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Put Your Right Hand In... What?
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Dead: Robert Degen, at 104. Who? Why, he was... well, he MAY have been the creator of "The Hokey Pokey." He was a musician who copyrighted a song, "The Hokey Pokey Dance," in 1944. A few years later, a group in Sun Valley, Idaho, the Ram Trio, performed and took credit for creating "The Hokey Pokey." That led to a decades-long battle. The Idaho version's the one you know, and Degen's version was a little different. But there's a similar song, "Hokey Cokey," from England, that may have predated either one. And there's even a connection to mocking the Catholic Church -- this is not a joke -- and the Catholic Church in Scotland suggested that the song's use by soccer fans as a taunt should be prosecuted as a hate crime. All of this from "you put your right hand in, you put your right hand out"?
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