Josh Turner photo courtesy of UMG Nashville.

When Josh Turner decided to record “Why Don’t We Just Dance,” one of the biggest reasons was the song’s ability to create an escapist, happy mood in the middle of a difficult economic landscape.

Naturally, when it came time to celebrate the single’s four-week run at No. 1 on the country chart, a happy mood was imperative. And so was a dancing theme. Numerous executives showed up Tuesday at the Nashville restaurant Cabana to toast Josh and the song’s writers — Jim Beavers, Jonathan Singleton and Darrell Brown — and they were greeted with a sonic medley of happy, dance-themed songs: Wilson Pickett’s “Land Of 1000 Dances,” Men Without Hats’ “The Safety Dance,” the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” and Van Halen’s “Dance The Night Away,” to cherry-pick a few.

The mood reflected the original intent of the writers when they came up with the ignore-the-news-with-a-party-for-two storyline somewhere around August or September of 2008.

“Basically everything was falling apart financially when we wrote this song,” Darrell remembered.

They tried to “find an optimistic way” to put it in perspective, Jim noted, and once they did, Josh and another artist began competing for it. Josh demonstrated his enthusiasm for “Why Don’t We Just Dance” by going into the studio two months early to get it recorded, and he obviously won the competition to release it. Still, even he had no clue at first how much of an impact it would make.

“I don’t think I really realized the effect that that song was really gonna have on people until I heard it on the radio for the first time,” he conceded. “When I heard it, that light bulb in my head went off that went, ‘Oh, that’s really what this song is about.’ It felt good, I understood the lyrics right off the bat, it did have a positive, uplifting kind of message, and I just knew from that point on that this song really was gonna be a hit. At first, I knew it was a cool song. It was different and everything, but I really didn’t know how it was gonna translate to everybody else in the country. When I heard it on the radio the first time, I knew it was definitely somethin’ that needed to be said.”

Josh made a couple of minor alterations to the demo version that he heard, including changing the phrase “the whole dang world has gone crazy” to “the whole wide world.” Ultimately, he was able to convey “Dance” — particularly its melody — in a way that few of his peers could.

“I remember worrying that it was too rangy for most people in this town to sing, Josh being one of the few that I could think of that could really pull it off,” Jim said.

Two performance rights organizations, ASCAP and BMI, joined MCA Records in hosting Tuesday’s event, which which saw Josh, the writers and producer Frank Rogers showered with plaques and cups by the Country Music Association, Country Radio Broadcasters and several music publishing companies.

One of those publishing houses, Kobalt Music, punctuated the dance theme with an exclamation point. It gave Darrell a commemorative plaque that included images from such dance touchstones as Michael Jackson, Fred Astaire and the movie West Side Story. And Kobalt passed out a bevy of certificates for ballroom dance lessons with the promise of another dance-related party. Said Kobalt’s Whitney Daane: “We’re gonna have a wampin’ good time!”

ShareThis