Pop culture: Boogie Oogie Oogie (get down)

Self-tutoring about pop culture and music: the tutor mentions an essential song from the ’70s.

“Get down…Boogie oogie oogie”

I recall a kid facing me, back in ’78 or ’79, in a nighttime game of one-on-one basketball, saying those words. I didn’t know about the song, so didn’t understand what he was saying or why.

The 70s were like two or three different decades. “Boogie Oogie Oogie,” by A Taste of Honey, was released in ’78, and unlike any music from the early 70s, so far as I know. That’s perhaps an interesting part of the 70s: it was a decade that continued to hang on, reinventing itself even as 1980 closed in.

It would be some years before I realized the kid had been singing “Boogie Oogie Oogie,” no doubt having heard it at home from his parents or older sibling. In the 90s my wife bought me a 70s compilation which includes that song.

Almost everyone who remembers the 70s recalls “Boogie Oogie Oogie,” even if perhaps not so many know it was by A Taste of Honey. “Boogie Oogie Oogie” became part of the 70s, ever entwined with that amazing decade in memory.

Source:

genius.com