Hully Gully (song)
1965 song composed by Fred Sledge Smith performed by The Beach Boys

"(Baby) Hully Gully" is a song written by Fred Sledge Smith and Cliff Goldsmith and recorded by The Olympics. Released in 1959, it peaked at number 72 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1960 and sparked the Hully Gully dance craze.
According to recollections by the Beatles about their early 1960 and '61 touring years, both in Hamburg and Liverpool the song had also gained a certain notoriety as a popular accompaniment to brawls among the audience, with fights often breaking out as soon as the song started being played.
Cover versions
"(Baby) Hully Gully" was covered by a number of different artists, sometimes under the name "Hully Gully (Baby)", "Hully Gully Baby" or simply "Hully Gully".
Buddy Guy, Stone Crazy! 1960–1967 (recorded 1960)
Chubby Checker, It's Pony Time (1961)
The Ventures, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy (1962)
The Dovells, single (1962)
Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers (1962) (appears on some bootlegs miscredited as The Beatles)
The Searchers, At the Star Club
The Beach Boys, Beach Boys' Party! (1965)
Jackie Lee, The Duck (1966)
Hollywood Argyles, single (1960)
Mike Bloomfield, Junko Partner and Prescription for the Blues (recorded 1977)
Grateful Dead (Amsterdam, 10-16-1981)
The A-Bones, Music Minus Five (1993)
Petr Kotvald, Právě tady...Právě teď (2011)
The song was covered, with new lyrics by H. B. Barnum and Marty Cooper, under the name of "Peanut Butter" by:
The Marathons (The Vibrations) (1961)
The Royal Guardsmen (1966)
J. Geils Band (1976)
Billy Vera and the Beaters (1987)
Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen (1992)
The Wiggles (2013)
The song was adapted as a commercial jingle for Peter Pan peanut butter in the 1980s.
The public source identifies “Hully Gully (song)” as 1965 song composed by Fred Sledge Smith performed by The Beach Boys. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hully, Gully and song.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q16845426. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959, 1960, 1967 and 1961.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hully Gully (song)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.