Every Sunday after church, our whole family (my mom, dad, brother and sister, eleven cousins, three aunties, three uncles, and five pet dogs), gathered at Granny's house for supper. Rain or shine, all fourteen of us grandkids ran wildly around her yard playing Kick The Can, Red Rover or Capture The Flag. We had so much fun together and made such a ruckus there was only one way to get our attention. And sure enough, everyone stopped playing immediately and ran inside for supper as soon as Granny came to the back porch, waved her spoon in the air and hollered at the top of her lungs:

"Kick-Ta-Bill-Icky-All-Uh-Guh-Locks-Ta-Hunk-Ta-Bunk-Ta-Boo...Yooo Hooo!"

Granny (my father's mother), died in 1989 at the age of 87. She told me that her GREAT grandmother (her grandmother's mother) used the whole phrase to call to the pigs on their farm. Granny and her sister "Dodie" used it to call to their farm animals and to each other. My dad used it to locate his pals while on fishing trips. Today, my sister and brother's children use it to call to one another just as my cousins and I did.

From its long history, you can see how it has been remembered and used through six generations of my family. In fact, I thought I had forgotten the word until a publisher asked me to write some songs for children some 30 years later. For some reason, as I sat with my guitar on my knee thinking about what on earth I could write about, the very last part of that phrase popped out of my memory bank, and "Hunk-Ta-Bunk-Ta BOO!" was the very first children's song I wrote.

In 1991, I founded Hunk-Ta-Bunk-Ta® MUSIC, which is an independent company committed to producing music-based materials of the highest quality in order to entertain and educate children, their families and loved ones, educators and early childcare providers.