Does everyone wake up with a song droning away in their heads, or is that just me? By the time I’ve staggered to the bathroom from my cozy little bed each morning, I’m being fully serenaded by whatever song is playing on repeat in my brain. I can’t account for it, and quite often the song comes as a complete surprise to me.
**Public Service Announcement: I am going to be mentioning the name of a song that you will NOT want as an earworm for the rest of your day, so if you are susceptible to musical suggestions, it will be better for you to just move away from this essay right now and get on with your day. I wouldn’t kid about this.**
This morning’s theme song was of all things, The Chicken Dance. The Chicken Dance? “From what deep pit in my brain did that thing surface?” I wondered then, as I do now.
Polka nuts already know the happy undeniable draw of an accordion and as soon as any good polka band strikes up a tune, the mood turns ebullient and quite often the dance floor fills with happy revelers embarrassing themselves. That is, unless you’re in a dance club downtown on a Saturday night. The necessity of needing a polka-accepting target market is why The Chicken Dance’s worldwide popularity confounds me. That and it’s accompanying silly dance—how did that make it through?
We have a Swiss guy to thank for it, which is odd because the Swiss are known as solid people who brought us precision watches, stay neutral during arguments, invented white chocolate, cheese with fun holes, and bobsleighing. They are home to the European headquarters of the United Nations, they boast four official languages, and they were the army chosen to personally protect the Pope beginning in 1506, on account of their legendary bravery. It just seems a bit off-brand for this same country to let loose as being the birthplace of not only the Chicken Dance, but also of yodeling and the alpenhorn. I think the Swiss are more complicated than they seem.
In the 1950s, a Swiss accordion player named Werner Thomas wrote The Chicken Dance tune and began playing it during his gigs as the musical act in small restaurants and local resorts. He didn’t call it The Chicken Dance, however. It was a lyric-less little ditty that he had named “Der Ententanz”, which translates into “The Duck Dance”. Some say that Werner himself invented the dance that accompanies this (and only this) song, and that he would teach it to his audiences when he was performing. How it caught on is beyond me. Those of you who have been living in complete isolation since before the 1980s can find YouTube videos on how to do the actual gestures that are called for. But remember that you’ve only got yourself to blame.
It took a Belgian music producer, who in 1970 had the great fortune of catching one of Werner Thomas’ sets at a hotel bar in the town of Davos, to recognize the snappy hook of The Duck Dance, shout Eureka!, and to start the wheels turning on recording the catchy song.
The recording of The Duck Dance, released in 1973 by a Belgian cover band called “Cash & Carry”, was played on synthesizers rather than accordions. It’s very 70s. Europe loved the song, then called “Tchip, Tchip” (!), and the record sold a million copies. It faded away into obscurity until a Dutch trio/quartet named “De Electronica’s” re-recorded the ditty in 1980 using both accordion and synths, and after heavy rotation on Dutch pirate radio stations, its popularity forced the record to be played on the mainstream stations.
Popular thought is that it arrived under the name of “Dance Little Bird” in North America via Tulsa Oklahoma, along with a German band hired for Oktoberfest in 1981. During the event, the band wanted to teach the locals the accompanying dance and asked the local organizers to find them a bird costume to wear to get the idea across. All the organizers could find was a chicken costume to borrow from a local TV station. The song was associated with the costume and the moves and became known on this continent as “The Chicken Dance”.
The song took over in Canada once “The Emeralds” (from Edmonton) covered the song in 1982 for K-Tel, and their recording shot to double platinum in Canada and gold in Australia.
To date, it is estimated that there are over 340 recorded versions of the little polka tune and over 40 million copies of the song have been bought in 140 countries throughout the world.
It has also been voted “Most Annoying Song of All Time”, so clearly the listening audience is deeply divided.
The song continues to be added to wedding reception compilations, to party playlists (always a mistake), and is often heard, unpredictably, during sporting events where people are encouraged to get up from their seats and dance along in order to prevent DVTs.
What in the blazes this song was doing rattling around in my brain this morning, I can’t begin to figure out, but know that if it ever shows up at an event that I find myself attending, I will be the blue streak racing in the opposite direction.
I was hoping that by writing about the song today, I could purge my brain of it but at this point I fear that I’ve just embedded it. Maybe I’ll just have to sing all 14 verses of “The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald” or maybe I can try to Rickroll myself by humming “Never Gonna Give You Up” for a while. I am grateful that the lame lyrics associated with That Other Song, only had the briefest of life, and yet that doesn’t erase the all-too-familiar sticky theme of, “Na, na, na, na, na, na, na…”!
Sorry.
