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Sunday, September 11, 2016

The “Mickey” singer is 72-years-old and still a better dancer than many of us


 Now..
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Back when... Hey Mickey


by:Chris Willman
Hey Toni, you’re still so fine, you’re still so fine, you still blow our minds.
Forming a human pyramid isn’t how we usually celebrate pop artists entering their eighth decade. But we’ll have to make an exception in the case of Toni Basil, the symbol of early-’80s sprightliness who slipped us a “Mickey” with her sole hit back in 1982. She turns 73 on September 22 and, if a recent viral video of her busting a move at a 2016 dance workshop is any indication, Basil fits into that Las Vegas High cheerleader outfit just as well as when she starred in one of MTV’s most famous early videos. 

Basil is a one-hit wonder who’s enjoyed a successful career throughout the last 50 years. If that sounds paradoxical, it’s worth pointing out that “singer” has really been the least important component of her multi-hyphenate singer/dancer/actress/choreographer/director legacy. Like Jennifer Lopez, Basil was a dancer who parlayed that into a musical career. But unlike J.Lo, she quickly went back to her former profession, retiring from record-making after her sophomore album stiffed in ’83.
”People think, ‘Well, she’s not around because she’s not in front of the camera.’ You’re not going to be that naïve, are you?” she complained to Entertainment Weekly in 1996, taking umbrage at the one-hit wonder slur.
It was hardly as if she could financially coast on the success of “Mickey,” which continues to be the DJ’s choice any time some ‘80s tunes are called for on the dance floor. “I don’t think my story is an unusual story for a lot of music performers,” she told an English TV interviewer recently. “But I think that since 1982, worldwide, I have probably seen less than 3,000 American dollars in royalties.” 




Unknown to most pop fans who know her mostly for her work with pompons, Basil has been a virtual Zelig of pop culture — working alongside David Bowie, Elvis Presley, Talking Heads, the Monkees, Devo, Frank Sinatra, George Lucas, Jack Nicholson, Tom Hanks, Bette Midler, the Muppets, Matchbox Twenty, and even Suite Life-era Zack and Cody. One of her latest credits on IMDB had her choreographing an episode of RuPaul’s TV show… which is a long way from dancing next to Annette Funicello all the way back in 1964’s Pajama Party.
Basil really did go to Las Vegas High, per the uniform, thanks to her father/s longtime gig as the orchestra leader at the Sands. She soon came to L.A. to dance in an early-/60s theatrical revival of West Side Story, the cast of which included fellow dancer and BFF Teri Garr, who boogied along with her in Pajama Party, Viva Las Vegas, and The T.A.M.I. Show

“Boy, did I envy her!” Garr wrote in her memoir. “Toni grew up in a show business family in Las Vegas…At her apartment she had false eyelashes, hairpieces, and a waist-cincher. This level of accessorizing impressed me. As far as I was concerned, it made Toni a real show-business dancer. I was in awe of her.” Their adventures included being invited to sit in on the recording of the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine,” then going out for a full night of drinking and dancing with all four Fabs afterward. 

Basil also hoofed it up for Bob Fosse in Sweet Charity and partnered with Davy Jones for a memorable production number in the Monkees’ Head. But her allure was enough to land her non-dancing roles in Five Easy Pieces and Easy Rider; in the latter, she played a hooker Peter Fonda took a shine to in New Orleans.
Hollywood suddenly had a thirst for the counterculture, but its elders didn’t know how to service these crazy kids. As someone who knew how to keep dancing from looking musty on the big screen, Basil was uniquely positioned to start getting her own choreographing gigs.
She was well known enough by 1974 to land a cover story in New York’s After Dark magazine, and, in 1976, to be praised as “the Pavlova of the Sunset Strip” in a feature in Ms. magazine.  










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