TheHully Gully is a type of unstructuredline dance often considered to have originated in the 1960s, but is also mentioned some forty years earlier as a dance common in the blackjuke joints in the first part of the twentieth century.[1] In its modern form it consisted of a series of dance steps called out by theMC. Each step was relatively simple and easy to execute; however, the challenge was to keep up with the speed of each step.[citation needed]
The phrase "Hully Gully" or "Hull da Gull" comes from a folk game in which a player shakes a handful of nuts or seeds and asks his opponent "Hully Gully, how many?"[2]
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The Hully Gully was started by Frank Rocco at the Cadillac Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. In 1959The Olympics sang the song "Hully Gully", which involved no physical contact at all. In 1961 the Olympics version of the song was popularized in the south of England by the first version ofZoot Money's Big Roll Band and involved the audience facing the stage in lines and dancing the steps of the "Southampton jive".[3] The same tune appeared in 1961 in a song bythe Marathons, entitled "Peanut Butter", which was later used for the Peter Pan Peanut Butter commercial during the 1980s. Tim Morgan sang different lyrics to the song "Peanut Butter" as well, however, only mentioning the Skippy" brand. There was another song about the dance byThe Dovells, entitled "Hully Gully Baby".The Jive Five had a hit called "Hully Gully Callin' Time";Ike & Tina Turner had a song in their repertoire known as "If You Can Hully Gully (I Can Hully Gully Too)".[4]Ed Sullivan mentioned theCadillac Hotel as "Home of the Hully Gully" on his weekly show, featuring some dancers fromFrank Rocco's revue. Known as "Mr. Hully Gully", Rocco then toured America (including the1964 New York World's Fair—he danced it withGoldie Hawn) and Europe, where over the next year he taught the dance at theNATO Base inNaples, Italy, inRome, and all over Europe.
