The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #83749   Message #1541538
Posted By: Azizi
13-Aug-05 - 03:19 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Little Sally Walker Other versions
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Little Sally Walker Other versions
[This is a continuation from the last post]

* There is a contemporary version of "Little Sally Walker" that I've heard in Pittsburgh. Because not many girls seem to know it, I get the sense that this bersion is relatively new. However I saw it performed in one section of Pittsburgh in 1999 and in another quite distance section in 2005. There is also a mention of this version of Little Sally Walker in a Mudcat thread [??? I'll look it up].
I recall that the poster said she saw girls perform it in a summer camp in New York.

The basic words to this version are:
Little Sally Walker
was walkin down the street
She didn't know what to do
so she stood in front of me
and I said
Ooh girl do your thing
do your thing
Stop!
Ooh girl do your thing
do your thing
Stop!

-snip-

Instructions: girls form a circle with one girl in the middle. The girls forming the circle don't hold hands but stand in place while they recite the words to the song.**

The girl who is playing the part of "Little Sally Walker" doesn't sing. While the others sing, she moves around the circle, and eventually [arbitrarily picks some one to stand in front of. When the girls sing "ooh girl do your thing, do your thing" , the girl does a popular social dance of the hip shaking variety..When the girls sing "Stop"!, she stops dancing and starts up again when the other sing again.

BTW, the girl that she is standing in front of is supposed to also dance, but sometimes I've seen others have to remind that girl that she is supposed to be dancing too {another indication to me that this is a relatively new game song]...I also get the impression that,in the grand ole tradition of "Show me your motion game songs [a tradition that I'd bet the farm these girls don't know anything about], the girl who "Little Sally" chose to stand in front of is supposed to exactly imitate the dance that "Little Sally" does.
At the end of the second "Stop" the girl who Sally stands in front of is the next Sally and the former one rejoins the circle. This continues until the girls get tired of singing it, and move on to another 'song', usually a handclap rhyme like "I don't want to go to Mexico No More" or "Tweedleelee"-both of which IMO are definitely much more popular than "Little Sally Walker" or even "Miss Mary Mack".

**When they perform this modern version of "Little Sally Walker" I've also seen girls standing in place in a circle but as they stand in place they also perform a bass sounding "stomp stomp" clap 'step' routine. However, the more I think about it, this addition was probably adult driven. My 32 year old school teacher daughter and I share game songs and rhymes with co-ed but mostly girl elementary school age groups. An integral part of the sessions is 'show & tell' when children have the opportunity to share the songs {as they call rhymes}" that they know. After the girls showed us what I call "Little Sally Walker walkin down the street, my daughter who loooves African American Greek letter steppin, suggested adding the stomp stomp clap step to the song. And the girls loved it. From then on that's how they performed that song {at least in front of us}.

And come to think of it, that 'step' addition is the folk process at work.