He wrote "Do The Hokey Pokey" in the early 1940s for the après-ski crowd at a club in Sun Valley, Idaho.
The song was first recorded by his group the Ram Trio (on the record they're known as the Sun Valley Trio) (with Charles Macak and Tafit Baker) in 1948.
The authorship of the Hokey Pokey is disputed, with Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy having published the original "Cokey-Coney" in 1942.
Robert Degan sued LaPrise for copyright infringement of his 1946 "The Hokey-Pokey Dance".
After the group broke up in the mid-1960s, LaPrise worked for the Post Office in Ketchum, Idaho.