Hokey Pokey
Encyclopedia
The hokey cokey or hokey pokey (United States
& Ireland
), also known as the okey cokey, hokey tokey, or cokey cokey, is a participation dance
with a distinctive accompanying tune and lyric structure. It is well known in English-speaking countries. It is of unclear origin, with two main traditions having evolved in different parts of the world.
in London, a Canadian officer suggested to Al Tabor, a British bandleader of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s that he write a party song with actions similar to "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree
". The inspiration for the song's title that resulted, the hokey pokey, came from an ice cream vendor whom Tabor had heard as a boy, calling out, "Hokey pokey penny a lump. Have a lick make you jump". He changed the name to the "hokey cokey" at the suggestion of the officer who said that cokey, in Canada, meant "crazy" and would sound better. A well known lyricist/songwriter/music publisher of the time, Jimmy Kennedy
, reneged on a financial agreement to promote and publish it, and finally Tabor settled out of court, giving up all rights to the number. There had been many theories and conjectures about the meaning of the words "hokey pokey", and of their origin. Some scholars attributed the origin to the Shaker song Hinkum-Booby which had similar lyrics and was published in Edward Deming Andrews' A gift to be simple in 1960: (p. 42).
Before the invention of ice cream cones, ice cream was often sold wrapped in waxed paper and known as a hokey-pokey (possibly a corruption of the Italian ecco un poco - "here is a little") An Italian ice cream street vendor was called a hokey-pokey man.
Other scholars found similar dances and lyrics dating back to the 17th century. A very similar dance is cited in Robert Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland from 1826.
suggests that the phrase "hokey cokey" ultimately comes from "hocus pocus
", the traditional magician's incantation. However, the dictionary discounts suggestions that "hocus pocus" in its turn derives from a distortion of hoc est enim corpus meum ("this is my body" - the Latin
words of consecration
of the host
at Eucharist
, the point, at which according to traditional Catholic practice, transubstantiation
takes place - mocked by Puritan
s and others as a form of "magic words"), noting that "The notion that hocus pocus was a parody of the Latin words used in the Eucharist, rests merely on a conjecture thrown out by Tillotson
". The conjecture put forward by Tillotson reads "In all probability those common juggling words of hocus pocus are nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus, by way of ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation".
The Anglican Canon Matthew Damon, Provost of Wakefield Cathedral
, West Yorkshire
, has claimed that the dance as well comes from the Catholic Latin mass
. The priest would perform his movements with his back to the congregation, who could not hear well the words, nor understand the Latin, nor clearly see his movements. This theory led Scottish politician Michael Matheson
in 2008 to urge police action "against individuals who use it to taunt Catholics.” This claim by Matheson was deemed ridiculous by fans from both sides of the Old Firm
(the Glasgow
football teams Celtic
and Rangers
) and calls were put out on fans' forums for both sides to join together to sing the song on 27 December 2008 at Ibrox Stadium
.
Close relatives of the song's original publisher and of the song's author have publicly stated their recollections of its origin and its meaning. These accounts differ.
In January 2009, the son of Jimmy Kennedy stated that the song which his father originally published as Cokey Cokey originated in 1942 from an experience his father had with Canadian soldiers stationed at a London nightclub. Jimmy Kennedy Jr. quoted his father's writing:
According to Kennedy Jr., his father told him "the unusual title was to do with drugs[ cocaine
] taken by the miners in Canada to cheer themselves up in the harsh environment where they were prospecting."
Alternatively, the grandson of the song's author, Alan Balfour, stated in a letter to The Times
published 11 January 2009, responding to the then-recent claims that the song was anti-Catholic:
Alan Balfour has written a play about his grandfather’s life called The Hokey Cokey Man (scheduled as of January 2009 to start a five-week run at New End Theatre
in London, UK, on 20 May 2009) and was interviewed at its announcement by The Times:
song and novelty dance in the mid-1940s in Britain and Ireland.
There is a claim of authorship by the British/Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy
, responsible for the lyrics to popular songs such as the wartime "We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line
" and the children's song "Teddy Bears' Picnic
". Sheet music copyrighted in 1942 and published by Campbell Connelly & Co Ltd, agents for Kennedy Music Co Ltd, styles the song as "the Cokey Cokey".
In the 1973 Thames Television
documentary, 'May I have the Pleasure?', about the Hammersmith Palais de Danse
, Lou Praeger comments on how his was the first band to record the 'Okey Cokey'.
The song was used by comedian Bill Bailey
during his "Part Troll" tour, however it was reworked by Bailey into a style of the German electronic group Kraftwerk
, including quasi-German lyrics and Kraftwerk's signature robotic dance moves.
The comedy act Ida Barr, a fictional East End pensioner who mashes up music hall songs with rap numbers, almost always finishes her shows with the hokey cokey, performed over a thumping RnB backing. Ida Barr is performed by a British comedian called Christopher Green
.
, Charles Macak and Tafit Baker of the musical group the Ram Trio, recorded the song in the late 1940s. They have generally been credited with creating this novelty dance as entertainment for the ski crowd at Idaho
's Sun Valley
resort. However, two club musicians from Scranton, Pennsylvania
, Robert Degen and Joseph P. Brier, had previously copyrighted a very similar song, "The Hokey Pokey Dance", in 1944. (One account says that copyright was granted in 1946.) According to Degan's son in The New York Times
, Degan and Brier wrote the song while playing for the summer at a resort near the Delaware Water Gap
. Degan resided at Richmond Place Rehabilitation and Health Center in Lexington, Kentucky
until he died on November 23, 2009 at the age of 104. In 1953, Ray Anthony
's big band
recording of the song turned it into a nationwide sensation. The distinctive vocal was by singer Jo Ann Greer
, who simultaneously sang with the Les Brown band and dubbed the singing voices for such film stars as Rita Hayworth, Kim Novak, June Allyson and Esther Williams. (She also charted with Anthony later the same year with the song "Wild Horses.)
The hokey cokey (United Kingdom
) or hokey pokey (United States
& Ireland
), also known as the okey cokey, hokey tokey, or cokey cokey, is a participation dance
with a distinctive accompanying tune and lyric structure. It is well known in English-speaking countries. It is of unclear origin, with two main traditions having evolved in different parts of the world.
in London, a Canadian officer suggested to Al Tabor, a British bandleader of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s that he write a party song with actions similar to "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree
". The inspiration for the song's title that resulted, the hokey pokey, came from an ice cream vendor whom Tabor had heard as a boy, calling out, "Hokey pokey penny a lump. Have a lick make you jump". He changed the name to the "hokey cokey" at the suggestion of the officer who said that cokey, in Canada, meant "crazy" and would sound better. A well known lyricist/songwriter/music publisher of the time, Jimmy Kennedy
, reneged on a financial agreement to promote and publish it, and finally Tabor settled out of court, giving up all rights to the number. There had been many theories and conjectures about the meaning of the words "hokey pokey", and of their origin. Some scholars attributed the origin to the Shaker song Hinkum-Booby which had similar lyrics and was published in Edward Deming Andrews' A gift to be simple in 1960: (p. 42).
Before the invention of ice cream cones, ice cream was often sold wrapped in waxed paper and known as a hokey-pokey (possibly a corruption of the Italian ecco un poco - "here is a little") An Italian ice cream street vendor was called a hokey-pokey man.
Other scholars found similar dances and lyrics dating back to the 17th century. A very similar dance is cited in Robert Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland from 1826.
suggests that the phrase "hokey cokey" ultimately comes from "hocus pocus
", the traditional magician's incantation. However, the dictionary discounts suggestions that "hocus pocus" in its turn derives from a distortion of hoc est enim corpus meum ("this is my body" - the Latin
words of consecration
of the host
at Eucharist
, the point, at which according to traditional Catholic practice, transubstantiation
takes place - mocked by Puritan
s and others as a form of "magic words"), noting that "The notion that hocus pocus was a parody of the Latin words used in the Eucharist, rests merely on a conjecture thrown out by Tillotson
". The conjecture put forward by Tillotson reads "In all probability those common juggling words of hocus pocus are nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus, by way of ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation".
The Anglican Canon Matthew Damon, Provost of Wakefield Cathedral
, West Yorkshire
, has claimed that the dance as well comes from the Catholic Latin mass
. The priest would perform his movements with his back to the congregation, who could not hear well the words, nor understand the Latin, nor clearly see his movements. This theory led Scottish politician Michael Matheson
in 2008 to urge police action "against individuals who use it to taunt Catholics.” This claim by Matheson was deemed ridiculous by fans from both sides of the Old Firm
(the Glasgow
football teams Celtic
and Rangers
) and calls were put out on fans' forums for both sides to join together to sing the song on 27 December 2008 at Ibrox Stadium
.
Close relatives of the song's original publisher and of the song's author have publicly stated their recollections of its origin and its meaning. These accounts differ.
In January 2009, the son of Jimmy Kennedy stated that the song which his father originally published as Cokey Cokey originated in 1942 from an experience his father had with Canadian soldiers stationed at a London nightclub. Jimmy Kennedy Jr. quoted his father's writing:
According to Kennedy Jr., his father told him "the unusual title was to do with drugs[ cocaine
] taken by the miners in Canada to cheer themselves up in the harsh environment where they were prospecting."
Alternatively, the grandson of the song's author, Alan Balfour, stated in a letter to The Times
published 11 January 2009, responding to the then-recent claims that the song was anti-Catholic:
Alan Balfour has written a play about his grandfather’s life called The Hokey Cokey Man (scheduled as of January 2009 to start a five-week run at New End Theatre
in London, UK, on 20 May 2009) and was interviewed at its announcement by The Times:
song and novelty dance in the mid-1940s in Britain and Ireland.
There is a claim of authorship by the British/Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy
, responsible for the lyrics to popular songs such as the wartime "We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line
" and the children's song "Teddy Bears' Picnic
". Sheet music copyrighted in 1942 and published by Campbell Connelly & Co Ltd, agents for Kennedy Music Co Ltd, styles the song as "the Cokey Cokey".
In the 1973 Thames Television
documentary, 'May I have the Pleasure?', about the Hammersmith Palais de Danse
, Lou Praeger comments on how his was the first band to record the 'Okey Cokey'.
The song was used by comedian Bill Bailey
during his "Part Troll" tour, however it was reworked by Bailey into a style of the German electronic group Kraftwerk
, including quasi-German lyrics and Kraftwerk's signature robotic dance moves.
The comedy act Ida Barr, a fictional East End pensioner who mashes up music hall songs with rap numbers, almost always finishes her shows with the hokey cokey, performed over a thumping RnB backing. Ida Barr is performed by a British comedian called Christopher Green
.
, Charles Macak and Tafit Baker of the musical group the Ram Trio, recorded the song in the late 1940s. They have generally been credited with creating this novelty dance as entertainment for the ski crowd at Idaho
's Sun Valley
resort. However, two club musicians from Scranton, Pennsylvania
, Robert Degen and Joseph P. Brier, had previously copyrighted a very similar song, "The Hokey Pokey Dance", in 1944. (One account says that copyright was granted in 1946.) According to Degan's son in The New York Times
, Degan and Brier wrote the song while playing for the summer at a resort near the Delaware Water Gap
. Degan resided at Richmond Place Rehabilitation and Health Center in Lexington, Kentucky
until he died on November 23, 2009 at the age of 104. In 1953, Ray Anthony
's big band
recording of the song turned it into a nationwide sensation. The distinctive vocal was by singer Jo Ann Greer
, who simultaneously sang with the Les Brown band and dubbed the singing voices for such film stars as Rita Hayworth, Kim Novak, June Allyson and Esther Williams. (She also charted with Anthony later the same year with the song "Wild Horses.)
The hokey cokey (United Kingdom
) or hokey pokey (United States
& Ireland
), also known as the okey cokey, hokey tokey, or cokey cokey, is a participation dance
with a distinctive accompanying tune and lyric structure. It is well known in English-speaking countries. It is of unclear origin, with two main traditions having evolved in different parts of the world.
in London, a Canadian officer suggested to Al Tabor, a British bandleader of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s that he write a party song with actions similar to "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree
". The inspiration for the song's title that resulted, the hokey pokey, came from an ice cream vendor whom Tabor had heard as a boy, calling out, "Hokey pokey penny a lump. Have a lick make you jump". He changed the name to the "hokey cokey" at the suggestion of the officer who said that cokey, in Canada, meant "crazy" and would sound better. A well known lyricist/songwriter/music publisher of the time, Jimmy Kennedy
, reneged on a financial agreement to promote and publish it, and finally Tabor settled out of court, giving up all rights to the number. There had been many theories and conjectures about the meaning of the words "hokey pokey", and of their origin. Some scholars attributed the origin to the Shaker song Hinkum-Booby which had similar lyrics and was published in Edward Deming Andrews' A gift to be simple in 1960: (p. 42).
Before the invention of ice cream cones, ice cream was often sold wrapped in waxed paper and known as a hokey-pokey (possibly a corruption of the Italian ecco un poco - "here is a little") An Italian ice cream street vendor was called a hokey-pokey man.
Other scholars found similar dances and lyrics dating back to the 17th century. A very similar dance is cited in Robert Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland from 1826.
suggests that the phrase "hokey cokey" ultimately comes from "hocus pocus
", the traditional magician's incantation. However, the dictionary discounts suggestions that "hocus pocus" in its turn derives from a distortion of hoc est enim corpus meum ("this is my body" - the Latin
words of consecration
of the host
at Eucharist
, the point, at which according to traditional Catholic practice, transubstantiation
takes place - mocked by Puritan
s and others as a form of "magic words"), noting that "The notion that hocus pocus was a parody of the Latin words used in the Eucharist, rests merely on a conjecture thrown out by Tillotson
". The conjecture put forward by Tillotson reads "In all probability those common juggling words of hocus pocus are nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus, by way of ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation".
The Anglican Canon Matthew Damon, Provost of Wakefield Cathedral
, West Yorkshire
, has claimed that the dance as well comes from the Catholic Latin mass
. The priest would perform his movements with his back to the congregation, who could not hear well the words, nor understand the Latin, nor clearly see his movements. This theory led Scottish politician Michael Matheson
in 2008 to urge police action "against individuals who use it to taunt Catholics.” This claim by Matheson was deemed ridiculous by fans from both sides of the Old Firm
(the Glasgow
football teams Celtic
and Rangers
) and calls were put out on fans' forums for both sides to join together to sing the song on 27 December 2008 at Ibrox Stadium
.
Close relatives of the song's original publisher and of the song's author have publicly stated their recollections of its origin and its meaning. These accounts differ.
In January 2009, the son of Jimmy Kennedy stated that the song which his father originally published as Cokey Cokey originated in 1942 from an experience his father had with Canadian soldiers stationed at a London nightclub. Jimmy Kennedy Jr. quoted his father's writing:
According to Kennedy Jr., his father told him "the unusual title was to do with drugs[ cocaine
] taken by the miners in Canada to cheer themselves up in the harsh environment where they were prospecting."
Alternatively, the grandson of the song's author, Alan Balfour, stated in a letter to The Times
published 11 January 2009, responding to the then-recent claims that the song was anti-Catholic:
Alan Balfour has written a play about his grandfather’s life called The Hokey Cokey Man (scheduled as of January 2009 to start a five-week run at New End Theatre
in London, UK, on 20 May 2009) and was interviewed at its announcement by The Times:
song and novelty dance in the mid-1940s in Britain and Ireland.
There is a claim of authorship by the British/Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy
, responsible for the lyrics to popular songs such as the wartime "We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line
" and the children's song "Teddy Bears' Picnic
". Sheet music copyrighted in 1942 and published by Campbell Connelly & Co Ltd, agents for Kennedy Music Co Ltd, styles the song as "the Cokey Cokey".
In the 1973 Thames Television
documentary, 'May I have the Pleasure?', about the Hammersmith Palais de Danse
, Lou Praeger comments on how his was the first band to record the 'Okey Cokey'.
The song was used by comedian Bill Bailey
during his "Part Troll" tour, however it was reworked by Bailey into a style of the German electronic group Kraftwerk
, including quasi-German lyrics and Kraftwerk's signature robotic dance moves.
The comedy act Ida Barr, a fictional East End pensioner who mashes up music hall songs with rap numbers, almost always finishes her shows with the hokey cokey, performed over a thumping RnB backing. Ida Barr is performed by a British comedian called Christopher Green
.
, Charles Macak and Tafit Baker of the musical group the Ram Trio, recorded the song in the late 1940s. They have generally been credited with creating this novelty dance as entertainment for the ski crowd at Idaho
's Sun Valley
resort. However, two club musicians from Scranton, Pennsylvania
, Robert Degen and Joseph P. Brier, had previously copyrighted a very similar song, "The Hokey Pokey Dance", in 1944. (One account says that copyright was granted in 1946.) According to Degan's son in The New York Times
, Degan and Brier wrote the song while playing for the summer at a resort near the Delaware Water Gap
. Degan resided at Richmond Place Rehabilitation and Health Center in Lexington, Kentucky
until he died on November 23, 2009 at the age of 104. In 1953, Ray Anthony
's big band
recording of the song turned it into a nationwide sensation. The distinctive vocal was by singer Jo Ann Greer
, who simultaneously sang with the Les Brown band and dubbed the singing voices for such film stars as Rita Hayworth, Kim Novak, June Allyson and Esther Williams. (She also charted with Anthony later the same year with the song "Wild Horses.) , Degen and Brier, who died in 1991, sued the members of the Ram Trio and several record companies and music publishers for copyright infringement, asking for $200,000 in damages and $1 for each record of the LaPrise "Hokey Pokey". The suit was settled out of court. LaPrise later sold the rights to his version to country-western music
star Roy Acuff
's Nashville publishing company, Acuff-Rose Music
; that company was sold to Sony/ATV Music Publishing
in 2002.
A competing authorship claim is made by or on behalf of British bandleader
Gerry Hoey from around 1940, under the title "the Hoey Oka".
Another variation came about in the United States at roller skating rinks due to another version of the song. In this version, instead of "left foot in," the words go "left skate in." It is unclear what the origins of this are, but they date back at least to the 1970's.
Participants stand in a circle. On "in" they put the appropriate body part in the circle, and on "out" they put it out of the circle. On "And you shake it all about", the body part is shaken three times (on "shake", "all", and "-bout", respectively). Throughout "You do the hokey pokey, / And you turn yourself around", the participants spin in a complete circle with the arms raised at 90° angles and the index fingers pointed up, shaking their arms up and down and their hips side to side seven times (on "do", "hoke-", "poke-", "and", "turn", "-self", and "-round" respectively). For the final "That's what it's all about", the participants clap with their hands out once on "that's" and "what" each, clap under the knee with the leg lifted up on "all", clap behind the back on "a-", and finally one more clap with the arms out on "-bout".
The body parts usually included are, in order, "right leg", "left leg", "right arm", "left arm", "head", "backside
", and "whole self
"; the body parts "right elbow", "left elbow", "right hip", and "left hip" are often included as well.
The final verse goes:
On each "pokey", the participants again raise the arms at 90° angles with the index fingers pointed up, shaking their arms up and down and their hips side to side five times.
On "You do the hokey cokey", each participant joins their right and left hands at the fingertips to make a chevron and rocks the chevron from side to side.
Each instruction set is followed by a chorus, entirely different from other parts of the world:
For this chorus all participants stand in a circle and hold hands: on each "Whoa" they raise their joined hands in the air and run in toward the centre of the circle, and on "…the hokey cokey" they run backwards out again. On the penultimate line they bend knees then stretch arms, as indicated, and on "Rah! rah! rah!" they either clap in time or raise arms above their heads and push upwards in time. Sometimes each subsequent verse and chorus is a little faster and louder, with the ultimate aim of making people chaotically run into each other in gleeful abandon.
Copyright
In the United Kingdom the hokey cokey is regarded as a traditional song and is therefore free of copyright restrictions. In the United States, Sony/ATV Music Publishing
controls 100% of the publishing rights to the "hokey pokey."
In popular culture
The BBC TV comedy series 'Allo 'Allo!
showed one of its characters (Herr Otto Flick
) demonstrating a variation of the hokey cokey in an episode from season 3. Being a Gestapo officer the lyrics are changed to reflect his sinister nature as follows:
The University of Iowa
Hawkeye
football
team, under coach Hayden Fry
, used to perform the hokey pokey after particularly impressive victories, such as over Michigan
and Ohio State
. On September 3, 2010, a crowd of 7,384 — with Fry present — performed the hokey pokey in Coralville, Iowa
, establishing a new world record.
The Marching Virginians of Virginia Tech play this song (known as the "Hokie Pokie" at Virginia Tech because of their mascot) between the third and fourth quarters at all Virginia Tech football
games. Much of the crowd participates in the dance, as do the tubas during much of the song and the rest of the band during the tuba feature. The song is also generally used as the Marching Virginians' dance number in the first half-time
field show of the year, and an abbreviated version is played as a "Spirit Spot" (short song used between plays during the football game) after a big play.
Alternative band The Three O'Clock
used the roller skating version of the hokey cokey in the video for their song "Her Head's Revolving." The video opens and ends with them doing the hokey cokey. It is available at YouTube
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
& Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
), also known as the okey cokey, hokey tokey, or cokey cokey, is a participation dance
Participation dance
Participation dance, also known as group-participation dance or audience participation dance, is a major category or classification of dance forms or dance styles based on purpose. The purpose of this type of dance is to actively encourage dancing in a group...
with a distinctive accompanying tune and lyric structure. It is well known in English-speaking countries. It is of unclear origin, with two main traditions having evolved in different parts of the world.
Origins and meaning
According to one account, in 1940, during the BlitzThe Blitz
The Blitz was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed...
in London, a Canadian officer suggested to Al Tabor, a British bandleader of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s that he write a party song with actions similar to "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree
Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree
Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree is a set of variations, with fugue, for orchestra composed in 1939 by Jaromír Weinberger. It premiered under the direction of Sir John Barbirolli in New York City on October 12, 1939...
". The inspiration for the song's title that resulted, the hokey pokey, came from an ice cream vendor whom Tabor had heard as a boy, calling out, "Hokey pokey penny a lump. Have a lick make you jump". He changed the name to the "hokey cokey" at the suggestion of the officer who said that cokey, in Canada, meant "crazy" and would sound better. A well known lyricist/songwriter/music publisher of the time, Jimmy Kennedy
Jimmy Kennedy
Jimmy Kennedy OBE was an Irish songwriter, predominantly a lyricist, putting words to existing music such as "Teddy Bears' Picnic" and "My Prayer", or co-writing with the composers Michael Carr, Wilhelm Grosz and Nat Simon amongst others.-Biography:Kennedy was born near Omagh...
, reneged on a financial agreement to promote and publish it, and finally Tabor settled out of court, giving up all rights to the number. There had been many theories and conjectures about the meaning of the words "hokey pokey", and of their origin. Some scholars attributed the origin to the Shaker song Hinkum-Booby which had similar lyrics and was published in Edward Deming Andrews' A gift to be simple in 1960: (p. 42).
-
- " A song rendered ("with appropriate gestures") by two Canterbury sisters while on a visit to Bridgewater, N.H. in 1857 starts thus:
- I put my right hand in,
- I put my right hand out,
- In out, in out.
- shake it all about.
- As the song continues, the "left hand" is put in, then the "right foot," then the "left foot," then "my whole head."
- ...Newell gave it the title, "Right Elbow In", and said that it was danced " deliberately and decorously...with slow rhythmical motion."
Before the invention of ice cream cones, ice cream was often sold wrapped in waxed paper and known as a hokey-pokey (possibly a corruption of the Italian ecco un poco - "here is a little") An Italian ice cream street vendor was called a hokey-pokey man.
Other scholars found similar dances and lyrics dating back to the 17th century. A very similar dance is cited in Robert Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland from 1826.
Controversy
The Oxford English DictionaryOxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
suggests that the phrase "hokey cokey" ultimately comes from "hocus pocus
Hocus Pocus (magic)
Hocus Pocus or hocus-pocus is a generic term that may be derived from an ancient language and is presently used by magicians, usually the magic words spoken when bringing about some sort of change. It was once a common term for a magician, juggler, or other similar entertainer.The origins of the...
", the traditional magician's incantation. However, the dictionary discounts suggestions that "hocus pocus" in its turn derives from a distortion of hoc est enim corpus meum ("this is my body" - the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
words of consecration
Consecration
Consecration is the solemn dedication to a special purpose or service, usually religious. The word "consecration" literally means "to associate with the sacred". Persons, places, or things can be consecrated, and the term is used in various ways by different groups...
of the host
Sacramental bread
Sacramental bread, sometimes called the lamb, altar bread, host or simply Communion bread, is the bread which is used in the Christian ritual of the Eucharist.-Eastern Catholic and Orthodox:...
at Eucharist
Eucharist
The Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...
, the point, at which according to traditional Catholic practice, transubstantiation
Transubstantiation
In Roman Catholic theology, transubstantiation means the change, in the Eucharist, of the substance of wheat bread and grape wine into the substance of the Body and Blood, respectively, of Jesus, while all that is accessible to the senses remains as before.The Eastern Orthodox...
takes place - mocked by Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
s and others as a form of "magic words"), noting that "The notion that hocus pocus was a parody of the Latin words used in the Eucharist, rests merely on a conjecture thrown out by Tillotson
John Tillotson
John Tillotson was an Archbishop of Canterbury .-Curate and rector:Tillotson was the son of a Puritan clothier at Haughend, Sowerby, Yorkshire. He entered as a pensioner of Clare Hall, Cambridge, in 1647, graduated in 1650 and was made fellow of his college in 1651...
". The conjecture put forward by Tillotson reads "In all probability those common juggling words of hocus pocus are nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus, by way of ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation".
The Anglican Canon Matthew Damon, Provost of Wakefield Cathedral
Wakefield Cathedral
Wakefield Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of All Saints Wakefield is the cathedral for the Church of England's Diocese of Wakefield and is the seat of the Bishop of Wakefield. The cathedral has Anglo Saxon origins and the tallest cathedral spire in Yorkshire...
, West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county within the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England with a population of 2.2 million. West Yorkshire came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....
, has claimed that the dance as well comes from the Catholic Latin mass
Tridentine Mass
The Tridentine Mass is the form of the Roman Rite Mass contained in the typical editions of the Roman Missal that were published from 1570 to 1962. It was the most widely celebrated Mass liturgy in the world until the introduction of the Mass of Paul VI in December 1969...
. The priest would perform his movements with his back to the congregation, who could not hear well the words, nor understand the Latin, nor clearly see his movements. This theory led Scottish politician Michael Matheson
Michael Matheson
Michael Matheson is the Public Health Minister in the Scottish Government. He has been an SNP Member of the Scottish Parliament since 1999, first representing Central Scotland and, since 2007, the Falkirk West constituency....
in 2008 to urge police action "against individuals who use it to taunt Catholics.” This claim by Matheson was deemed ridiculous by fans from both sides of the Old Firm
Old Firm
The Old Firm is a common collective name for the association football clubs Celtic and Rangers, both based in Glasgow, Scotland.The origin of the term is unclear. One theory has it that the expression derives from Celtic's first game in 1888, which was played against Rangers. However, author,...
(the Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
football teams Celtic
Celtic F.C.
Celtic Football Club is a Scottish football club based in the Parkhead area of Glasgow, which currently plays in the Scottish Premier League. The club was established in 1887, and played its first game in 1888. Celtic have won the Scottish League Championship on 42 occasions, most recently in the...
and Rangers
Rangers F.C.
Rangers Football Club are an association football club based in Glasgow, Scotland, who play in the Scottish Premier League. The club are nicknamed the Gers, Teddy Bears and the Light Blues, and the fans are known to each other as bluenoses...
) and calls were put out on fans' forums for both sides to join together to sing the song on 27 December 2008 at Ibrox Stadium
Ibrox Stadium
Ibrox Stadium is a football stadium located on the south side of the River Clyde, on Edmiston Drive in the Ibrox district of Glasgow. It is the home ground of Scottish Premier League club Rangers and has an all-seated capacity of 51,082...
.
Close relatives of the song's original publisher and of the song's author have publicly stated their recollections of its origin and its meaning. These accounts differ.
In January 2009, the son of Jimmy Kennedy stated that the song which his father originally published as Cokey Cokey originated in 1942 from an experience his father had with Canadian soldiers stationed at a London nightclub. Jimmy Kennedy Jr. quoted his father's writing:
"They were having a hilarious time, singing and playing games, one of which they said was a Canadian children's game called The Pokey Pokey. I thought to myself, wouldn't that be fun as a dance to cheer people up! So when I got back to my hotel, I wrote a chorus based on the feet and hand movements the Canadians had used, with a few adaptations. A few days later, I wrote additional lyrics to it but kept the title, Cokey Cokey, and, as everybody knows, it became a big hit."
According to Kennedy Jr., his father told him "the unusual title was to do with drugs
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
] taken by the miners in Canada to cheer themselves up in the harsh environment where they were prospecting."
Alternatively, the grandson of the song's author, Alan Balfour, stated in a letter to The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
published 11 January 2009, responding to the then-recent claims that the song was anti-Catholic:
The idea that the Hokey Cokey song was inspired by any hocus pocus (hoc est enim corpus meum), is a lot of bigoted bunkum (News, December 21). The man who wrote the Hokey Cokey was my grandfather—Al Tabor, a well-known bandleader of the 1930s and 1940s, and neither a Latin scholar nor a bigot.
Alan Balfour has written a play about his grandfather’s life called The Hokey Cokey Man (scheduled as of January 2009 to start a five-week run at New End Theatre
New End Theatre
The New End Theatre, Hampstead, was a 80-seat fringe theatre venue in London, England, located in the London Borough of Camden which operated from 1974 until 2011. It was listed widely on the internet, including with the New York Times....
in London, UK, on 20 May 2009) and was interviewed at its announcement by The Times:
"All of a sudden the song has become something to hammer people with when all it was something to create cheer and a better feeling for the population during the time of the war.
"My grandfather would have thought this was totally absurd. It was never meant to be a dig at anybody, it was meant to inspire people to express themselves physically and celebrate living. It was to cheer everybody up not just Protestants or Jews or whoever.
"This whole business with the Catholic church is silly. The song and the music for the song certainly didn’t come from hocus-pocus."
Balfour said his grandfather told him he thought of the ice-cream sellers of his youth when he was looking for a cheery title for a throwaway ditty.
"When he was a boy they used to come up and down the street shouting 'hokey pokey, penny a lump' to sell ice cream. The Canadian officer said to him why don't you change it to 'hokey cokey' because in Canada 'cokey' means 'crazy'."
United Kingdom and Ireland
Known as the "hokey cokey" or "okey cokey" ("hokey pokey" in Ireland), the song and accompanying dance peaked in popularity as a music hallMusic hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
song and novelty dance in the mid-1940s in Britain and Ireland.
There is a claim of authorship by the British/Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy
Jimmy Kennedy
Jimmy Kennedy OBE was an Irish songwriter, predominantly a lyricist, putting words to existing music such as "Teddy Bears' Picnic" and "My Prayer", or co-writing with the composers Michael Carr, Wilhelm Grosz and Nat Simon amongst others.-Biography:Kennedy was born near Omagh...
, responsible for the lyrics to popular songs such as the wartime "We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line
We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line
"We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line" is a popular song written by Ulster songwriter Jimmy Kennedy, whilst he was a Captain in the British Expeditionary Force during the early stages of the Second World War. The Siegfried Line was a chain of fortifications along Germany's...
" and the children's song "Teddy Bears' Picnic
Teddy bears' picnic
"Teddy Bears' Picnic" is a song consisting of a melody by American composer John Walter Bratton, written in 1907, and lyrics added by Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy in 1932. It remains popular as a children's song, having been recorded by numerous artists over the decades. Kennedy lived at...
". Sheet music copyrighted in 1942 and published by Campbell Connelly & Co Ltd, agents for Kennedy Music Co Ltd, styles the song as "the Cokey Cokey".
In the 1973 Thames Television
Thames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
documentary, 'May I have the Pleasure?', about the Hammersmith Palais de Danse
Hammersmith Palais
The Hammersmith Palais de Danse, later simply the Hammersmith Palais, was a ballroom and entertainment venue in London that operated from 1919 until 2007...
, Lou Praeger comments on how his was the first band to record the 'Okey Cokey'.
The song was used by comedian Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey is an English comedian, musician and actor. As well as his extensive stand-up work, Bailey is well known for his appearances on Black Books, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Have I Got News for You, and QI.Bailey was listed by The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy in...
during his "Part Troll" tour, however it was reworked by Bailey into a style of the German electronic group Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
, including quasi-German lyrics and Kraftwerk's signature robotic dance moves.
The comedy act Ida Barr, a fictional East End pensioner who mashes up music hall songs with rap numbers, almost always finishes her shows with the hokey cokey, performed over a thumping RnB backing. Ida Barr is performed by a British comedian called Christopher Green
Chris Green (writer/performer)
Christopher Green is a writer and performer whose work covers comedy, cabaret, theatre and live art. Green was born in Matlock, Derbyshire, grew up in Darley Dale and lives and works in London, England.-Background:...
.
Denmark
Mostly performed in the British style of the dance, it is known as the "boogie woogie" .United States
Known as the "hokey pokey", it became popular in the USA in the 1950s. Larry LaPriseLarry LaPrise
Larry LaPrise at one point held the U.S. copyright for the song Hokey Pokey....
, Charles Macak and Tafit Baker of the musical group the Ram Trio, recorded the song in the late 1940s. They have generally been credited with creating this novelty dance as entertainment for the ski crowd at Idaho
Idaho
Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....
's Sun Valley
Sun Valley, Idaho
Sun Valley is a resort city in Blaine County in the central part of the U.S. state of Idaho, adjacent to the city of Ketchum, lying within the greater Wood River valley. Tourists from around the world enjoy its skiing, hiking, ice skating, trail riding, tennis, and cycling. The population was 1,427...
resort. However, two club musicians from Scranton, Pennsylvania
Scranton, Pennsylvania
Scranton is a city in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, United States. It is the county seat of Lackawanna County and the largest principal city in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area. Scranton had a population of 76,089 in 2010, according to the U.S...
, Robert Degen and Joseph P. Brier, had previously copyrighted a very similar song, "The Hokey Pokey Dance", in 1944. (One account says that copyright was granted in 1946.) According to Degan's son in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Degan and Brier wrote the song while playing for the summer at a resort near the Delaware Water Gap
Delaware Water Gap
The Delaware Water Gap is on the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania where the Delaware River cuts through a large ridge of the Appalachian Mountains...
. Degan resided at Richmond Place Rehabilitation and Health Center in Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington is the second-largest city in Kentucky and the 63rd largest in the US. Known as the "Thoroughbred City" and the "Horse Capital of the World", it is located in the heart of Kentucky's Bluegrass region...
until he died on November 23, 2009 at the age of 104. In 1953, Ray Anthony
Ray Anthony
Ray Anthony is an American bandleader, trumpeter, songwriter and actor.- Biography :...
's big band
Big band
A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...
recording of the song turned it into a nationwide sensation. The distinctive vocal was by singer Jo Ann Greer
Jo Ann Greer
Jo Ann Greer had one of the most distinctive and elegant voices, yet least-known faces of all the successful jazz and pop singers in show business....
, who simultaneously sang with the Les Brown band and dubbed the singing voices for such film stars as Rita Hayworth, Kim Novak, June Allyson and Esther Williams. (She also charted with Anthony later the same year with the song "Wild Horses.)
The hokey cokey (United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
) or hokey pokey (United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
& Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
), also known as the okey cokey, hokey tokey, or cokey cokey, is a participation dance
Participation dance
Participation dance, also known as group-participation dance or audience participation dance, is a major category or classification of dance forms or dance styles based on purpose. The purpose of this type of dance is to actively encourage dancing in a group...
with a distinctive accompanying tune and lyric structure. It is well known in English-speaking countries. It is of unclear origin, with two main traditions having evolved in different parts of the world.
Origins and meaning
According to one account, in 1940, during the BlitzThe Blitz
The Blitz was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed...
in London, a Canadian officer suggested to Al Tabor, a British bandleader of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s that he write a party song with actions similar to "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree
Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree
Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree is a set of variations, with fugue, for orchestra composed in 1939 by Jaromír Weinberger. It premiered under the direction of Sir John Barbirolli in New York City on October 12, 1939...
". The inspiration for the song's title that resulted, the hokey pokey, came from an ice cream vendor whom Tabor had heard as a boy, calling out, "Hokey pokey penny a lump. Have a lick make you jump". He changed the name to the "hokey cokey" at the suggestion of the officer who said that cokey, in Canada, meant "crazy" and would sound better. A well known lyricist/songwriter/music publisher of the time, Jimmy Kennedy
Jimmy Kennedy
Jimmy Kennedy OBE was an Irish songwriter, predominantly a lyricist, putting words to existing music such as "Teddy Bears' Picnic" and "My Prayer", or co-writing with the composers Michael Carr, Wilhelm Grosz and Nat Simon amongst others.-Biography:Kennedy was born near Omagh...
, reneged on a financial agreement to promote and publish it, and finally Tabor settled out of court, giving up all rights to the number. There had been many theories and conjectures about the meaning of the words "hokey pokey", and of their origin. Some scholars attributed the origin to the Shaker song Hinkum-Booby which had similar lyrics and was published in Edward Deming Andrews' A gift to be simple in 1960: (p. 42).
-
- " A song rendered ("with appropriate gestures") by two Canterbury sisters while on a visit to Bridgewater, N.H. in 1857 starts thus:
- I put my right hand in,
- I put my right hand out,
- In out, in out.
- shake it all about.
- As the song continues, the "left hand" is put in, then the "right foot," then the "left foot," then "my whole head."
- ...Newell gave it the title, "Right Elbow In", and said that it was danced " deliberately and decorously...with slow rhythmical motion."
Before the invention of ice cream cones, ice cream was often sold wrapped in waxed paper and known as a hokey-pokey (possibly a corruption of the Italian ecco un poco - "here is a little") An Italian ice cream street vendor was called a hokey-pokey man.
Other scholars found similar dances and lyrics dating back to the 17th century. A very similar dance is cited in Robert Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland from 1826.
Controversy
The Oxford English DictionaryOxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
suggests that the phrase "hokey cokey" ultimately comes from "hocus pocus
Hocus Pocus (magic)
Hocus Pocus or hocus-pocus is a generic term that may be derived from an ancient language and is presently used by magicians, usually the magic words spoken when bringing about some sort of change. It was once a common term for a magician, juggler, or other similar entertainer.The origins of the...
", the traditional magician's incantation. However, the dictionary discounts suggestions that "hocus pocus" in its turn derives from a distortion of hoc est enim corpus meum ("this is my body" - the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
words of consecration
Consecration
Consecration is the solemn dedication to a special purpose or service, usually religious. The word "consecration" literally means "to associate with the sacred". Persons, places, or things can be consecrated, and the term is used in various ways by different groups...
of the host
Sacramental bread
Sacramental bread, sometimes called the lamb, altar bread, host or simply Communion bread, is the bread which is used in the Christian ritual of the Eucharist.-Eastern Catholic and Orthodox:...
at Eucharist
Eucharist
The Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...
, the point, at which according to traditional Catholic practice, transubstantiation
Transubstantiation
In Roman Catholic theology, transubstantiation means the change, in the Eucharist, of the substance of wheat bread and grape wine into the substance of the Body and Blood, respectively, of Jesus, while all that is accessible to the senses remains as before.The Eastern Orthodox...
takes place - mocked by Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
s and others as a form of "magic words"), noting that "The notion that hocus pocus was a parody of the Latin words used in the Eucharist, rests merely on a conjecture thrown out by Tillotson
John Tillotson
John Tillotson was an Archbishop of Canterbury .-Curate and rector:Tillotson was the son of a Puritan clothier at Haughend, Sowerby, Yorkshire. He entered as a pensioner of Clare Hall, Cambridge, in 1647, graduated in 1650 and was made fellow of his college in 1651...
". The conjecture put forward by Tillotson reads "In all probability those common juggling words of hocus pocus are nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus, by way of ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation".
The Anglican Canon Matthew Damon, Provost of Wakefield Cathedral
Wakefield Cathedral
Wakefield Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of All Saints Wakefield is the cathedral for the Church of England's Diocese of Wakefield and is the seat of the Bishop of Wakefield. The cathedral has Anglo Saxon origins and the tallest cathedral spire in Yorkshire...
, West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county within the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England with a population of 2.2 million. West Yorkshire came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....
, has claimed that the dance as well comes from the Catholic Latin mass
Tridentine Mass
The Tridentine Mass is the form of the Roman Rite Mass contained in the typical editions of the Roman Missal that were published from 1570 to 1962. It was the most widely celebrated Mass liturgy in the world until the introduction of the Mass of Paul VI in December 1969...
. The priest would perform his movements with his back to the congregation, who could not hear well the words, nor understand the Latin, nor clearly see his movements. This theory led Scottish politician Michael Matheson
Michael Matheson
Michael Matheson is the Public Health Minister in the Scottish Government. He has been an SNP Member of the Scottish Parliament since 1999, first representing Central Scotland and, since 2007, the Falkirk West constituency....
in 2008 to urge police action "against individuals who use it to taunt Catholics.” This claim by Matheson was deemed ridiculous by fans from both sides of the Old Firm
Old Firm
The Old Firm is a common collective name for the association football clubs Celtic and Rangers, both based in Glasgow, Scotland.The origin of the term is unclear. One theory has it that the expression derives from Celtic's first game in 1888, which was played against Rangers. However, author,...
(the Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
football teams Celtic
Celtic F.C.
Celtic Football Club is a Scottish football club based in the Parkhead area of Glasgow, which currently plays in the Scottish Premier League. The club was established in 1887, and played its first game in 1888. Celtic have won the Scottish League Championship on 42 occasions, most recently in the...
and Rangers
Rangers F.C.
Rangers Football Club are an association football club based in Glasgow, Scotland, who play in the Scottish Premier League. The club are nicknamed the Gers, Teddy Bears and the Light Blues, and the fans are known to each other as bluenoses...
) and calls were put out on fans' forums for both sides to join together to sing the song on 27 December 2008 at Ibrox Stadium
Ibrox Stadium
Ibrox Stadium is a football stadium located on the south side of the River Clyde, on Edmiston Drive in the Ibrox district of Glasgow. It is the home ground of Scottish Premier League club Rangers and has an all-seated capacity of 51,082...
.
Close relatives of the song's original publisher and of the song's author have publicly stated their recollections of its origin and its meaning. These accounts differ.
In January 2009, the son of Jimmy Kennedy stated that the song which his father originally published as Cokey Cokey originated in 1942 from an experience his father had with Canadian soldiers stationed at a London nightclub. Jimmy Kennedy Jr. quoted his father's writing:
"They were having a hilarious time, singing and playing games, one of which they said was a Canadian children's game called The Pokey Pokey. I thought to myself, wouldn't that be fun as a dance to cheer people up! So when I got back to my hotel, I wrote a chorus based on the feet and hand movements the Canadians had used, with a few adaptations. A few days later, I wrote additional lyrics to it but kept the title, Cokey Cokey, and, as everybody knows, it became a big hit."
According to Kennedy Jr., his father told him "the unusual title was to do with drugs
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
] taken by the miners in Canada to cheer themselves up in the harsh environment where they were prospecting."
Alternatively, the grandson of the song's author, Alan Balfour, stated in a letter to The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
published 11 January 2009, responding to the then-recent claims that the song was anti-Catholic:
The idea that the Hokey Cokey song was inspired by any hocus pocus (hoc est enim corpus meum), is a lot of bigoted bunkum (News, December 21). The man who wrote the Hokey Cokey was my grandfather—Al Tabor, a well-known bandleader of the 1930s and 1940s, and neither a Latin scholar nor a bigot.
Alan Balfour has written a play about his grandfather’s life called The Hokey Cokey Man (scheduled as of January 2009 to start a five-week run at New End Theatre
New End Theatre
The New End Theatre, Hampstead, was a 80-seat fringe theatre venue in London, England, located in the London Borough of Camden which operated from 1974 until 2011. It was listed widely on the internet, including with the New York Times....
in London, UK, on 20 May 2009) and was interviewed at its announcement by The Times:
"All of a sudden the song has become something to hammer people with when all it was something to create cheer and a better feeling for the population during the time of the war.
"My grandfather would have thought this was totally absurd. It was never meant to be a dig at anybody, it was meant to inspire people to express themselves physically and celebrate living. It was to cheer everybody up not just Protestants or Jews or whoever.
"This whole business with the Catholic church is silly. The song and the music for the song certainly didn’t come from hocus-pocus."
Balfour said his grandfather told him he thought of the ice-cream sellers of his youth when he was looking for a cheery title for a throwaway ditty.
"When he was a boy they used to come up and down the street shouting 'hokey pokey, penny a lump' to sell ice cream. The Canadian officer said to him why don't you change it to 'hokey cokey' because in Canada 'cokey' means 'crazy'."
United Kingdom and Ireland
Known as the "hokey cokey" or "okey cokey" ("hokey pokey" in Ireland), the song and accompanying dance peaked in popularity as a music hallMusic hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
song and novelty dance in the mid-1940s in Britain and Ireland.
There is a claim of authorship by the British/Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy
Jimmy Kennedy
Jimmy Kennedy OBE was an Irish songwriter, predominantly a lyricist, putting words to existing music such as "Teddy Bears' Picnic" and "My Prayer", or co-writing with the composers Michael Carr, Wilhelm Grosz and Nat Simon amongst others.-Biography:Kennedy was born near Omagh...
, responsible for the lyrics to popular songs such as the wartime "We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line
We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line
"We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line" is a popular song written by Ulster songwriter Jimmy Kennedy, whilst he was a Captain in the British Expeditionary Force during the early stages of the Second World War. The Siegfried Line was a chain of fortifications along Germany's...
" and the children's song "Teddy Bears' Picnic
Teddy bears' picnic
"Teddy Bears' Picnic" is a song consisting of a melody by American composer John Walter Bratton, written in 1907, and lyrics added by Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy in 1932. It remains popular as a children's song, having been recorded by numerous artists over the decades. Kennedy lived at...
". Sheet music copyrighted in 1942 and published by Campbell Connelly & Co Ltd, agents for Kennedy Music Co Ltd, styles the song as "the Cokey Cokey".
In the 1973 Thames Television
Thames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
documentary, 'May I have the Pleasure?', about the Hammersmith Palais de Danse
Hammersmith Palais
The Hammersmith Palais de Danse, later simply the Hammersmith Palais, was a ballroom and entertainment venue in London that operated from 1919 until 2007...
, Lou Praeger comments on how his was the first band to record the 'Okey Cokey'.
The song was used by comedian Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey is an English comedian, musician and actor. As well as his extensive stand-up work, Bailey is well known for his appearances on Black Books, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Have I Got News for You, and QI.Bailey was listed by The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy in...
during his "Part Troll" tour, however it was reworked by Bailey into a style of the German electronic group Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
, including quasi-German lyrics and Kraftwerk's signature robotic dance moves.
The comedy act Ida Barr, a fictional East End pensioner who mashes up music hall songs with rap numbers, almost always finishes her shows with the hokey cokey, performed over a thumping RnB backing. Ida Barr is performed by a British comedian called Christopher Green
Chris Green (writer/performer)
Christopher Green is a writer and performer whose work covers comedy, cabaret, theatre and live art. Green was born in Matlock, Derbyshire, grew up in Darley Dale and lives and works in London, England.-Background:...
.
Denmark
Mostly performed in the British style of the dance, it is known as the "boogie woogie" .United States
Known as the "hokey pokey", it became popular in the USA in the 1950s. Larry LaPriseLarry LaPrise
Larry LaPrise at one point held the U.S. copyright for the song Hokey Pokey....
, Charles Macak and Tafit Baker of the musical group the Ram Trio, recorded the song in the late 1940s. They have generally been credited with creating this novelty dance as entertainment for the ski crowd at Idaho
Idaho
Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....
's Sun Valley
Sun Valley, Idaho
Sun Valley is a resort city in Blaine County in the central part of the U.S. state of Idaho, adjacent to the city of Ketchum, lying within the greater Wood River valley. Tourists from around the world enjoy its skiing, hiking, ice skating, trail riding, tennis, and cycling. The population was 1,427...
resort. However, two club musicians from Scranton, Pennsylvania
Scranton, Pennsylvania
Scranton is a city in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, United States. It is the county seat of Lackawanna County and the largest principal city in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area. Scranton had a population of 76,089 in 2010, according to the U.S...
, Robert Degen and Joseph P. Brier, had previously copyrighted a very similar song, "The Hokey Pokey Dance", in 1944. (One account says that copyright was granted in 1946.) According to Degan's son in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Degan and Brier wrote the song while playing for the summer at a resort near the Delaware Water Gap
Delaware Water Gap
The Delaware Water Gap is on the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania where the Delaware River cuts through a large ridge of the Appalachian Mountains...
. Degan resided at Richmond Place Rehabilitation and Health Center in Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington is the second-largest city in Kentucky and the 63rd largest in the US. Known as the "Thoroughbred City" and the "Horse Capital of the World", it is located in the heart of Kentucky's Bluegrass region...
until he died on November 23, 2009 at the age of 104. In 1953, Ray Anthony
Ray Anthony
Ray Anthony is an American bandleader, trumpeter, songwriter and actor.- Biography :...
's big band
Big band
A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...
recording of the song turned it into a nationwide sensation. The distinctive vocal was by singer Jo Ann Greer
Jo Ann Greer
Jo Ann Greer had one of the most distinctive and elegant voices, yet least-known faces of all the successful jazz and pop singers in show business....
, who simultaneously sang with the Les Brown band and dubbed the singing voices for such film stars as Rita Hayworth, Kim Novak, June Allyson and Esther Williams. (She also charted with Anthony later the same year with the song "Wild Horses.)
The hokey cokey (United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
) or hokey pokey (United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
& Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
), also known as the okey cokey, hokey tokey, or cokey cokey, is a participation dance
Participation dance
Participation dance, also known as group-participation dance or audience participation dance, is a major category or classification of dance forms or dance styles based on purpose. The purpose of this type of dance is to actively encourage dancing in a group...
with a distinctive accompanying tune and lyric structure. It is well known in English-speaking countries. It is of unclear origin, with two main traditions having evolved in different parts of the world.
Origins and meaning
According to one account, in 1940, during the BlitzThe Blitz
The Blitz was the sustained strategic bombing of Britain by Nazi Germany between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, during the Second World War. The city of London was bombed by the Luftwaffe for 76 consecutive nights and many towns and cities across the country followed...
in London, a Canadian officer suggested to Al Tabor, a British bandleader of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s that he write a party song with actions similar to "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree
Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree
Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree is a set of variations, with fugue, for orchestra composed in 1939 by Jaromír Weinberger. It premiered under the direction of Sir John Barbirolli in New York City on October 12, 1939...
". The inspiration for the song's title that resulted, the hokey pokey, came from an ice cream vendor whom Tabor had heard as a boy, calling out, "Hokey pokey penny a lump. Have a lick make you jump". He changed the name to the "hokey cokey" at the suggestion of the officer who said that cokey, in Canada, meant "crazy" and would sound better. A well known lyricist/songwriter/music publisher of the time, Jimmy Kennedy
Jimmy Kennedy
Jimmy Kennedy OBE was an Irish songwriter, predominantly a lyricist, putting words to existing music such as "Teddy Bears' Picnic" and "My Prayer", or co-writing with the composers Michael Carr, Wilhelm Grosz and Nat Simon amongst others.-Biography:Kennedy was born near Omagh...
, reneged on a financial agreement to promote and publish it, and finally Tabor settled out of court, giving up all rights to the number. There had been many theories and conjectures about the meaning of the words "hokey pokey", and of their origin. Some scholars attributed the origin to the Shaker song Hinkum-Booby which had similar lyrics and was published in Edward Deming Andrews' A gift to be simple in 1960: (p. 42).
-
- " A song rendered ("with appropriate gestures") by two Canterbury sisters while on a visit to Bridgewater, N.H. in 1857 starts thus:
- I put my right hand in,
- I put my right hand out,
- In out, in out.
- shake it all about.
- As the song continues, the "left hand" is put in, then the "right foot," then the "left foot," then "my whole head."
- ...Newell gave it the title, "Right Elbow In", and said that it was danced " deliberately and decorously...with slow rhythmical motion."
Before the invention of ice cream cones, ice cream was often sold wrapped in waxed paper and known as a hokey-pokey (possibly a corruption of the Italian ecco un poco - "here is a little") An Italian ice cream street vendor was called a hokey-pokey man.
Other scholars found similar dances and lyrics dating back to the 17th century. A very similar dance is cited in Robert Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland from 1826.
Controversy
The Oxford English DictionaryOxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
suggests that the phrase "hokey cokey" ultimately comes from "hocus pocus
Hocus Pocus (magic)
Hocus Pocus or hocus-pocus is a generic term that may be derived from an ancient language and is presently used by magicians, usually the magic words spoken when bringing about some sort of change. It was once a common term for a magician, juggler, or other similar entertainer.The origins of the...
", the traditional magician's incantation. However, the dictionary discounts suggestions that "hocus pocus" in its turn derives from a distortion of hoc est enim corpus meum ("this is my body" - the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
words of consecration
Consecration
Consecration is the solemn dedication to a special purpose or service, usually religious. The word "consecration" literally means "to associate with the sacred". Persons, places, or things can be consecrated, and the term is used in various ways by different groups...
of the host
Sacramental bread
Sacramental bread, sometimes called the lamb, altar bread, host or simply Communion bread, is the bread which is used in the Christian ritual of the Eucharist.-Eastern Catholic and Orthodox:...
at Eucharist
Eucharist
The Eucharist , also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the Blessed Sacrament, the Lord's Supper, and other names, is a Christian sacrament or ordinance...
, the point, at which according to traditional Catholic practice, transubstantiation
Transubstantiation
In Roman Catholic theology, transubstantiation means the change, in the Eucharist, of the substance of wheat bread and grape wine into the substance of the Body and Blood, respectively, of Jesus, while all that is accessible to the senses remains as before.The Eastern Orthodox...
takes place - mocked by Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
s and others as a form of "magic words"), noting that "The notion that hocus pocus was a parody of the Latin words used in the Eucharist, rests merely on a conjecture thrown out by Tillotson
John Tillotson
John Tillotson was an Archbishop of Canterbury .-Curate and rector:Tillotson was the son of a Puritan clothier at Haughend, Sowerby, Yorkshire. He entered as a pensioner of Clare Hall, Cambridge, in 1647, graduated in 1650 and was made fellow of his college in 1651...
". The conjecture put forward by Tillotson reads "In all probability those common juggling words of hocus pocus are nothing else but a corruption of hoc est corpus, by way of ridiculous imitation of the priests of the Church of Rome in their trick of Transubstantiation".
The Anglican Canon Matthew Damon, Provost of Wakefield Cathedral
Wakefield Cathedral
Wakefield Cathedral, formally the Cathedral Church of All Saints Wakefield is the cathedral for the Church of England's Diocese of Wakefield and is the seat of the Bishop of Wakefield. The cathedral has Anglo Saxon origins and the tallest cathedral spire in Yorkshire...
, West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county within the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England with a population of 2.2 million. West Yorkshire came into existence as a metropolitan county in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972....
, has claimed that the dance as well comes from the Catholic Latin mass
Tridentine Mass
The Tridentine Mass is the form of the Roman Rite Mass contained in the typical editions of the Roman Missal that were published from 1570 to 1962. It was the most widely celebrated Mass liturgy in the world until the introduction of the Mass of Paul VI in December 1969...
. The priest would perform his movements with his back to the congregation, who could not hear well the words, nor understand the Latin, nor clearly see his movements. This theory led Scottish politician Michael Matheson
Michael Matheson
Michael Matheson is the Public Health Minister in the Scottish Government. He has been an SNP Member of the Scottish Parliament since 1999, first representing Central Scotland and, since 2007, the Falkirk West constituency....
in 2008 to urge police action "against individuals who use it to taunt Catholics.” This claim by Matheson was deemed ridiculous by fans from both sides of the Old Firm
Old Firm
The Old Firm is a common collective name for the association football clubs Celtic and Rangers, both based in Glasgow, Scotland.The origin of the term is unclear. One theory has it that the expression derives from Celtic's first game in 1888, which was played against Rangers. However, author,...
(the Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
football teams Celtic
Celtic F.C.
Celtic Football Club is a Scottish football club based in the Parkhead area of Glasgow, which currently plays in the Scottish Premier League. The club was established in 1887, and played its first game in 1888. Celtic have won the Scottish League Championship on 42 occasions, most recently in the...
and Rangers
Rangers F.C.
Rangers Football Club are an association football club based in Glasgow, Scotland, who play in the Scottish Premier League. The club are nicknamed the Gers, Teddy Bears and the Light Blues, and the fans are known to each other as bluenoses...
) and calls were put out on fans' forums for both sides to join together to sing the song on 27 December 2008 at Ibrox Stadium
Ibrox Stadium
Ibrox Stadium is a football stadium located on the south side of the River Clyde, on Edmiston Drive in the Ibrox district of Glasgow. It is the home ground of Scottish Premier League club Rangers and has an all-seated capacity of 51,082...
.
Close relatives of the song's original publisher and of the song's author have publicly stated their recollections of its origin and its meaning. These accounts differ.
In January 2009, the son of Jimmy Kennedy stated that the song which his father originally published as Cokey Cokey originated in 1942 from an experience his father had with Canadian soldiers stationed at a London nightclub. Jimmy Kennedy Jr. quoted his father's writing:
"They were having a hilarious time, singing and playing games, one of which they said was a Canadian children's game called The Pokey Pokey. I thought to myself, wouldn't that be fun as a dance to cheer people up! So when I got back to my hotel, I wrote a chorus based on the feet and hand movements the Canadians had used, with a few adaptations. A few days later, I wrote additional lyrics to it but kept the title, Cokey Cokey, and, as everybody knows, it became a big hit."
According to Kennedy Jr., his father told him "the unusual title was to do with drugs
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
] taken by the miners in Canada to cheer themselves up in the harsh environment where they were prospecting."
Alternatively, the grandson of the song's author, Alan Balfour, stated in a letter to The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
published 11 January 2009, responding to the then-recent claims that the song was anti-Catholic:
The idea that the Hokey Cokey song was inspired by any hocus pocus (hoc est enim corpus meum), is a lot of bigoted bunkum (News, December 21). The man who wrote the Hokey Cokey was my grandfather—Al Tabor, a well-known bandleader of the 1930s and 1940s, and neither a Latin scholar nor a bigot.
Alan Balfour has written a play about his grandfather’s life called The Hokey Cokey Man (scheduled as of January 2009 to start a five-week run at New End Theatre
New End Theatre
The New End Theatre, Hampstead, was a 80-seat fringe theatre venue in London, England, located in the London Borough of Camden which operated from 1974 until 2011. It was listed widely on the internet, including with the New York Times....
in London, UK, on 20 May 2009) and was interviewed at its announcement by The Times:
"All of a sudden the song has become something to hammer people with when all it was something to create cheer and a better feeling for the population during the time of the war.
"My grandfather would have thought this was totally absurd. It was never meant to be a dig at anybody, it was meant to inspire people to express themselves physically and celebrate living. It was to cheer everybody up not just Protestants or Jews or whoever.
"This whole business with the Catholic church is silly. The song and the music for the song certainly didn’t come from hocus-pocus."
Balfour said his grandfather told him he thought of the ice-cream sellers of his youth when he was looking for a cheery title for a throwaway ditty.
"When he was a boy they used to come up and down the street shouting 'hokey pokey, penny a lump' to sell ice cream. The Canadian officer said to him why don't you change it to 'hokey cokey' because in Canada 'cokey' means 'crazy'."
United Kingdom and Ireland
Known as the "hokey cokey" or "okey cokey" ("hokey pokey" in Ireland), the song and accompanying dance peaked in popularity as a music hallMusic hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...
song and novelty dance in the mid-1940s in Britain and Ireland.
There is a claim of authorship by the British/Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy
Jimmy Kennedy
Jimmy Kennedy OBE was an Irish songwriter, predominantly a lyricist, putting words to existing music such as "Teddy Bears' Picnic" and "My Prayer", or co-writing with the composers Michael Carr, Wilhelm Grosz and Nat Simon amongst others.-Biography:Kennedy was born near Omagh...
, responsible for the lyrics to popular songs such as the wartime "We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line
We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line
"We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line" is a popular song written by Ulster songwriter Jimmy Kennedy, whilst he was a Captain in the British Expeditionary Force during the early stages of the Second World War. The Siegfried Line was a chain of fortifications along Germany's...
" and the children's song "Teddy Bears' Picnic
Teddy bears' picnic
"Teddy Bears' Picnic" is a song consisting of a melody by American composer John Walter Bratton, written in 1907, and lyrics added by Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy in 1932. It remains popular as a children's song, having been recorded by numerous artists over the decades. Kennedy lived at...
". Sheet music copyrighted in 1942 and published by Campbell Connelly & Co Ltd, agents for Kennedy Music Co Ltd, styles the song as "the Cokey Cokey".
In the 1973 Thames Television
Thames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
documentary, 'May I have the Pleasure?', about the Hammersmith Palais de Danse
Hammersmith Palais
The Hammersmith Palais de Danse, later simply the Hammersmith Palais, was a ballroom and entertainment venue in London that operated from 1919 until 2007...
, Lou Praeger comments on how his was the first band to record the 'Okey Cokey'.
The song was used by comedian Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey
Bill Bailey is an English comedian, musician and actor. As well as his extensive stand-up work, Bailey is well known for his appearances on Black Books, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Have I Got News for You, and QI.Bailey was listed by The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy in...
during his "Part Troll" tour, however it was reworked by Bailey into a style of the German electronic group Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk
Kraftwerk is an influential electronic music band from Düsseldorf, Germany. The group was formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970, and was fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008...
, including quasi-German lyrics and Kraftwerk's signature robotic dance moves.
The comedy act Ida Barr, a fictional East End pensioner who mashes up music hall songs with rap numbers, almost always finishes her shows with the hokey cokey, performed over a thumping RnB backing. Ida Barr is performed by a British comedian called Christopher Green
Chris Green (writer/performer)
Christopher Green is a writer and performer whose work covers comedy, cabaret, theatre and live art. Green was born in Matlock, Derbyshire, grew up in Darley Dale and lives and works in London, England.-Background:...
.
Denmark
Mostly performed in the British style of the dance, it is known as the "boogie woogie" .United States
Known as the "hokey pokey", it became popular in the USA in the 1950s. Larry LaPriseLarry LaPrise
Larry LaPrise at one point held the U.S. copyright for the song Hokey Pokey....
, Charles Macak and Tafit Baker of the musical group the Ram Trio, recorded the song in the late 1940s. They have generally been credited with creating this novelty dance as entertainment for the ski crowd at Idaho
Idaho
Idaho is a state in the Rocky Mountain area of the United States. The state's largest city and capital is Boise. Residents are called "Idahoans". Idaho was admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, as the 43rd state....
's Sun Valley
Sun Valley, Idaho
Sun Valley is a resort city in Blaine County in the central part of the U.S. state of Idaho, adjacent to the city of Ketchum, lying within the greater Wood River valley. Tourists from around the world enjoy its skiing, hiking, ice skating, trail riding, tennis, and cycling. The population was 1,427...
resort. However, two club musicians from Scranton, Pennsylvania
Scranton, Pennsylvania
Scranton is a city in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania, United States. It is the county seat of Lackawanna County and the largest principal city in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan area. Scranton had a population of 76,089 in 2010, according to the U.S...
, Robert Degen and Joseph P. Brier, had previously copyrighted a very similar song, "The Hokey Pokey Dance", in 1944. (One account says that copyright was granted in 1946.) According to Degan's son in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Degan and Brier wrote the song while playing for the summer at a resort near the Delaware Water Gap
Delaware Water Gap
The Delaware Water Gap is on the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania where the Delaware River cuts through a large ridge of the Appalachian Mountains...
. Degan resided at Richmond Place Rehabilitation and Health Center in Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky
Lexington is the second-largest city in Kentucky and the 63rd largest in the US. Known as the "Thoroughbred City" and the "Horse Capital of the World", it is located in the heart of Kentucky's Bluegrass region...
until he died on November 23, 2009 at the age of 104. In 1953, Ray Anthony
Ray Anthony
Ray Anthony is an American bandleader, trumpeter, songwriter and actor.- Biography :...
's big band
Big band
A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...
recording of the song turned it into a nationwide sensation. The distinctive vocal was by singer Jo Ann Greer
Jo Ann Greer
Jo Ann Greer had one of the most distinctive and elegant voices, yet least-known faces of all the successful jazz and pop singers in show business....
, who simultaneously sang with the Les Brown band and dubbed the singing voices for such film stars as Rita Hayworth, Kim Novak, June Allyson and Esther Williams. (She also charted with Anthony later the same year with the song "Wild Horses.) , Degen and Brier, who died in 1991, sued the members of the Ram Trio and several record companies and music publishers for copyright infringement, asking for $200,000 in damages and $1 for each record of the LaPrise "Hokey Pokey". The suit was settled out of court. LaPrise later sold the rights to his version to country-western music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
star Roy Acuff
Roy Acuff
Roy Claxton Acuff was an American country music singer, fiddler, and promoter. Known as the King of Country Music, Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and "hoedown" format to the star singer-based format that helped make it internationally successful.Acuff...
's Nashville publishing company, Acuff-Rose Music
Acuff-Rose Music
Acuff-Rose Music was an American music publishing firm formed by Roy Acuff and Fred Rose in Nashville, Tennessee. Acuff-Rose's honest behavior towards their writers set them apart from other music publishing firms at the time and lead them to fame throughout the 50's, 60's, 70's.-History:Acuff-Rose...
; that company was sold to Sony/ATV Music Publishing
Sony/ATV Music Publishing
Sony/ATV Music Publishing is a music publishing company co-owned by The Michael Jackson Family Trust and Sony. The organisation was originally founded as Associated TeleVision in 1955 by Lew Grade. In 1957, ATV acquired Pye Records as a wholly owned subsidiary...
in 2002.
A competing authorship claim is made by or on behalf of British bandleader
Bandleader
A bandleader is the leader of a band of musicians. The term is most commonly, though not exclusively, used with a group that plays popular music as a small combo or a big band, such as one which plays jazz, blues, rhythm and blues or rock and roll music....
Gerry Hoey from around 1940, under the title "the Hoey Oka".
Another variation came about in the United States at roller skating rinks due to another version of the song. In this version, instead of "left foot in," the words go "left skate in." It is unclear what the origins of this are, but they date back at least to the 1970's.
United States style of dance
The dance follows the instructions given in the lyrics of the song, which may be prompted by a bandleader, a participant, or a recording. A sample instruction set would be:
You put your [right leg] in,
You put your [right leg] out;
You put your [right leg] in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the hokey pokey,
And you turn yourself around.
That's what it's all about!
Participants stand in a circle. On "in" they put the appropriate body part in the circle, and on "out" they put it out of the circle. On "And you shake it all about", the body part is shaken three times (on "shake", "all", and "-bout", respectively). Throughout "You do the hokey pokey, / And you turn yourself around", the participants spin in a complete circle with the arms raised at 90° angles and the index fingers pointed up, shaking their arms up and down and their hips side to side seven times (on "do", "hoke-", "poke-", "and", "turn", "-self", and "-round" respectively). For the final "That's what it's all about", the participants clap with their hands out once on "that's" and "what" each, clap under the knee with the leg lifted up on "all", clap behind the back on "a-", and finally one more clap with the arms out on "-bout".
The body parts usually included are, in order, "right leg", "left leg", "right arm", "left arm", "head", "backside
Buttocks
The buttocks are two rounded portions of the anatomy, located on the posterior of the pelvic region of apes and humans, and many other bipeds or quadrupeds, and comprise a layer of fat superimposed on the gluteus maximus and gluteus medius muscles. Physiologically, the buttocks enable weight to...
", and "whole self
Human body
The human body is the entire structure of a human organism, and consists of a head, neck, torso, two arms and two legs.By the time the human reaches adulthood, the body consists of close to 100 trillion cells, the basic unit of life...
"; the body parts "right elbow", "left elbow", "right hip", and "left hip" are often included as well.
The final verse goes:
You do the hokey pokey,
The hokey pokey,
The hokey pokey.
That's what it's all about!
On each "pokey", the participants again raise the arms at 90° angles with the index fingers pointed up, shaking their arms up and down and their hips side to side five times.
United Kingdom and Ireland style of dance
The instruction set goes as follows:
You put your [right leg] in,
Your [right leg] out:
In, out, in, out.
You shake it all about.
You do the hokey cokey,
And you turn around.
That's what it's all about!
On "You do the hokey cokey", each participant joins their right and left hands at the fingertips to make a chevron and rocks the chevron from side to side.
Each instruction set is followed by a chorus, entirely different from other parts of the world:
Whoa, the hokey cokey!,
Whoa, the hokey cokey!,
Whoa, the hokey cokey!,
Knees bent, arms stretched,
Rah! rah! rah!
For this chorus all participants stand in a circle and hold hands: on each "Whoa" they raise their joined hands in the air and run in toward the centre of the circle, and on "…the hokey cokey" they run backwards out again. On the penultimate line they bend knees then stretch arms, as indicated, and on "Rah! rah! rah!" they either clap in time or raise arms above their heads and push upwards in time. Sometimes each subsequent verse and chorus is a little faster and louder, with the ultimate aim of making people chaotically run into each other in gleeful abandon.
Copyright
In the United Kingdom the hokey cokey is regarded as a traditional song and is therefore free of copyright restrictions. In the United States, Sony/ATV Music Publishing
Sony/ATV Music Publishing
Sony/ATV Music Publishing is a music publishing company co-owned by The Michael Jackson Family Trust and Sony. The organisation was originally founded as Associated TeleVision in 1955 by Lew Grade. In 1957, ATV acquired Pye Records as a wholly owned subsidiary...
controls 100% of the publishing rights to the "hokey pokey."
In popular culture
The BBC TV comedy series 'Allo 'Allo!
'Allo 'Allo!
'Allo 'Allo! is a British sitcom broadcast on BBC One from 1982 to 1992 comprising eighty-five episodes. It is a parody of another BBC programme, the wartime drama Secret Army, and was created by David Croft, who also wrote the theme music, and Jeremy Lloyd. Lloyd and Croft wrote the first 6...
showed one of its characters (Herr Otto Flick
Herr Otto Flick
Herr Otto Flick is a fictional character in the BBC sitcom Allo 'Allo!, which ran from 1982 to 1992. He was played by the actors Richard Gibson and David Janson...
) demonstrating a variation of the hokey cokey in an episode from season 3. Being a Gestapo officer the lyrics are changed to reflect his sinister nature as follows:
- You put your left boot in
- You take your left boot out
- You do a lot of shouting
- And you shake your fist about
- You light a little smokey
- And you burn down the town
- That's what it's all about
- Heil!
- Aah, Himmer Himmler Himmler—
The University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
Hawkeye
Iowa Hawkeyes football
The Iowa Hawkeyes football team is the interscholastic football team at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa. The Hawkeyes have competed in the Big Ten Conference since 1900, and are currently a Division I Football Bowl Subdivision member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association...
football
American football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
team, under coach Hayden Fry
Hayden Fry
John Hayden Fry is a former American football player and coach. He served as the head coach at Southern Methodist University , North Texas State University, now the University of North Texas , and the University of Iowa , compiling a career college football record of 232–178–10...
, used to perform the hokey pokey after particularly impressive victories, such as over Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
and Ohio State
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...
. On September 3, 2010, a crowd of 7,384 — with Fry present — performed the hokey pokey in Coralville, Iowa
Coralville, Iowa
Coralville is a city in Johnson County, Iowa, United States. It is a suburb of Iowa City and part of the Iowa City Metropolitan Statistical Area...
, establishing a new world record.
The Marching Virginians of Virginia Tech play this song (known as the "Hokie Pokie" at Virginia Tech because of their mascot) between the third and fourth quarters at all Virginia Tech football
Virginia Tech Hokies football
The Virginia Tech Hokies football team is a college football program that competes in NCAA Division I-FBS, in the Coastal Division of the Atlantic Coast Conference. They have more wins in team history than any other program in the ACC. Their home games are played at Lane Stadium which seats over...
games. Much of the crowd participates in the dance, as do the tubas during much of the song and the rest of the band during the tuba feature. The song is also generally used as the Marching Virginians' dance number in the first half-time
Half-time
In some team sports such as association football and rugby, matches are played in two halves. Half-time is the name given to the interval between the two halves of the match...
field show of the year, and an abbreviated version is played as a "Spirit Spot" (short song used between plays during the football game) after a big play.
Alternative band The Three O'Clock
The Three O'Clock
The Three O'Clock were a United States alternative rock group associated with the Los Angeles 1980s Paisley Underground scene. Lead singer and bassist Michael Quercio is credited with coining the term "Paisley Underground" to describe a subset of the 1980s L.A...
used the roller skating version of the hokey cokey in the video for their song "Her Head's Revolving." The video opens and ends with them doing the hokey cokey. It is available at YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
.