Hokey Cokey

The Hokey Cokey, Okey Cokey, Hokey Pokey, 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.

Origins and meaning

According to one account, in 1940, during the Blitz 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, "The Hokey Pokey", that resulted, came from an ice cream vendor whom Al 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 'hokey 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 Al 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 |date=May 2011}} 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 |date=May 2011}} 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.

The Oxford English Dictionary 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 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.

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 Cokey Cokey. 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] 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:

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 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 States

Known as the Hokey Pokey, it became popular in the USA in the 1950s. Larry LaPrise, 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. 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.

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.

References

External links

Hokey Pokey - U.S. NIEHS website - Printed lyrics with synthesized music (no sung lyrics), with U.S. copyright information (audio plays automatically).

Category:British popular music Category:Group dances Category:Novelty and fad dances Category:Novelty songs Category:Songs with lyrics by Jimmy Kennedy Category:Slade songs Category:Songs produced by Chas Chandler