Talk:Larry LaPrise

Some visitor's comments from a former version of page http://fff.at/2002/03/02/hokey-pokey-creator/
http://fff.at/2002/03/02/hokey-pokey-creator/ is now redirected to Talk:Larry LaPrise.

Not to be confused with Johnny Dankward who wrote \"The Okey-Dokey\".

The \"Hokey Pokey\" was \"borrowed\" from the English. It\'s supposed to be called the Hokey Cokey, which is a bastardised form of \"Hoc est Corpus\" or \"This is my Body\". The Hokey-Cokey, with its song and actions, is a mimicry of the Roman Catholic Mass. In those days the priest faced the altar (not the people) and performed several actions as he consecrated the bread and wine at Holy Communion. The words of the service were in Latin. You put your left arm in ......etc was ridiculing the priest as he lifted his arms heavenward during the rite. You do the Hokey- Cokey and you turn around............ was when the priest turned to face the congregation with the host (consecrated bread) to offer it to them.

Doing hokey cokey \'mimics Latin Mass\'

By David Bamber

The hokey cokey and other ditties - The Tartan Army Song Book

THE hokey cokey, the popular dance, has always been seen as an innocent, if raucous, form of entertainment. But an Anglican clergyman has now discovered a more sinister side: it originated as a parody of the Roman Catholic Church\'s Latin Mass.

Canon George Nairn-Briggs, Provost of Wakefield Cathedral, West Yorkshire, says that both the name of the dance and its actions were originally designed to satirise the traditional Mass and the clergy. The dance involves participants forming a chain and flinging their limbs about in line with commands.

Canon Nairn-Briggs said: \"In the days when the priest celebrated the Mass with his back to the people and whispered the Latin words of consecration with many hand movements, the laity mimicked the movements as they saw them and the words as they misheard them.\" The words \"hokey cokey\" were a mishearing, or a deliberate parody, of the Latin phrase \"Hoc est enim corpus meum\", which translates as \"This is my body\".

Canon Nairn-Briggs also contends that another corruption of the same phrase is \"hocus pocus\", the words believed to be used by magicians when they were casting spells.

Historical sources appear to back up his theories. The Hokey Cokey became a popular dance in 1940s America and crossed the Atlantic with US soldiers. But its origins are much older and it seems to have gained popularity originally on this side of the Atlantic, before being taken to the US by refugees. An earlier folk dance version was performed in mainland Europe in the 19th century.

The Oxford English Dictionary says that \"hokey cokey\" comes from \"hocus pocus\", the traditional magicians\' incantation that derives from a Latin phrase used in satanic masses, themselves parodies of the Latin Mass. --Roland2 09:23, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"LaPrise wrote the song in the late 1940s..."
If the information at Hokey Pokey is correct, then the above statement cannot also be correct, since at Hokey Pokey we read that the dance song was "wildly popular with American servicemen and Britons during WWII". Loganberry (Talk) 23:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Indeed, Hokey Cokey pre-dates this guy LaPrise, but maybe you could argue he created a commercial version of a traditional song. Now this would have been essentially by, erm, changing the letter C to a P, but such things have happened and he could still be considered author of the work.  Unless the Cokey had already become Pokey in popular tradition, perhaps in N America.  Did he create the dance by the way?  As that also pre-dates him, curiously ;) Hakluyt bean 18:31, 12 January 2007 (UTC)