Everything is okey dokey when you do the Hokey Pokey

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Everything is okey dokey when you do the Hokey Pokey

POSTED: Thursday, December 3, 2009, 4:44 PM

Filed Under: In Memoriam | Music

Robert Degen is wigglin' it all about in the big wedding/bar mitzvah/birthday party/roller skating rink in the sky.

Degen, a Scranton native who died on his 104th birthday, claimed to be one of the authors of the Hokey Pokey. The song's true authorship is up for debate ' it's often attributed to Larry LaPrise, who Degen sued and later co-owned the Hokey Pokey with, even though the two never met in person. Degen retired from music after WWII to sell furniture but in the '20 he was a member of the Scranton Sirens that also including big banders Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. According to Bruce Weber's NYTimes obit, Degen's version is rhythmically similar but has different lyrics:

Put your right hand in,

Put your right hand out

Put your right hand in and you wiggle all about.

Everything is okey dokey when you do the Hokey Pokey.

That is what the dance is all about.

Weber uses Degen's death as an opportunity to explore the Hokey Pokey and comes up with interesting tidbits such as:

Some Roman Catholic churchmen, meanwhile, have said that the words 'hokey pokey' derive from 'hocus pocus' ' the Oxford English Dictionary concurs ' and that the song was written by 18th-century Puritans to mock the language of the Latin Mass. Last year the Catholic Church in Scotland, concerned that some soccer fans were using the song as a taunt, raised the possibility that singing it should be prosecuted as a hate crime.

Whoa, chill Catholic Church of Scotland. Maybe they'd lighten up if they saw my favorite rumination on the Hokey Pokey, rock 'n' roll-style:

daniel

Posted 2010-01-27 03:05:42

That would be funny if the POPE danced the Hokey pokey with a black cat

Posted by Molly Eichel @ 4:44 PM Permalink | Post a comment

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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