The story of rock and roll is littered with happy accidents, but few are as improbable, as perfectly chaotic, as the birth of “Hanky Panky.” It wasn’t crafted in a sun-drenched California studio or a savvy Tin Pan Alley writing room. It was born of teenage exuberance, left for dead, and then resurrected by the sheer force of a dance craze in a city its creator had never even visited. It’s a ghost story where the ghost comes back to top the charts.
Our story begins not in 1966, the year the song conquered the airwaves, but two years earlier in Niles, Michigan. A sixteen-year-old Tommy Jackson—not yet James—is fronting his band, The Shondells. They’re kids, full of unrefined energy, and they stumble upon a B-side by The Raindrops, a Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich tune that has the right kind of swagger. They need a song for a local gig, so they hammer out their own version.
Forget meticulous production. The 1964 recording of “Hanky Panky” took place in the studios of WNIL, a local radio station. You can almost feel the cramped space, smell the hot vacuum tubes of the amplifiers. There was no producer meticulously shaping the sound, just a local DJ named Jack Douglas hitting ‘record.’ What they captured was raw, adolescent lightning: a snarling vocal, a primitive beat, and a guitar riff so simple and potent it felt like an incantation.
The sound is wonderfully crude. The guitar, drenched in a throbbing tremolo effect, doesn’t just play a riff; it stutters and spits, a nervous system jangling with teenage lust. The drums are a relentless, almost brutal thud, pushing everything forward with the subtlety of a shove. Tommy’s voice is a marvel of unpolished confidence, a sneer wrapped in echo that perfectly sells the song’s playground-chant lyrics. The record was pressed on the tiny Snap Records label and, like countless local singles of the era, it promptly vanished. Tommy finished high school. The band broke up. The song was a ghost.
Two years pass. The world changes. The British Invasion has fully landed, and pop music is becoming more sophisticated, more artful. Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, a dance promoter and DJ named “Mad Mike” Metrovich is digging through a crate of forgotten records. He pulls out the Snap Records 45 of “Hanky Panky” and gives it a spin. The raw, unhinged energy connects. The kids on the dance floor react not with their minds, but with their feet.
Suddenly, this dead record had a pulse. Pittsburgh radio stations, inundated with requests, couldn’t find copies. A local record distributor capitalized on the frenzy by bootlegging the track, reportedly selling tens of thousands of copies throughout Pennsylvania. This forgotten piece of music, recorded by a teenager in a small-town radio station, was now a regional monster hit, all without its creator even knowing.
The phone call must have felt like a prank. Tommy James, now 19 and playing with a different band, gets a call from a Pittsburgh promoter telling him his two-year-old record is the biggest thing in the city. He’s told to come immediately. The problem? The original Shondells were long gone. In a scramble worthy of a Hollywood script, he cobbled together a new band from a local group, The Raconteurs, and headed to Pittsburgh. They became The Shondells.
After a whirlwind tour of Pennsylvania clubs, playing a song the new band barely knew, James took the original master tape to New York City. He was turned down by nearly every major label. The recording was too primitive, too unprofessional for 1966. Finally, he found a home at Roulette Records, a label run by the infamous Morris Levy. Levy, recognizing the raw power of the original, made a crucial decision: he released the 1964 master as-is, dirt and all.
“It’s a testament to the idea that feel can sometimes matter more than fidelity.”
The song exploded. In the summer of 1966, amidst the blossoming genius of The Beatles’ Revolver and The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, this crude, two-chord stomp went all the way to number one in America. An album, also titled Hanky Panky, was hastily assembled to capitalize on the single’s success, a common practice of the time. The album itself is a mix of covers and originals, a snapshot of a band finding its footing in the shadow of a monolithic hit.
Listening today, the track’s appeal is primal. It’s the antithesis of overthinking. In an era where some artists were adding sitars and string sections, “Hanky Panky” offered a simple, visceral thrill. It doesn’t feature an elegant piano melody; it relies on the blunt-force trauma of that iconic guitar riff. That sound inspired a generation of kids to demand an electric guitar for their birthday, convinced that a few guitar lessons were all that stood between them and rock and roll stardom.
Imagine a teenager in 2025, scrolling through a “Garage Rock Classics” playlist on their music streaming subscription. They’re used to digitally perfected beats and auto-tuned vocals. Then “Hanky Panky” erupts from their speakers. That fuzzy, trembling guitar. That relentless, pounding drum. That wild, reverb-soaked voice. It connects across six decades because its energy is pure and its intention is simple: to make you move. It sounds just as electrifying on a modern home audio system as it did crackling out of a tiny transistor radio in 1966.
Tommy James & The Shondells would go on to have a spectacular career, evolving into sophisticated pop craftsmen with hits like “Crimson and Clover” and “Crystal Blue Persuasion.” But they would never again capture the beautiful, accidental chaos of their first hit. “Hanky Panky” isn’t their most complex or artistic statement, but it is their most essential. It’s the sound of a door being kicked open, a glorious mistake that turned out to be exactly right.
Go back and listen to it again. Listen past the simplicity and hear the sound of a second chance, of a ghost in the machine who came back to have the last dance.
LISTENING RECOMMENDATIONS
- The Kingsmen – “Louie Louie”: For its similarly legendary lo-fi production and a raw energy that made it a garage-rock blueprint.
- The Troggs – “Wild Thing”: For its shared DNA of primal, riff-driven simplicity and effortlessly cool swagger.
- ? and the Mysterians – “96 Tears”: For another a-ha moment in garage rock, driven by a hypnotic, unforgettable keyboard riff and a mysterious vocal.
- The Seeds – “Pushin’ Too Hard”: For its proto-punk snarl, showcasing the grittier, more aggressive edge of the mid-60s garage sound.
- The Count Five – “Psychotic Reaction”: For bridging raw garage with emerging psychedelia through a frantic pace and an iconic fuzz guitar break.
- Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs – “Wooly Bully”: For its equally infectious, party-starting simplicity that also rocketed up the charts against more polished competition.