Music: Chickery Chick

In the ’70s, collegians at Amherst set the loo-year-old jingle to music and sang it over pots of ale, when they wanted to prove that they could walk a musical straight line. One of the many versions ran like this: In China there lived a little man His name was Chingery-ri-chan-chan, His feet were large and his head was small, And this little man had no brains at all.

Chingery-rico-rico-day ekel tekel Hap py man.

Kuan-a-desco cartty-o gallopy-wallopy-china-go.

Last week this old tongue twister, with new and even less intelligible lyrics, was the fast-climbing No. 2 seller in Billboard magazine’s poll of record sales. It was well on its way to join Mairzy Boats and the Hut Sut Song in the jabberwocky Valhalla of the jukebox. Twenty-nine-year-old Ar kansas-born Jo Proffitt had changed the Chinaman into a chick, and called it Chickery Chick. She sent the lyrics to Tin Pan Alleysmith Sidney Lippman, who added some new notes. Now it describes a chicken who got bored with saying “chick chick” all day, astounds his companions

with some jived-up poultry poetry: Chickery-chick cha-la cha-la, Check-a-la-romey in a ba-nan-i-ka… .Tin Pan Alley actuarians estimate that

the U.S. will need about three months to

get over it.

-Copyright 1945 by Santly-Joy, Inc.