Zoodio

Category: Game Song
Source:     Multiple Sources

        Here we go Zoodio, Zoodio, Zoodio
        Here we go Zoodio,
        All night long 

        Step back, Sally, Sally, Sally
        Step back, Sally
        All night long       

        Walkin through the alley, alley, alley
        Walkin through the alley
        All night long

(Continue singing and performing the song as long as you choose)

I learned “Zoodio” in the 1950s during Vacation Bible School in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  One of our teachers, Mrs. Janie Mae Owens taught it to the all children attending the sessions.  I remember that she told us that she used to play “Zoodio” when she was a child in North Carolina.  I am guessing at Mrs. Owens' spelling of the this game's name.  I remember that Ms. Owens told us that “the alley” meant the rows between the corn or other vegetables.

This game is best played with at least eight people in a large open space either outside or inside. Mrs. Owens taught us how to play “Zoodio” this way: Choose a partner; stand facing your partner; cross your arms in front of your waist and take your partners’ right hand in your left hand (and vice versa). Slightly bend your knees like you are riding a bicycle and  move your partner's arms back and forth to the beat in a scissors motion while sing/chanting the rhyme.  On the words “Step back, Sally”, each partner jumps back four times to the beat (or, if the group agrees before hand,  back and forth to the beat).  On the words, “Walking down the alley”, the individual partners strut to the beat, each finding a new partner.  The song then begins again.  

Bessie Jones and Bess Lomax Hawes include a game called “Zudie-O” in Step It Down, their book on African American games, plays, songs, and stories from the Georgia Sea Isles (The University of Georgia Press, 1972, pages 137-138).  It is easy to imagine that these two games are different versions of each other, although they are slightly different in words and considerably different in directions. The game that Mrs. Jones remembers includes this first "Here comes another one, just like the other one all night long. And they're going zudie-o, zudie-o, zudie-o, They're going zudie-o all night long."  Mrs. Jones also talks about the "zudie-o rhythm", one that I can't approximate with this format.  "Step It Down" includes a music score of this song, but since I never learned how to read music, I'm only guessing that the Zoodio/Zudie-o tunes are the same.

Do you know any African American games like this?  Please share them with CocoJams!