Misirlou, the tune, was published as sheet music in the 1930s by
Nicholas Roubanis, a Columbia University musical scholar and professor.
The words to the song are by Fred Wise, Milton Leeds, and S.K.
Russell.

In the 1940s, the Mitchell Ayers band recorded the tune. Jan August
had his first and biggest hit with the tune in the late 1940s and it was
a hit for band leader Wayne King. “Dick Dale and His Del-Tones,” as well
as “The Beach Boys,” recorded the tune in 1963; and other surfer bands
subsequently put it into their repertoires. Misirlou was featured in the
opening scene of the movie Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino in
the late 1990s.

In 1945, a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, women’s musical organization
asked Professor Brunhilde E. Dorsch to organize an international dance
group at Duquesne University to honor America’s World War II allies. She
contacted Mercine Nesotas, who taught several Greek dances, including
Syrtos Haniotikos (from Crete), which she called Kritikos, but for which
they had no music. Because Pittsburgh’s Greek-American community did not
know Cretan music, Pat Mandros Kazalas, a music student, suggested the
tune Misirlou, an Arabian Serenade, although slower, might fit the
dance.

The dance was first performed at a program to honor America’s allies
of World War II at Stephen Foster Memorial Hall in Pittsburgh on March
6, 1945. A folk dance leader in Pittsburgh, Monty Mayo, introduced the
dance in New York and Michael Herman listed it in his catalogue,
eventually calling it “Misirlou” so as not to confuse it with the
genuine “Kritikos Syrtos” and Brunhilde introduced the dance at Oglebay
Park Camp in 1948.

Anne Pittman learned Misirlou at Oglebay and introduced it to
Southern California in the early 1950s.

The dance was first noted in Partners All, Places All by
Mimi Kirkell and Irma Schaffnit in 1949. The rest, as they say, is
history. Misirlou is danced all over the world, even by the local
Pittsburgh Greeks.

Many available