Great Googly Moogly (minicast)

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It’s another minicast from A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette.

Great googly moogly!

Ever heard that one?

Jerry from Baltimore called to say he’d heard it during the 1970s when he was in the military.

After that, he didn’t run into it again for years.

Then earlier this year, he noticed it popping up everywhere.

Curious, Jerry did a lot of research on the Internet, but he still wasn’t satisfied.

So he called us.

I ran into it on a discussion board for owners of a particular sailboat, and somebody mentioned it like, great googly moogly, do you believe the price of that?

And I noticed it, and I said, gee, I haven’t heard that for a while.

And then I heard it in conversation somewhere else.

And then American Express started running reprises of their old commercials.

And there’s Jerry Seinfeld dressed as a cricket player getting brushed back by a pitch.

And he says, that was a great googly.

And I looked that up and found out that a googly is a bit like a screwball in that it’s designed to totally fool the batsmen.

And I’m trying to figure out if there was any connection to Googly Moogly.

Little further looking, and I find out that it appeared as early as the 50s in blues lyrics.

And it was used a lot in the 70s, the early 70s, by people like Howlin’ Wolf and Frank Zappa.

And later on, Tom Waits.

And I just couldn’t resist calling my favorite experts to find out if there’s something more to where that came from.

Other than just some blues man inventing some nifty little exclamatory line to try to get his lyrics remembered.

Your favorite experts.

What did Tom and Ray say?

Yeah.

No, those would be you.

Oh.

Those would be you, too.

Oh.

I do not miss a podcast.

Well, now, do you think that there’s a connection with the cricket idea?

Well, it’s pretty hard to make a connection between Frank Zappa, Holland Wolf, and Cricket.

Yeah.

Yeah, but if anybody could do it, Grant Barrett could.

Well, it just seems to me that the word was distinctive enough that there might be a history back there.

It would require something extraordinary to make that connection.

I think it’s a coincidence.

I completely agree.

And you do find that expression, great googly moogly, back in the 50s, a lot of R&B songs.

But there’s an earlier version, at least I think it’s related, Grant, and that’s back in 1953.

Actually, a Baltimore doo-wop group called the Magic Tones.

The Magic Tones.

The Magic Tones.

Are you familiar with them?

No, I’m not.

Well, they had a song called Good Googa Mooga.

I saw that, too.

How did you spell that?

Did you see that?

Good, and then G-O-O-G-A, and next word, M-O-O-G-A.

-huh.

And I think it’s just a goofy phrase.

It’s fun to say.

So it’s kind of from that era when people were just throwing nonsense words into songs to, I don’t know why.

Yeah, yeah, and especially the doo-wop connection.

I just think it’s a silly term, and you can see how it might change.

I mean, I’ve seen googly moogly and googly moogly.

But you said it was popping up all over the place just recently, right?

For some reason, I was noticing it.

And what really pushed me to go look was when I saw the Seinfeld commercial.

And I made the connection to the cricket pitch.

See, to me, the stories that are the most interesting are the ones that have the weirdest connections.

Exactly.

That would have been weird.

Yeah, that’s true.

Yeah, it would be wonderful if there were a connection,

But I would bet money that there is no connection with cricket.

But what’s the explanation for the word kind of popping up in Jerry’s radar recently?

I think that’s really a good question.

I mean, I’ve seen a couple of places.

There’s a rapper named Project Pat.

Do you know him?

Yeah, no, I don’t know him, but I saw that too when I went out there to work.

But is he well-known enough to credit for the more recent popularization of this expression?

Or is it just Jerry’s illusion that it’s become more popular?

I have a few of those.

It could be that.

I don’t know how popular that song is, but I know it’s got a great catchy tune,

Something like, good, googly moogly, that thing is juicy.

What’s he talking about?

Well, I can’t go into the rest of the lyrics.

Oh, I see.

But good googly moogly, that thing is juicy.

Yeah, I think that’s what it’s about.

I don’t know.

Did you check that out, Jerry?

I saw that and decided that that’s probably not where the people I know were getting it.

Okay.

Okay.

And do you have any preschoolers who are your friends?

Well, I work in an ad agency, and sometimes we see that behavior, but no.

Okay.

Right.

Well, there’s a Nickelodeon show.

What’s it called?

Maggie and the Ferocious Beast?

And it’s this little cartoon girl and her sidekick friend, the ferocious beast, always says, great googly moogly or oh googly moogly or something like that.

OK.

So there’s a whole new generation of googly moogly sayers out there.

OK.

But, you know, I don’t know.

Do you know, Grant?

No, I don’t know.

I just know that about 20 years ago, there was a singer by the name of Mojo Nixon, I think, who actually came out of San Diego, who used to do some kind of call and response with that expression, googly moogly, with his crowd.

And he was kind of in the R&B quasi rockabilly tradition, I guess, if I’m remembering correctly.

But I don’t know about more recently.

I suspect it came up on a commercial that was replayed repeatedly, but I don’t think it was the Seinfeld commercial.

Well, Jerry, I’m sorry we weren’t able to give you a more definitive answer.

But hey, speaking of commercials, have you seen the Snickers one with this expression?

You can find it on YouTube. It’s pretty funny.

Here’s how it goes.

There’s a football stadium, and it has a groundskeeper working in the end zone.

He’s just finished carefully painting the name of the home team in giant letters on the grass.

Then a player walks up, and he says, hey, that’s great, but who are the chefs?

The groundskeeper realizes that after hours of work, he’s left the letter I out of the word chiefs.

And, of course, that’s the point where he says disgustedly, great googly moogly.

Anyway, if you know more about the expression great googly moogly,

Or you’d like to talk about another word or phrase, give us a call.

The number is 1-877-929-9673 or send an email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.

Thanks for listening.

For A Way with Words, I’m Martha Barnette.

You can support this program by making a donation at waywordradio.org.

Thank you.