Let's Get the Rhythm

DESCRIPTION: Someone is drunk or ill. The doctor is called and recommends rhythm of the head (ding dong), the feet (stamp, stamp), hands (clap, clap), hot dog (pant, pant). Put it all together: ding, dong, stamp, stamp, clap, clap, pant, pant.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1973 (Frye)
KEYWORDS: playparty doctor drink
FOUND IN: Britain(England(Lond)) US(MA)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame, p. 479, ("When Jimmy got drunk on a bottle o' gin") (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Ellen Frye, "Children's Rhythm Games from New York City" in Western Folklore, Vol. XXXII, No. 1 (Jan 1973 (available online by JSTOR)), #1 p. 54, ("Let's get the rhythm of the hands (clap clap clap"); #2 p. 55, ("We are going to the Jackie Gleason studio. Mister Knickerbocker, Knickerbocker, boo boo boo") (2 texts)
Kyra D. Gaunt, The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-dutch to Hip-hop (New York, 2006 (copyrighted material limited preview "Digitized by Google")) pp. 94-95, "Down, Down Baby" (1 text)
Onwuchekwa Jemie, editor, Yo' Mama: New Raps, Toasts, Dozens, Jokes, and Children's Rhymes from Urban Black America (Philadelphia, 2003 (copyrighted material limited preview "Digitized by Google")) p. 135, "Let's Get the Rhythm" (1 text)
NOTES [135 words]: The longest text and, in that sense, the most complete, is from Gaunt. That text has five sections that, Gaunt writes, "are exchanged between other game-songs." Nevertheless, the last three of those sections, at least, belong here. In section 3 grandma was sick in bed and when the doctor was called he said: section 4, "let's get the rhythm" of -- as in Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame -- the head, hands, feet and hot dog. In section 5, as in Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame "You put it all together."
Of the Frye texts, the first is a leader, answer-back set from the middle of the "full text." The second, like the Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame text had no "leader" but the group answered itself with pairs of lines like "Let's get together with the hands (clap clap clap) We got the ribbon of the hands (clap clap clap)." - BS
Last updated in version 2.6
File: OpGa479B

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