Square Dance Is a Calling, Literally

There’s music drifting out of the Buena Park Recreation Center.

Inside, Bill “Tex” Gipson, square dance caller, has his hands on a microphone, his smooth baritone voice -- and heart -- wrapped around a countrified ditty.

“I realize the best part of love,” he belts out slowly, “is the thinnest lace.”

Then Gipson, up-tempo, exhorts 20 eager couples on the dance floor to do-si-do as cowboy boots and women’s heels click on the center’s parquet floor.

Gipson, 53, of Anaheim, is a member of the Orange County Callers Assn., a group of about 15 who keep their day jobs and spend their evenings on the square dance circuit.

“We go as far away as we get booked,” Gipson said. “Some of us go to Palm Springs, San Bernardino and San Diego.”

On any Friday or Saturday night, there’s a square dance somewhere in Southern California where a caller is needed, said association President Jim Smith.

Callers travel, much like club DJs of the younger generation, carrying sophisticated speaker and amplifier setups, bringing something from an Old West culture to a landscape dotted with strip malls and crisscrossed with freeways.

They call -- a practice that involves singing and giving instructions for the next step -- to mostly middle-aged dancers belonging to clubs with names such as Shirts and Skirts, Guns ‘n’ Garters and Orange County Lariats.

The region’s square dance circuit includes an estimated 60 dance clubs, a third of which are in northern Orange County, including Anaheim, Garden Grove and Westminster.

Gipson, a construction superintendent for Shea Homes, teaches square dancing two nights a week in Buena Park. He has another class in Santa Monica, with lawyers, dentists and college professors.

“It’s not the cowboy who just came off the ranch anymore,” he said.

To become a member of the callers association, the candidate must be recommended by an established member, Gipson said. It can take years to learn the intricate rhythms and steps. The pay can be $300 and up at big dances.

Some, such as Gipson and Smith, are certified through the International Assn. of Square Dance Callers, which has standardized the calls, so dancers in Oregon can square dance to a caller in Florida without skipping a beat.

Nationally, there are an estimated 3,000 to 3,500 callers, said John Letson, executive director for the American Callers Assn., based in Muscle Shoals, Ala.

Most callers consider it a hobby, although some do it full time, said Gipson, who on a busy week can make $500. But there are full-time professionals earning $60,000 to $70,000 a year, he said.

Today’s callers know that the ranks of square dancers are dwindling. There are groups of young square dancers, but the bump in popularity from John Travolta’s 1980 movie “Urban Cowboy,” for instance, has waned, Letson said.

“We simply do not have a program to teach people how to square dance that’s short and fits today’s busy lifestyle,” Letson said. It can take nine months to master a beginner’s course.

Letson recalled attending a national square dance convention in Anaheim in the 1970s that attracted 44,000 dancers. Only 6,000 people attended last year’s national convention in Denver, he said.

To keep square dancing alive, callers are softening the twang in country music by adapting pop, swing, rock ‘n’ roll and even hip-hop to square dancing.

Getting the younger generation active in square dancing will help it survive, said Andrew Melczer of Garden Grove, who with his wife, Deena, were taking lessons from Gipson at the Buena Park center.

“I’m 42, and we’re the youngest couple here,” Melczer said, looking out at a sea of mostly white-haired dancers.

The Melczers’ class was offered, in part, through the Boys ‘n’ Berries club, a group begun more than 35 years ago.

“We used to have 100 people here for classes,” said Stephan Roehrich, 72, president of Boys ‘n’ Berries. “Now there’s about 40.”