current female Trotters, antagonized the pursuing Generals with a series of between-the-leg tumble dribbles.
But the comedy never stopped, and neither did the game clock, even during the gag-filled interludes. Head showman Mack led a dance routine to Whitey Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” with a good-spirited fellow from the crowd. A mini-hoop was rolled out during a fast break so X-Over could get a dunk in. A ten-year-old “superfan” from the audience outfitted with his own Globetrotters jersey hit a layup and learned dance moves from the Trotters. The team challenged an official’s call by acting out the previous play in reverse and then again in slow-motion, a clever bit.
I saw the afternoon matinee, and it wasn’t lost on me that the date was January 6th. With that date in mind and with all the stars and stripes and patriotic colors — a Globetrotters tradition — in the crowd, I found myself worrying that the masses would storm the court and attack the scorers table to keep officials from certifying the score if the Globetrotters didn’t win.
And the Trotters made it uncomfortably close. In the old days, they ran up the score on the hapless Generals; on Saturday, they manufactured a buzzer-beater to let the Trotters win by two on a last-second power slam by Hi-Rise Mitchell. No insurrection needed; this throwback act wins fair and square.
Throughout the event, the merchandise table sold hundreds of youth-sized Globetrotters basketballs, and after the game the concourse was filled with little kids frantically dribbling all over the place, attempting under-the-leg moves and behind-the-back tosses. It was all I could do to keep from stealing a ball to see if I could still spin it on my finger and roll it down my arms. But I held off, heroically, settling instead for whistling “Sweet Georgia Brown” into the parking lot with my son. Will the Magic Circle be unbroken.
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