On that same Hi-Y trip to New York City in 1965, there were several other side trips besides the Broadway musical. As I recall, we were given a list of several activities that we could choose from.

I’m not sure why but one of the ones I picked was to see the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, a magnificent structure on Amsterdam Avenue up around 110th Street. It’s the world’s sixth largest church by area and either the largest or second-largest Anglican cathedral. I’m sure Jesus would be so proud that folks are spending millions of dollars to build and maintain these huge buildings to worship him rather than putting those funds towards helping the poor. Right?

That must have been the Saturday morning activity, because in the afternoon I went to some sort of pop concert. Again, I’m not sure why I picked that except Shirley Ellis was the featured performer and she had recently had a hit with “The Name Game”.

I didn’t really follow much pop music in those days, but I was aware of “The Name Game”. It wasn’t so much a song as a set of rules for playing around with names set to an R&B rhythm. It had a good beat and you could dance to it, so it became a hit.

Wikipedia lists the rules:

Using the name Katie as an example, the song follows this pattern:

Katie, Katie, bo-batie,
Bonana-fanna fo-fatie
Fee fi mo-matie
Katie!

A verse can be created for any name with stress on the first syllable, with X as the name and Y as the name without the first consonant sound (if it begins with a consonant), as follows:

(X), (X), bo-b (Y)
Bonana-fanna fo-f (Y)
Fee fi mo-m (Y)
(X)!

If the name starts with a b, f, or m, that sound simply is not repeated. For example: Billy becomes “Billy Billy bo-illy”; Fred becomes “bonana fanna fo-red”; Marsha becomes “fee fi mo-arsha”

So my name would be:

James, James, bo-bames
Bonana-fanna fo-fames
Fee fi mo-mames
James!

Simple.

Anyway, I remember getting to the concert already in progress, I think several of us had gone but I don’t recall who any of the others were.

When Shirley Ellis came on, she launched into “The Name Game” and got the crowd clapping and swooning, and then with the band riffing behind her, she started taking requests for names. The first couple went fine, she applied the rules to the names, the crowd was digging it, and we were all having a great time.

Then another request came that she ignored, and she asked for another. We were sitting about halfway back and the name requests were coming from the front of the audience so we couldn’t hear them. Finally, we heard her say, “No, I’m not gonna do Chuck!”

And I wondered why. She got another acceptable name request and she launched into that as I mentally went through “Chuck, Chuck, bo-buck, Bonana-fanna fo-f— Oh, dear!”

I later learned that Chuck was not the only name that she learned not to do.