The Chicken Dance

The "Chicken Dance", also known as the Birdie Song or the Chicken Song, is an oom-pah song and its associated fad dance is now a contemporary dance throughout the Western world. The song was composed by accordion (Handharmonika) player Werner Thomas from Davos, Switzerland, in the 1950s.

The name of the original Swiss song was "Der Ententanz" (The Duck Dance). It is rumored to be a drinking song sung at Oktoberfest. Sometime in the late 1970s, the song acquired the name "Vogeltanz" (The Bird Dance) or "Vogerltanz" (Little Bird Dance or Birdie Dance), although these names never caught on seriously in Germany. On some sheet music and recordings it is called "Dance Little Bird". It appears that no one in Germany uses the term "Kükentanz" or "Huhn/Hühnertanz" (Küken means chick, Huhn/Hühner means chicken (sg./pl.)). Since 1963 Werner Thomas had played it in restaurants and hotels. During one of Thomas' performances, Belgian producer Louis van Rijmenant heard the song. Van Rijmenant had some lyrics created and in 1970 released it to the public through his publishing company Intervox Music (later on co-publishing with his other company Eurovox Music) without much success. However, on subsequent releases of the song, Van Rijmenant was listed as co-author under the pen name of Terry Rendall. Eurovox Music now manages the publishing rights worldwide, except for the US (September Music), UK (Valentine Music) and the Netherlands (Benelux Music), sub-publishers. The dance and song was originally brought from Germany to the US by Eddie Duling and Larry Karhoff of Glandorf Ohio in 1974.

In 1980, Dutch local band "De Electronica's" released an instrumental version called "De Vogeltjesdans" ("The dance of the little birds") as the B-side of a single. The A-side was not a hit, but local radio stations in the south and east of the Netherlands decided to flip the disc and started playing "De Vogeltjesdans". The record entered the Dutch charts and stayed there for over seven months, and started the international success of the song. On some recorded releases of the music Werner Thomas is listed as the sole composer, while on others other authors are listed, e.g., as "Thomas/Rendall/Hoes", the last name referring to Dutch singer/producer Johnny Hoes, who re-arranged the song for the Electronicas recording (which was released on Hoes' own record label, Telstar Records). He also wrote new Dutch lyrics for the song, although the Electronicas version is an instrumental one (Hoes himself recorded the vocal version, but that did not become a hit).

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