#88 – What If The Hokey Pokey Is All It Really Is About

by Stacy Loves Buffett · Published March 11, 2024 · Updated March 11, 2024

#88 – What If The Hokey Pokey Is All It Really Is About

-by Stacy Garwood-

What If The Hokey Pokey Is All It Really Is About is a humorous, slightly irreverent, and yet strangely introspective song of Jimmy Buffett’s. It has his characteristic humor mixed into popular culture, current (for 2002) news and deeply thoughtful questions and concerns about life on this crazy planet we call Earth, as well as our ever-expanding universe. And what is the Hokey Pokey really all about anyway? It is supposed to be simple, while life is not. The ironic thing is, while the Hokey Pokey song and dance are uncomplicated, its history is quite complicated.

“Maybe it’s all too simple, For our brains to figure it out, What if the hokey pokey, Is all it really is about…”

What If The Hokey Pokey Is All It Really Is About was released on Jimmy’s 2002 album Far Side Of The World. It was written by Jimmy and Mac McAnally, as well as Larry LaPrise, Charles Makak and Taftt Baker. The first two are obviously familiar since it is Jimmy himself and long-time writing partner and friend, Mac. The other three men given songwriting credit are probably much less familiar, but I will get back to them a bit later.

A couple nights ago, while contemplating the current time change, the “Spring forward 2024 version”, I was grumbling to myself while counting how many clocks I had to change forward, which ones will update on their own, and the one in the back bathroom that has been fast for the last six months, but will now, almost miraculously, be correct again. I was also thinking about going through the motions just because some stupid law tells us we have to, and honestly contemplating living life an “hour off” of the rest of society for the next six months, and what kind of ramifications that might have.

After deciding that was not going to work well, I altered my clocks early, because I seem to transition better if I do it on Saturday night before I go to bed, I sat down to ponder how long into the week it would take before my body adjusted and grumpy again because the time change is all an illusion anyway. The day lasts as long as it lasts, the night lasts as long as it lasts, and that changes every day every year, because that is the way the planet works, regardless of what our clocks say.

Then I turned on RadioMargaritaville because I thought that would be a great distractor from the annoyance of the time change, and the very song that was playing was What If The Hokey Pokey Is All It Really Is About. And I had to laugh, and I sent a heavenly thank you up to Jimmy and enjoyed the song. The song did distract me, it lifted my mood; I felt myself breathe in, breathe out, and relax. I did not stand up and do the hokey pokey, but I did go through the motions while sitting in my chair, which is nearly as good anyway.

So, at that point, I knew that this song was going to be my song of the week, and I was happy to share it. I love Jimmy’s lighter and more humorous songs just as much as I like the deeply introspective ones. Rumor has it, that Jimmy was inspired to write this song because of a bumper sticker. Then he sat down at some point with Magic Mac and a new song was born. It has a little jazz vibe, it has a little scat feeling to it without the nonsensical syllables, and perhaps even that Saturday afternoon brass band feeling at the country club, combined with wit and wonder and whimsy, and it touches on the simple parts of life as well as the complexities.

“The universe is runnin’ away, I heard it on the news just the other day, There’s this new stuff called dark energy, We can’t measure and we can’t see…”

“It’s some elemental mystery, Train that we can’t catch, But our heads are in the oven, And somebody’s about to strike a match…”

I recall the first time I heard the song when I was playing Far Side Of The World on compact disk in 2002. Our world had shifted dramatically the fall before with the 9/11 attacks and fall-out. Nothing would ever be the same, and it did not feel like it was in any way a change for the better, and I was not sure what to think of this song. But I listened to it again and again on each album replay, and pretty soon, I was singing right along with Jimmy. After all, I love Grapefruit-Juicy Fruit, and Jimmy might not have a more unusual song than that.

Between the Hokey Pokey and the Chicken Dance, no human is safe at any wedding reception. It seems that people are either dragging someone onto the dance floor or they are the person being dragged out there, unless you know it’s coming and decide to hide in the bathroom for approximately ten minutes of safe time. If you go this route, you usually find the bathroom crammed with other avoiders, and you all share knowing looks, and maybe even congratulating each other and yourselves for your crafty avoidance.

But why would a person feel this way? What is wrong with the Hokey Pokey? Nothing, honestly. There is a little something wrong with the Chicken Dance and no amount of politicking will convince me that it’s not quite ridiculous. It is also a little fun…

“Meanwhile back on our big round ball, Things are getting serious as cholesterol, Permutations, calculations, Greedy piggies at the trough…”

“Arrogance and ignorance, Just to top it off, I just can’t keep up with the Nasdaq, Who got sold and bought, I’ve got to take my lunch break, But I’ll leave you with a little food for thought…”

So, what is the Hokey Pokey? Well, it’s a song, and it’s a dance. But where did it come from? And what does it mean? Because when I was growing up, “hokey pokey” seemed to mean things that people were sneaking out of school to do with that cute boy from north of town. As well as being an odd wedding dance favorite.

Turns out that what I thought would be a little light research led me down an interesting series of ideas about the original concept for this song. And might have to do with ice cream, or perhaps a satanic ritual, or maybe just an old folk song that has been passed around for so many generations that no one knows exactly what it means or how it started.

Let’s start somewhere in the middle of the story, because I am not sure how far back the beginning actually is. Around 1940, during the blitz bombing of London, there was a British band leader by the name of Al Tambor, whose real name was Alfred Taboriwsky, who was born to Jewish parents who had fled to England from the continent when Al was a child. He was a music prodigy who played violin so well at age 11, he won a scholarship at the Guildhall School of Music. He actually spent the time frame of World War I in safety with relatives in Boston, Massachusetts, where he came into contact with jazz music, and it was there that he formed first a trio and later his own band that performed around Boston. After WWI, he returned to England where his big band career continued for the next thirty years. At some point, he is one of the people given credit for composing the Hokey Cokey (no, I didn’t misspell that), and it was quite popular on the dance floors.

Hokey Cokey is just a different name version of a very similar song and dance.

However, variations of this song can be found reaching back at least a hundred years before, into the 1840’s in Scotland and perhaps even back as far as the 1820’s. Parts of the words and motions show up in multiple different folk poems from around the British Isles, and by several different names. In 1842, a collection of Scottish folk stories was published, called Popular Rhymes of Scotland. In this collection, there is a rhyme that is very similar to the Hokey Pokey with wording of “Hinkumbooby, round about, Right hands in, and left hands out, Hinkumbooby, round about”. This collection was organized and edited by Robert Chambers and published by his brother William. Interestingly, both brothers were born with six fingers and six toes, and while that has nothing to do with the actual song, it seems like something that just fits the unusual background of the origins of the Hokey Pokey.

Several rhymes and songs pop up in the 1800’s that seem to connect to the idea of right hands, then left hands into an imaginary circle, either as a dance or a ritual. Some people claimed the actions had to do with satanic rituals, while there were claims that it was Scottish Puritans that created a version of the words and motions to make fun of the actions during Catholic Mass. This idea reaches forward into this century, where in 2008, there was an attempt by a few Catholic Church officials to recognize the song Hokey Pokey as an example of “faith hate”. Nothing much came of this except great debate, but it is another interesting aspect of this simple/not so simple little song.

Another folk song from Great Britain called the Looby Loo, is quite similar in several aspects to the Hokey Pokey or Hokey Cokey. The Looby Loo poem mentions right foot in, right foot out, then you “wag it, wag it, wag it” and “turn about”. I am not going to dispute Al Tabor’s use of the song as a big band jazz dance number in the forties and fifties, but it does seem like the actual inspiration probably did come from folk culture, although Tabor did claim that his lyrics were inspired in part by an ice cream vendor from his past who used to advertise selling his ice cream with the words “hokey pokey” which is apparently crunchy caramelized candy in ice cream. It could be that the inspiration did indeed come from that, and who knows what inspired the ice cream vendor. These are things that are probably lost to time, but still seem quite interesting.

“What if life is just a cosmic joke, Like spiders in your underwear or olives in your Coke, My life can get as sticky as a day old sticky bun, So I arm myself with punch lines and a big ol’ water gun…”

Another nod to the Hokey Pokey, and one that Jimmy and Mac must have recognized, was The Hokey Pokey by the Ram Trio, also known as the Sun Valley Trio, which was comprised of Larry LaPrise, Charles Macak, and Taftt Baker. The Trio of musicians played nightly in Sun Valley Idaho for skiers in the evening at the Ram Bar. They were playing the song nightly in the late 1940’s, although LaPrise claimed to have written the song in the early forties. As soon as the trio began to play the song, it became a big hit, first at the Ram Club, then later when the trio recorded the song in 1948 or 1949 and released it in 1950. LaPrise had said the song was “like square dancing, really. You turn around. You shake it all about” or that is what it felt like to him. A sign hangs at the Village Station in Sun Valley that notes Sun Valley is the birthplace of the song The Hokey Pokey. Whether it is completely accurate or not could be debated, but that is just one more interesting thing about this song.

The LaPrise, Macak and Baker version of the song was then recorded by Ray Anthony and His Orchestra in 1953 with Jo Ann Greer on vocals. Ray Anthony was famous for releasing the dance hit The Bunny Hop in 1952, and this song was also a pretty instant hit in clubs, as well as homes across the country.

Never a clear winner on who the actual writer of The Hokey Pokey was, or how far back its true inspiration goes, there were legal suits in the fifties about the song. Another potential writer for the song was Robert Degen and Joseph Briar, who claimed to have written the song and performed it in clubs in Scranton, Pennsylvania as far back as 1944. The suits were settled out of court, with LaPrise walking away with song writing credit, along with his band mates, Macak and Baker. Yet even that ownership was a bit cloudy, because at some point, Roy Acuff ended up purchasing the rights to the song. He either bought the rights from LaPrise, or from Ray Anthony, who is said to have bought them from LaPrise. One thing in this whole confusing saga of the popular dance song, is that Sony/ATV Music owns 100% of the American rights to this song, which they eventually acquired through Roy Acuff’s music label, Acuff-Rose Music.

“I still believe in rock ‘n’ roll, It pays my bills and soothes my soul, There really really isn’t, A whole lot more around, Except for Frank Sinatra and the Big Band sound…”

The song itself has been recorded multiple times over the years, by multiple artists, including the British pop band Black Lace with their version called The Hokey Cokey, a hardcore version from the heavy metal/hard core punk band Haunted Garage, a 1974 glam-pop version by Kristine Sparkle, a popular version in 1981 by an uncredited group of British musicians called The Snowmen.

The song even has made it off of the dance floors of America and onto the turf of college stadiums and is noted to be part of American College sports culture, with both the Viginia Tech Marching Virginians fans performing it at games, and the University of Iowa Hawkeyes football team performing it after outstanding victories. It is also a part of British football (aka soccer) culture as well, with teams and fans using it to harass their opponents.

In further American pop-culture, the song has made appearances on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, and Sesame Street, with Elmo performing the song and dance. Jimmy Fallon and Howard Stern performed the Hokey Pokey from Times Square on an episode of The Tonight Show in 2019. The song was featured on the X-Files in the episode titled Chinga and also showed up on an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Regardless of its origins, the song is certainly a part of American popular culture, and seems to have touched life in many places. Not just in the British Isles, which seem connected to the origin of the song in folk sayings and poems, but in other English-speaking countries across the globe.

It is also known by multiple names, some with slight variations and some greater variation. In the United States and Canada, it is called the Hokey Pokey, but in Great Britain and Ireland is known as the Hokey Cokey or the Cokey Cokey. In New Zealand and parts of Australia, it is called the Hokey Cokey as well, but in other parts of Australia it is called the Honeycomb. In Denmark it is known as the Boogie Woogie and in Germany it is know as the Ruchi Zuchi.

Jimmy Buffett was said to have seen the phrase “What if the Hokey Pokey is all it really is about?” on a bumper sticker. Never one to pass on a funny phrase, something catchy or punny, Jimmy and his co-writing partner of many years sat down and wrote a song that not only ties to the nostalgia of the past in regard to what seems like a simple song and dance, and filled the lyrics with both humor and wonder at the modern day (circa 2002) world they were living in. On the album, co-writing credits for the song are given to Larry LaPrise, Charles Macak, and Taftt Baker.

Jimmy’s nod to the mysteries of the world being tied up in the Hokey Pokey include ideas on dark energy and cosmic jokes, elemental mysteries and the universe expanding, while down here on our little blue ball of a planet, we have cholesterol and the NASDAQ, arrogance and ignorance, spiders in your underwear or olives in your Coke, punchlines, water guns and sicky buns to worry about. This song does have a throwback vibe to the rhymes of Grapefruit-Juicy Fruit and The Wino And I Know and the silly sweetness of Pencil Thin Mustache. I think the message of this song could be that life seems complicated, the Hokey Pokey does not. Maybe we are all taking things much too seriously and we need to relax and enjoy the ride.

“Maybe it’s all too simple, For our brains to figure it out, What if the hokey pokey, Is all it really is about…”

Ironically, while the steps and lyrics of the Hokey Pokey might be simple, the history of the song is anything but.

While there might not be anything very simple in tracking the origin of the song The Hokey Pokey or how it traveled from folk poems in Scotland and England over two hundred years ago to part of a Jimmy Buffett album just after the turn of the millennium, the song is here to stay, and I kind of like the idea of what seems like a simple, almost child-like dance song, but has such a complicated and crooked history. It is certainly not what I expected when I looked into the history of the Hokey Pokey, but it has been an interesting journey.

I have no idea how much Jimmy might have known about any of this, or if he ever thought about how he now played a role in the interesting history of the Hokey Pokey, but I think he would probably find it curious and fun. As curious and fun as I find the version of the song he recorded and made a staple of his live concerts. I recall him playing it in Las Vegas in May of 2002, and the whole crowd danced the Hokey Pokey. Heck, if I was on the stage, I would love to look out at thousands of decked out Parrotheads with a left foot in, left foot out, shaking those parrot feathers, pirate hats and margarita’s all about! Heck, it is probably just as much fun as watching the crowd during Fins!

Later in my life, I have learned to enjoy the simple and fun aspects of life, like being on the dance floor for the Hokey Pokey and the Chicken Dance instead of drinking in the bathroom with the other grumps, smiling and laughing and just enjoying the moment. I enjoy the Cha Cha Slide and the Macarena too. Life is too short not to have fun, and really, no one that is watching you really matters more than how much fun you are having. I think Jimmy and his music probably taught me that.

And to bring it all full circle, just like the dance, it was the twice-yearly time change led me to this song, since going through the motions feels like we are performing a real life Hokey Pokey. For instance, “you put your left foot forward an hour, your put your right foot back an hour, then you shake it all about and do it all again”, etc. However, as much as I have learned to enjoy some odd wedding dances, including the Hokey Pokey and just have fun, you will still not convince me to enjoy or appreciate the time changes.

But I like the Hokey Pokey and I love this song!

Stacy

Please enjoy What If The Hokey Pokey Is All It Really Is About. I have included the link below. Enjoy!