What is "Googamooga"?

A Lesson in Its Origin and Meaning

  

This page was created because I received an e-mail one day in October 2002 from a 28-year old woman I did not know asking me the strangest question. She wanted to know the meaning and origin of the word, "googamooga." She was searching this out on the internet when she found it quoted on the Jocko page of our website. She said, "I'm trying to find out what in the heck the word, "googamooga," means! My boss is driving me nuts by singing the Temptations 'Ball of Confusion' song. [the expression appears as an exclamation in the lyric]"
 

So here is essentially what I told her:
   

Yes, you are right. Yours is probably the weirdest question I have received in relation to my class website.
  

I must tell you, I do not know the true origin of "googamooga" (alternatively, "googa mooga" or "googa-mooga," sometimes capitalized), and I can only surmise its meaning from the context in which I have heard it used. I am not familiar with the Temptations’ 1970 record, "Ball of Confusion." (I guess I am too old for that.) I will tell you what I do know and what I have learned as a result of your inquiry.
   

Although not confirmed by any online source I could find, it seems that most likely, "googamooga" is derived from black musician's jive talk or street slang that pre-dates the 1950s. (You might get a more authoritative response from a black history or language professor at a university.)  Like other white youths of the time, I first heard the term around 1954 as used by the great, black, pioneer, rock 'n' roll DJ, Douglas "Jocko" Henderson, as you read on my class website. The only other use of the word I was familiar with before my 2002 research was the one probably most familiar to most of you; it was in the lyric of the Cadets' 1956 recording of "Stranded in the Jungle,"1 as follows: 
  

I had a strange feeling I was with cookin' gear
I smelled something cookin', and a-a-a-h looked to see
That's when I found out they was ¾  a-a-a-h ¾  cookin' me!
  

                                                           

         

It appears that "googamooga" has no particular meaning by itself but when combined with the word, "great" as in "great googamooga" (or the significantly less well-known but possibly older variation, "good googamooga"),2 it is an exclamation of either shock and dismay or extreme appreciation, similar to "Wow!" or "Goodness Gracious!" or, as Clark Kent's boss at the Daily Planet (or are you too young for that?) always said, "Great Caesar's ghost!" According to David Fairweather, a jazz musician who wrote me in 2005, it is sometimes interpreted as an invocation of a folk voodoo deity "in the vein of black folk superstition/spirituality,"3  similar to "Great God!" or "Oh, my God!"
  

In doing research in 2002 to address this question, I found an article online written by a white, syndicated, blues DJ from Boulder, Colorado, known only as "The Red Rooster." It suggests that our Jocko may not have been as original as he claimed, as he was given credit for, or as we believed he was, but rather that he copied much of his style and expressions from another black radio pioneer, a contemporary and mentor of Jocko's who never seemed to achieve Jocko's widespread recognition, respect and notoriety outside Baltimore and Philadelphia. His name was Maurice "Hot

"Hot Rod" Hulbert

Rod" Hulbert, Jr., also known as "The Rod."

 

Some quotes from Rooster's article (http://www.bluesaccess.com/No_29/rooster.html) follow:
  

"Then there was 'great googa mooga,' the '50s equivalent of 'awesome,' an expression that was first immortalized in song by the Magic Tones in 1953 as 'Good Googa Mooga'."
  

"... HotRod [sic] was the first to say,  'It's good googa-mooga,' which means 'ain't she nice.'"

  
"The phrase turned up again in the Cadets' 'Stranded in the Jungle' in 1956 and later on the Temptations 1970 hit, 'Ball of Confusion'."
  

According to the same article, Hot Rod also influenced another one of our top New York jocks, who copied Hot Rod's version of Pig Latin called "ee-us" talk. "It simply consisted of inserting 'ee-us' in almost every syllable, as in 'Get the nee-us-od from the Ree-us-od.' " Of course, Rooster was talking about Murray "the K" ("Mee-us-urray Kee-us-aufman").

 
About Hot Rod, The Red Rooster's article also said:
   

"His 'Commander HotRod [sic] and the Rocket Ship' show not only nabbed the black audience WITH [a radio station] was looking for, it turned young white listeners on to a world of music known until then only by the tame cover versions recorded by the likes of Pat Boone and Peggy Lee.
  
'Hello mommios and daddios, keen teens, ladies and gentlemen. Commander HotRod [sic] moving and grooving, wheeling and dealing, hop, skipping and jumping here, there, each and everywhere bringing you the best in music, oyay, the best in songs, the best in jive, the best in helpful information, dedicated to you, the greatest people in the world, my listeners, as we move and groove, wheel and deal, hop, skip, jump here there and everywhere, I gotta say this is without a doubt the High Priest of Space, not the flower, not the root, but the seed..."
 

"By the early '60s, HotRod [sic] was a sizzling commodity throughout the airwaves of the Northeast, thanks to the fact that he was simultaneously doing shows on WHAT in Philadelphia, WWRL in New York and on Baltimore's WWIN. New Yorkers, however, missed out on the [Rod's] Rocket Ship show: Another DJ named Jocko had essentially stolen elements of the shtick and set up shop before the Rod got there."
    

As to who stole what from whom (who first used "Great Googamooga," "Mommy-Os and Daddy-Os" or the "Rocket Ship Show" on radio, who really knows?  We do know that Hot Rod Hulbert was an early influence of Jocko's, sometimes called "Jocko's idol," and, in fact, got him started in radio. But as for me, who was a pre-teenager in 1954 New York, I have to say that

for all of us guys the time who were teenagers at the time and who listened to New York radio late at night, the late Jocko Henderson definitely owns the term, "Great Googamooga."

  

Subsequent Updates:

  

Early in 2016, I stumbled upon a comical, tongue-in-cheek, online blog entry (I noticed it a little late; it was posted in March 2012) by Jim Bernhard, scholar and author of Words Gone Wild: Fun and Games for Language Lovers (among other things). Mr. Bernhard makes extensive reference to this page in his blog entry (http://wordsgoingwild.blogspot.com/2012/03/great-googamooga-indeed.html), "For a more complete explanation of 'Googamooga' ," he says, "I am indebted to Howard Levy and his website 1960sailors.net." Bernhard facetiously states at the outset, "As I’m sure all educated people must be aware, “Googamooga” is one word, not two," and based primarily on his summary of the foregoing information (which he found on this page), he concludes at the end, "I’m certainly glad to have that cleared up."

 

Bernhard's blog entry was inspired by, and created in reference to, a then planned, would-be annual, two-day music and food fest in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, N.Y., which I had never heard about before.4  It was called alternatively, "The GoogaMooga Festival" or just "The Great GoogaMooga."

 

These discoveries led me to do some additional internet research whereupon I learned for the first time that a New Orleans recoding artist named Lee Dorsey of "Ya-Ya" and "Do-Re-Mi" fame had recorded a rather obsure but catchy song in the same style called "Great Googa Mooga" ("Great Googa Mooga, you're a-sweeter than a-sugar..."). It was first released as an album track in 1961, and then it appeared on several others released after Dorsey's death in 1986. I also learned that the expression was spoken by an actor named Orlando Jones once in a 2001 movie called Evolution.

 

In 2017, I discovered a catchy but obscure recording made by the Del-Vikings in 1958 (released in 1959) in the entertaining style of the Coasters. It is called "Flat Tire." Although the third line of these lyrics appears differently in all of the transcriptions I could find online, the audio versions all contain the following lines:
 

"I grabbed my jack,

I reached for my spare,
Great Googamooga!

It was flat as a chair."

 

Listen here.

 

Lastly, in 2020, a visitor to this site called my attention to a 1963 version of the Errol Garner jazz standard, "Misty," in which the artist, the fabulous Lloyd Price, gleefully shouts out "great googamoga"!

 

Listen here.

 

 

Click to hear samplings of rare audio clips (called "airchecks") of portions of
Jocko's "Rocket Ship Show" (the "hottest show on the radio").

   

_____________

   

1

The original, far less successful (and in my opinion, inferior) version by the Jayhawks did not contain the expression, "great googamooga."

2 

Another variation, "great googly moogly," appeared in 1961 in "Goin' Down Slow" by Howling Wolf and again in a 1974 Frank Zappa song called "Nanook Rubs It."
   

3

Jazz musician, David Fairweather, refers us to a 1986 sculpture that is pictured in a book entitled The Art of Johnny Otis, copyright ©1995 by Johnny Otis. The sculpture entitled "The Great Googa Mooga" (shown at right), depicts a white-haired black man kneeling before an idol of the voodoo deity. Otis, an accomplished rhythm and blues musician/songwriter/painter/sculptor is best known by our rock 'n' roll generation for his 1958 hit record, "Willie and the Hand Jive."

4

The Googa Mooga Festival was held only for two years, 2012 and 2013, and its future, if any, is uncertain, but it was reported in 2013 as possibly moving to Lincoln Park in Chicago. However, there has been no word on that since. The promoters put a Googa Mooga page on Facebook, but it also has been inactive since 2013.

 

 

 

 

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