April A to Z blogging challenge Foxtrot

Foxtrot

Have you seen a fox trot

Neatly through the night,

Keeping out of eyeshot

And the farm dog’s bite?

Red coat and sharp black nose,

Bushy tail held straight,

Fleet of foot on soft toes,

Dinner can’t be late.

Now the henhouse beckons,

All the hens asleep,

Reynard swiftly reckons

How many he will reap.

One, two, three or seven?

Hungry cubs await

Chicken supper heaven -

Then he hears, too late

The farmer’s heavy footfalls,

The roaring of his gun;

The beating of his heart stalls -

Reynard’s life is done.

The Foxtrot is a ballroom dance originally danced to ragtime but now performed to big band music or ‘swing’. It was first executed publicly in 1914 and from then and through the 1940s it was the most popular fast dance. Most of the records produced in this period were foxtrots.

In the early 1950s rock and roll made its debut. Record companies were unsure what style of dancing would be most pertinent to the music. Decca Records decided to classify their rock and roll discs as foxtrots, so Bill Haley’s ‘Rock around the Clock’ was labelled a foxtrot. It is estimated that the recording sold more than 25 million copies to become the biggest selling foxtrot of all time.

Foxtrot comes after Echo and before Golf in the NATO phonetic alphabet which is always used in communications between aircraft and control tower when two nations are involved.