Is 'Wagon Wheel Watusi' a Real Dance? the Historical Truth Behind the Lyric

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If the Watusi is real, where did the "wagon wheel" come from? In American vernacular choreography, a "wagon wheel" exists in two completely separate traditions: Western square dancing and African-American chorus line choreography.

In traditional square dancing, a "wagon wheel" is an established call where male dancers move to the center of the square, link left hands or wrists to form a rotating hub, and extend right arms around their partners' waists, spinning the entire group across the floor like the spokes of a turning wheel. Concurrently, in 1930s and 1940s Apollo Theater stage routines, jazz dancers used "wagon wheel" as shorthand for full-circle floor spins or continuous rotating arm windmills.

[Square Dance Tradition] [R&B / Soul Fad]

"Wagon Wheel" Turn "The Watusi"

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[Pop Pastiche: 2010 Cher Lyric]

"Wagon Wheel Watusi"

What Lindsey and Gerrard accomplished in the Cher Burlesque soundtrack was a hybrid pastiche. By grafting the rustic, circular, rolling imagery of a "wagon wheel" onto the sharp, punchy hip-isolation of the Watusi, they created retro novelty dance slang that rolled effortlessly off Cher's tongue. It sounds authentic because both individual elements existed in the mid-century American lexicon, even though they were never historically cataloged as a single combined routine.