Hokey Pokey

Despite several claims of a recent invention, numerous variants of the song exist with similar dances and lyrics dating back to the 19th century.

One of the earlier variants, with a very similar dance to the modern one, is found in Robert Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland from 1842.

[4] A song rendered ("with appropriate gestures") by two sisters from Canterbury, England, United Kingdom, while on a visit in 1857 to Bridgewater, New Hampshire, United States, starts as an "English/Scottish ditty" in this way: I put my right hand in, I put my right hand out, In out, in out.

[8] In the book Charming Talks about People and Places, published around 1900,[9] there is a song with music entitled "Turn The Right Hand In" (page 163).

The tune is not the same as the later popular version of the Hokey Cokey, but the last verse of the lyrics is more similar as it states to "turn your body around".

In recent times various other claims about the origins of the song have arisen, but they are all contradicted by the evidence of the publication history.

One of these accounts tells that in 1940,[10] during The Blitz in the Second World War, when Nazi Germany was bombarding London, a Canadian officer suggested to Al Tabor, a British bandleader of the 1920s–1940s, that he could write a party song with moves similar to "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree".

In 2008, an Anglican cleric, Canon Matthew Damon, provost of Wakefield Cathedral, West Yorkshire, claimed that the dance movements were a parody of the traditional Catholic Latin Mass.

That theory led Scottish politician Michael Matheson in 2008 to urge police action "against individuals who use it [the song and dance] to taunt Catholics".

Matheson's claim was deemed ridiculous by fans from both sides of the Old Firm (the rival Glasgow football teams Celtic and Rangers) and calls were made on fans' forums for both sides to join together to sing the song on 27 December 2008 at Ibrox Stadium.

[12] Close relatives of Jimmy Kennedy and Al Tabor have publicly stated their recollections of the origin and meaning of Hokey Cokey, and have denied its connection to the Mass or to an imitation of it.

[13][14] Relatives' accounts differ, but they all agree on the fact that the song existed and was published decades before its supposed composition in the 1940s.

[22] In the 1973 Thames Television documentary, May I Have the Pleasure?, about the Hammersmith Palais de Danse, Lou Preager comments on how his was the first band to record the 'Okey Cokey'.

[23] 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.

Its originator in the US is debatable: 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.

After that the participants separately, but in time with the others, turn around (usually clockwise when viewed from above – novices may go in the opposite direction to the main group, but this adds more hilarity to this joyous, novelty dance).

The hands are either still joined together or moved as in a jogging motion – dependent on local tradition or individual choice.

Either the upper or lower limbs may start first, and either left or right, depending on local tradition, or by random choice on the night.

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.

Often, the final chorus is sung twice, the second time even faster and the song ends with the joyous chant, 'aye tiddly aye tie, brown bread!'.

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).