Show Business: Hula Balloo

On Labor Day weekend, a pop lyricist named Charles Grean (The Thing, Sweet Violets) was placidly cruising Long Island Sound in his 26-ft. skiff when he was struck by an inspiration. “With this hoop craze,” he thought, “there’s bound to be a song. Somebody ought to move fast!” Grean raced ashore and started to move. Next day he took his already completed lyrics around to his pal, Composer Bob Davie, and within an hour the two of them had batted out “a simple little teenage song with a good rock ‘n’ roll melody,” named it Hoopa Hoola.

That was Monday. Tuesday morning the song was accepted by Atlantic Records. Tuesday night Grean flew to Chicago to have his touring wife, Singer Betty Johnson, record it.

Rushing the Dubs. She learned the song in 15 minutes, recorded it in a dozen takes in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Atlantic rushed the tapes into production, cutting enough “dubs” (sample acetate disks for immediate use, good for 15 to 20 plays) to give the New York disk jockeys a preview hearing (Grean also dispatched a pretty secretary to demonstrate the hoop motion to local deejays).

Two days later the completed records started coming into Atlantic’s New York offices, were promptly funneled out to a list of 2,500 key disk jockeys about the country. Atlantic distributors started setting up deejay hoop contests through the Middle West. Scarcely more than a week after Lyricist Grean landed, his song was on the market ahead of the competition, and the painful fruits of his inspiration were assaulting ears across the land:*

Early in the mornin’ we’re a-doin’ the

hoola Walkin’ down the street on our way to

schoola Teachers are a-sayin’ that we’re actin’

the foola They really ought to try it ’cause it’s

real real coola . .

Second under the wire in the hula race was Roulette Records, closely followed by Coral. Both companies recorded The Hula Hoop Song, written by a couple of amateurs in Cleveland:

Oh what fun to see them rock and to

see them sway Tryin’ to keep the hula hoop from

slippin’ away.

Absorbing the Cost. Coral executives actually heard Hula Hoop 24 hours before Roulette did, but they lost valuable time by assigning it at first to a new female vocal group. Then the word got around that Roulette was recording Hula with Songstress Georgia Gibbs, and Coral executives decided that “we would have to come up with a big name, too.” Their choice: Songstress Teresa Brewer. In the mad scramble that followed, Georgia beat Teresa into the record shops by one day, was further aided by the fact that she was able to sing the song on The Ed Sullivan Show c:;Iy two days after she recorded it.

Fourth in the hula race was Dot Records, which recorded a number called Hula Hoop with Steve Allen, one of TV’s intellectuals, as the featured singer. Its lyrics made the previous songs sound cerebral by comparison:

Hula, hula, hula, hula

Hula, hula, hula, hula

Hula, hula, hula, hula Ho-o-ola hoop!

Although Dot’s song trailed the field by about five days, the company is counting heavily on Entertainer Allen to give it the TV boost it needs. A production push of the kind the hula hoopsters have been engaged in can send costs soaring to five times what they usually are. To absorb that kind of expense requires a major hit (like Purple People Eater), and none of the hula songs yet recorded seem likely to go that far. “It’s beginning to look,” said one weary A. & R. man last week, “like everybody got carried away with the whole thing.”

* Imperial Records actually brought out the first hoop disk (Hula Hoop) on the West Coast last June, but the craze had not yet reached its shimmying climax, and the record failed to take off.