I have done the math, and I now realize I was 11 years old when WILLIE AND THE HAND JIVE came out in 1958. So I suppose it was inaccurate to say "These were teenagers, not kids." But, since I didn't go to dances at that age, I and my classmates probably knew of the hand jive by hearing the song on the radio and seeing older kids doing it on "American Bandstand" or something similar.

I didn't start going to dances until a couple of years later, but before that, I remember having a teacher who would occasionally allow us to bring records to school and dance on school time; that's how we learned to act like teenagers and imitate the dances we saw on TV. I include the "hand jive" in that, although, strictly speaking, it wasn't a dance.

Anybody remember THE STROLL? It came out the same year, 1958, and was another of those fads that didn't last very long. I remember learning it the same way, in class, not at a real dance.

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I found the song that I was thinking of—at least one version of it—that I described in my message of 19 Mar 09 - 04:26 PM. It's EEP, IPE, WANNA PIECE OF PIE, sung by Fats Waller. I'm pretty sure it wasn't Fats Waller though, that sang the version I first heard. (I'll discuss this more in the "eephing" thread.)

The first two lines of that song are:

Eep, ipe, wanna piece of pie.
Eep, ipe, wanna bowl of soup.

--which is odd because it doesn't rhyme. The rest of the song rhymes. It makes me wonder: are there any versions of the "pie" rhyme that mention soup?

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Interestingly, the song LITTLE EEEFIN' ANNIE contains the line "Gimme piece o' pie!"

That's another bit of evidence that there is some connection between eephing and the "pie" rhymes.