THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE: Iko Iko

This was prepared as a chapter in my hypothetical book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1), but is not part of that project's current blueprint.

An infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!

THE DIXIE CUPS: Iko Iko

Written by James Crawford, Barbara Ann Hawkins, Rosa Lee Hawkins, and Joan Marie Johnson

Produced by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, Ellie Greenwich, and Jeff Barry

Single, Red Bird Records, 1965

Like Mary Poppins and the Ramones, the Dixie Cups' "Iko Iko" is practically perfect in every way. There's also much to be said for the group's originally-unreleased alternate version (which refers to a boy as "a sex machine," and probably wouldn't have made it to the radio in 1965), but nothing compares to the well-known hit rendition. The Greatest Record Ever Made? Well...yeah.

"Iko Iko" predates the Dixie Cups, beginning its life as "Jock-A-Mo," a 1953 Checker Records 78 by Sugar Boy and his Cane Cutters. It was written by James "Sugar Boy" Crawford himself, a New Orleans pianist who crafted the tale of conflict between tribes of Mardi Gras Indians. Y'know, like West Side Story, without the star-crossed romance, and a few years before Officer Krupke. It didn't matter what the song's story was about; listeners heard lyrics about "jock-a-mo" and "iko iko" and presumed it was another "Lawdy Miss Clawdy." Crawford likely had no grander ambition than that anyway.

The Dixie Cups, a vocal group comprised of two sisters and a cousin--Barbara Ann Hawkins, Rosa Lee Hawkins, and Joan Marie Johnson--were also from New Orleans. They had a # 1 smash in 1964 with the Jeff Barry-Ellie Greenwich song "Chapel Of Love," the first single issued by Mike Leiber, Jerry Stoller, and George Goldner's Red Bird Records label. The Dixie Cups followed "Chapel Of Love"  with the # 12 hit "People Say," also by Barry-Greenwich, also on Red Bird, also in '64. Subsequent singles did not fare as well. 

The group's next and final hit was "Iko Iko" in 1965. In his liner notes to the Dixie Cups compilation The Complete Red Bird Recordings, music journalist Bill Dahl chronicles the genesis of the record:

"'Iko Iko' was a percussion-laden Carnival Day strut with saucy lyrics; its taping was unplanned. 'My grandmother used to sing that to us as kids,' says Barbara. 'We were in the process of doing some overdubbing or whatever, or we had just finished with the band, because all of the musicians were gone. And we started singing, and for the music we used a chair, a drumstick, a Coke bottle, an ashtray, and we put drums on it. Got the beat we wanted, and started singing.

"'We didn't realize that Jerry and Mike were in the booth listening. So when we started singing it, they said, "Hey girls, that sounds good! Do it again! Do it again!" So we did, and they turned the tape on. And then afterwards, they came out and talked to us. They said, "Well, what is that?" So we told 'em what it was all about. And that's how it was born...

"'...In my entire life, I had never heard "Jock-A-Mo,"' states Barbara unequivocally."

The members of the Dixie Cups received the songwriting credit on the Red Bird 45 of "Iko Iko," a notable accomplishment by itself, given how routinely the names of producers, moneymen, and random passers-by often made their way into the lucrative publishing end of hitmaking during this era. That seeming triumph is tarnished by tales of group members being screwed over financially and physically abused behind the scenes, an all-too-common occurrence within the cruel world of the entertainment industry. And elsewhere.

It's not implausible that Barbara, Rosa Lee, and Joan really did think "Iko Iko" was just a song their grandmother sang to them...but "Iko Iko" is indeed "Jock-A-Mo," albeit a "Jock-A-Mo" rearranged and rethought from its original solid but generic R & B bop into an all-time girl-group classic. Crawford's name was eventually added back to the credit.

The Dixie Cups deserve credit, too. Would we even know "Jock-A-Mo"/"Iko Iko" if the Dixie Cups hadn't rescued it from obscurity, and remade it into something better? No, most of us would not. For us to notice it, somebody had to set the damned flag on fire. That task fell to the Dixie Cups. Talkin' 'bout hey-now....

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