There were a few rites of passage if you were an elementary school kid in Ontario in the early 1980s. There was that wretch-inducing, cherry-flavoured fluoride rinse served in tiny paper cups. (It was always a thrill to spit it back into the cup and see all the tiny bits of toast or cereal floating around.) Lice checks with those pokey wooden sticks. Exciting games of bean bags-on-a-parachute. The shame-ridden Canada Fitness Program with its gold, silver, bronze and “participation” patches. Oh, and its mascot: Vicky the Raccoon. For a while we had to start the day with The Lord’s Prayer, but some of us still remember when O Canada didn’t have “God keep our land” in it.
Speaking of music, the throwback I want to discuss here is The Health Hustle. This was an initiative developed in Scarborough in 1978, designed to improve fitness by getting kids dancing. A medley of pop songs were pumped through the school PA system, to which teachers would lead students through a series of movements to the music. The goal was to get student’s heart rates up to 150 beats per minute and maintain that for eight minutes.
If the school had a gym teacher, that person was responsible for showing the other teachers the Health Hustle “routine.” Senior students were also shown the routine so that they could be used as leaders in the classroom. The routine involved a warmup, a workout and a cooldown.
The Heath Hustle was the brainchild of Lennox Gray, a teacher with the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Board. It caught on in a big way. School boards around the world started doing their own Health Hustle. I’ve even found online forums from Australia where Gen Xers recall bouncing around to an entirely different slate of songs — including YMCA by The Village People and Nutbush City Limits by Ike & Tina Turner.
I can only speak to the version I grew up with in Eastern Ontario. In total, 12 minutes of music was used, and from that, a few different versions of the Health Hustle were created. The one I remember was a medley which began with Popcorn by Hot Butter (1972) and then some combination of these: Love Will Keep Us Together by The Captain & Tenille (1975), Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree by Tony Orlando & Dawn (1973), King Of The Road by Roger Miller (1965), Bad Bad Leroy Brown by Jim Croce (1973), Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head by B.J. Thomas (1969), Alley Cat by Bent Fabric (1962), Joy To The World by Three Dog Night (1971) and Draggin’ The Line by Tommy James (1971).
Some of these are curious choices. Even as a kid I thought King Of The Road was a strange song for us to dance to. It’s about a hobo who, among other things, will “smoke old stogies I have found” because he “ain’t got no cigarettes.” Not exactly puttin’ the “health” in Health Hustle with that one. Let’s also not forget Leroy Brown, who gets killed in Croce’s famous song —despite having “a .32 gun in his pocket for fun,” and “a razor in his shoe.” Tie A Yellow Ribbon is about a man on a bus headed to his girlfriend’s house after a three-year stint in prison. Draggin’ The Line sure sounds like a song about cocaine — sung by a man who decided to launch a solo career a year after a 1970 drug overdose led to him collapsing onstage and being declared dead.
Shake your sillies out, everybody!
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Area Resident is an Ottawa-based journalist, recording artist, music collector and re-seller. Hear (and buy) his music on Bandcamp, email him HERE, follow him on Instagram and check him out on Discogs.
