
For those unfamiliar, the basic movement involves shaking the shoulders and/or the hips in isolation (ie. the rest of the body is still) which achieves the effect of delicious wobbly bits being jostled about. Great huh?

Upon being asked about her dancing style, she is reported to have replied "I'm shaking my chemise [French for 'blouse']." As she had quite a heavy Polish accent in her younger years, this apparently sounded to the English-speaking audience like 'shimmy'. Gray denied having ever said this, which may or may not have been the case as the shimmy was already a popular dance move in the 1920's. The 'quote' stuck however and did her no disservice at all - in fact she is still credited with truly popularizing the shoulder shaking move in America. Well... she does share this throne with one other...

autobiography Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It, Mae West claims to have been THE agent of re-titling the "Shim-Me-Sha-Wobble" (a song associated with the dance composed in 1917) as "The Shimmy" after witnessing the movements in some black nightclubs (where the diaspora would be using the voodoo and Nigerian dances in a new context). The verity of her assertion is a tad doubtful as the word shimmy was used in the sheet music for the "Bullfrog Hop" in 1908 and the move could be seen in an old 1902 Edison film entitled "Princess Rajah."

