A friend on another interlist wrote:
"I don't usually pass on news like this but sometimes we need to
pauseand remember what life is all about. There was a great loss
recently in the entertainment world. Larry LaPrise, the Detroit native
who wrote the song "Hokey Pokey" died last week at 83. It was
especially difficult for the family to keep him in the casket. They put
his left leg in and...well, you know the rest."
Since I got this post while I was doing other research I took a break
and
researched this:
The joke is making its way around the internet.
I found the following on an English website, of rather recent date it
would
appear, called "Journey into melody" at
http://www.rfsoc.freeserve.co.uk/Journal%20Into%20Melody.htm
"Oh dear, we should have known we were asking for trouble when we
printed
that humorous anecdote
about Larry LaPrise in our last issue! Larry (you may, or may not
recall)
was the composer of that
1950s hit The Hokey Cokey (which seems to be known as Hokey Pokey in the
USA - completely
missing the alliterative possibilities of the piece). Anyway, Alan Watts
in
Georgia has sent us several
e-mails on the subject, so the least we can do is quote from one of
them:
The composer of the Hokey
Pokey, Larry LaPrise, a native of Detroit, died a few years ago in
Boise,
Idaho, at age 83. His song
writing career pretty much ended with the composition of the Hokey
Pokey
in the late 1940s. But he
made a modest fortune out of it and spent the rest of his life as a
postal
service employee. The song
was eventually picked up by bandleader Ray Anthony who recorded it in
1953
on the B-side of
another novelty song-dance, "The Bunny Hop." In no time, the Hokey Pokey
was everywhere.
School yards, Barmitzvahs, Weddings. You name it. Today every school kid
in
the country knows the Hokey Pokey. "
I am sitting here pondering: Hokey Cokey?
