David Millstone of the Square Dance History Project sent me a query in email about how the name "Paul Jones", after the naval hero of the American Revolution, came to be attached to a late nineteenth century song and then a twentieth-century mixer dance. I can't give a precise answer to David's question, but I can offer some background and informed speculation while meandering through a quick survey of some of the dances given the "Paul Jones" name.
The tl;dr version is: just because two things in dance or music have the same name doesn't mean they necessarily have any relationship whatsoever.
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John Paul Jones is most remembered by Americans today for his famous response to a British request for surrender during a naval battle: "I have not yet begun to fight!" His full career is a matter of public record which I see no need to recap here. Jones was highly revered in France, where he was given the title of Chevalier and lived the last years of his life after service in the American and Russian navies. His heroism apparently inspired a French dancing master, Monsieur Léchard, who composed a cotillon called Le Paul Jones which appears in at least two books of cotillons in the late eighteenth century. It's a simple dance which has nothing at all to do with the later mixer.
It is not particularly surprising that a hero of such stature would continue to be remembered in the musical world. An American song sheet printed in Vermont, probably in the early nineteenth century, includes lyrics for "Paul Jones' Victory", but, alas, no music. It may or may not have been the same, or sung to the same tune, as the one David noticed listed in an advertisement for a songbook in the back of an edition of Wehman's complete dancing master and call book (New York, 1889).
The next reference David found was to a 1920s mixer dance called the Paul Jones, but before going on to that, let me take note of some other nineteenth-century dance connections.
In his Third Part of the Musician's Companion (Boston, c1844), musician-caller-publisher Elias Howe gave a set of five tunes labelled a "Cotillion No. 26. Paul Jones' Sett." I expect that this was a standard five-figure quadrille, rather than an eighteenth-century-style French cotillon. The figures are generic calls; the name probably refers to the set of tunes. Neither the music nor the figures have anything to do with either Léchard's cotillon or the later mixer dance. They're just another musical shout-out to John Paul Jones.
Jumping a few decades forward, in 1887 the French composer (Jean) Robert Planquette (1848-1903) created the three-act comic opera, Surcouf, about John Paul Jones. In English it was titled, simply, Paul Jones. A Boston edition of the complete score (under the Paul Jones title) is available online at the Petrucci Music Library.
Like many other operas, this one was immediately made fodder for dance musicians, who took its tunes and adapted them into forms suitable for couple dances or quadrilles. Looking through my catalog of (primarily New England) dance cards, I find that the Hartford Lawn Club seems to have had a brief fad for Planquette's tunes. Dance cards from their series of winter assemblies helpfully provide each dance's tune with the composer's name, and Planquette keeps turning up:
(1) the card for their assembly of Tuesday, January 13, 1891, has both a waltz and a Lanciers that are labeled Paul Jones by Planquette.
(2) the card for their assembly of Tuesday, December 1, 1891, also has a Planquette/Paul Jones Lanciers.
(3) the card for their assembly of Friday, February 12, 1892, also has a Planquette/Paul Jones waltz.
A Paul Jones Lancers also turns up on the program of the Subscription Ball for the opening of the Prospect (Connecticut) Casino on February 20, 1895. Planquette is not mentioned by name, but I'd expect him to be the source.
There seems to have been yet another "Paul Jones" dance tune, probably by either Theodore Bendix (1862-1935?) or his brother Max (1866-1945), both of whom composed dance music. A two-step to the tune "Paul Jones" by "Bendix" appears on the dance card of the Hartford Business College Senior Dance held on June 28, 1895.
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Given how well-remembered Paul Jones was, it doesn't particularly surprise me that his name still turns up attached to dances in the early twentieth century. David's second reference was to the "Paul Jones" described in a c1922 American dance manual written by Charles Coll and Gabrielle Rosiere. I touched on that dance briefly in a post a few years ago on a more elaborate English version from the 1920s.
The Library of Congress record for that manual suggests that the dances in it were "long out of fashion by 1922." I have to disagree with that. Much of the book is taken up with the waltz, foxtrot, and one-step, all of which appear regularly on dance cards of the late 1910s and early 1920s. See, for example, the dance card from the Junior Promenade at Yale University in 1921, the program for which consisted exclusively of foxtrots, one-steps, and waltzes. And it does not seem to apply to the Paul Jones, either, since it appears on three other Connecticut dance cards from the early twentieth century:
(1) for the 23rd Annual Ball of the Veteran Volunteer Firemen's Association of Hartford, Connecticut, held on February 27, 1912. The program was a classic New England mix of late nineteenth-century dances (quadrille, Lancers, waltz, schottische, two-step), contras, and the Paul Jones.
(2) for the Hartford Union School Senior Dance, June 25, 1920. The program is the same sort of New England mix, including the Paul Jones, with one-step and foxtrot added in.
(3) for the Gilbert School Reception, undated but collected with other Hartford-area school cards dated 1901-1920. The program includes foxtrots, one-steps, waltzes, and a Paul Jones. I would date this card to c1920.
The former two cards would certainly have been considered old-fashioned in larger cities by the 1920s (or even 1910s), but the Paul Jones was far from the most old-fashioned element!
So what were these dancers doing?
Speaking generally, the Paul Jones genre of mixers generally seems to involve a grand chain figure (or "grand right and left") during which, at a signal, the dancers take as a new partner whoever they are approaching at that moment. I haven't made a grand project of looking for these, but the oldest one I've come across is a 1903 two-step version which is not called a Paul Jones. The famous American dance couple Vernon and Irene Castle also published a version under the name Paul Jones in 1914, which they said could be done to one-step, foxtrot, or waltz music.
Another mention of a Paul Jones comes in Polite and Social Dances, edited by Mari Ruef Hofer (Chicago, 1917). Ruef compares it to "Old Dan Tucker", in which an extra man stands in a circle of dancers and cuts in on one of the other men. Hofer does not describe the Paul Jones, noting only that "The popular Paul Jones is on the same order, starting with a grand chain until the call or whistle sounds." It's not clear whether this means Hofer's idea of a Paul Jones had an odd man out as well, or whether she was simply commenting on the mixer element.
After all this Paul Jones dance trivia, I still don't know precisely how or why the name Paul Jones came to mean a circle-and-chain mixer. In the short term, my best guess is that at some point in the early twentienth century, it was attached to a tune called "Paul Jones" (maybe the Bendix two-step?) and somehow the name stuck to the dance, even though, as evidenced by the Castles' version, by the 1910s the dance could later be done to any piece of music.
I'll keep an eye out for further evidence.
Hi. Just wanted to say thank you! We were watching a film this afternoon which had a scene with a Paul Jones dance in it! My mum and dad had a Scottish dance band back in the day (1950’s and 1960’s in Skye, 1970’s and 1980’s In Inverness) and this was occasionally done, especially in the summer when there were tourists up, so that is where I was aware of it from. Anyway, the inevitable “why is a Paul Jones called a Paul Jones” came up today which led us to reading about John Paul Jones (what an extraordinary life!) and then led us to you. So, again, thanks for your research eight years ago and just wanted to say it was all worth it! Cheers, Marion Urquhart nr Inverness
Posted by: Marion Urquhart | April 10, 2022 at 11:46 AM