This song has quite a history. It was written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich when they were The Raindrops back in 1963. This duo (husband and wife team) also wrote “Do Wah Ditty Ditty” which was later recorded by Manfred Mann. They were in the studio recording a song as the Raindrops, “That Boy John,” when they realized they needed a B-side for the record. So, they sat down and wrote “Hanky Panky” is about 20 minutes.

Now, jump back in time to 1947 when Tommy James was born in Dayton, Ohio. His real name was Thomas Gregory Jackson but he would later sing and record under the name Tommy James. When he was two, his mother bought him a record player and he loved to play the records. When he was three he got a ukulele and then when he was about nine, he got his first guitar. So, I think it’s safe to say that Tommy knew what he wanted to do right from the beginning.

In middle school, he put together a band he called The Shondells. They played wherever and whenever they could. At the age of twelve, they recorded a song called “Long Pony Tail” and tried to peddle it around Dayton. A DJ heard the record and asked Tommy if he had any more. He had heard a song done by a group in a club and decided to record what he could remember of the song. The song was “Hanky Panky.”

They recorded “Hanky Panky” on a local label called Snap Records which distributed just in the tri-state area of Michigan, Indiana and Illinois. So, the song died. Tommy graduated from the high school and the Shondells went their own way. Soon, Tommy was out of work and drifting, not sure what he should do, when he received a call from a disc jockey in Pittsburgh. The DJ had found an old copy of “Hanky Panky” and had been playing it. It was a hit in Pittsburgh.

Tommy tried to get the old Shondells together again, but they weren’t interested, so he went out and formed a whole new Shondells. Tommy took the original master to New York where, amazingly, Roulette bought the master just as it was. So, what you hear is the original “Hanky Panky” with the original Shondells playing. Roulette was a national distributor and so the record could now be heard all over the country. And it was.

Everyone was surprised when the song was a hit. Even one of the writers, Jeff Barry, thought it was a terrible song. But, you can’t listen to “Hanky Panky” and not smile and tap your foot. It’s like they used to say on American bandstand, “It has a great beat and you can dance to it.” At any rate, it kicked off a career for Tommy James and the Shondells, who would go on to hit the Top 40 seventeen times and have another number one in 1968 (“Crimson and Clover”.)

“Hanky Panky” debuted on the pop charts on June 18, 1966 and spent two weeks at number one.

Not sure when this video was filmed. It looks old so not sure if this is the original Shondells or the newer version.