"Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop" is a 1946 song by

Lionel Hampton Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphonist, percussionist, and bandleader. He worked with jazz musicians from Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Rich, to Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, an ...

and His Orchestra. The song's lead vocals were performed by Lionel Hampton himself and the recording featured

Herbie Fields Herbie Fields (Herbert Bernfeld, May 24, 1919 – September 17, 1958) was an American jazz musician. He attended New York's famed Juilliard School of Music (1936–38) and served in the U.S. Army from 1941 to 1943. Career Membership in the Raym ...

on alto sax. The song went to number one on the R&B Juke Box chart for sixteen non-consecutive weeks and reached number nine on the national pop charts. Although the writing of "Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop" was credited to Hampton and his drummer Curley Hamner, it was essentially a partial rewriting of

Helen Humes Helen Humes (June 23, 1913 – September 13, 1981) was an American singer. She was a blues, R&B and classic popular singer. Early life Humes was born on June 23, 1913, in Louisville, Kentucky, to Emma Johnson and John Henry Humes. She grew up ...

' 1945 R&B hit "Be-Baba-Leba", which in turn was closely related to "Ee-Bobaliba" by

Jim Wynn James Sherman Wynn (March 12, 1942March 26, 2020), nicknamed "the Toy Cannon", was an American professional baseball player. He played 15 seasons as a center fielder; he spent ten of his fifteen seasons with the Houston Colt .45s / Astros befor ...

Precursors

The song "Be-Baba-Leba" was recorded by Helen Humes with the

Bill Doggett William Ballard Doggett (February 16, 1916 – November 13, 1996) was an American pianist and organist. He began his career playing swing music before transitioning into rhythm and blues. Best known for his instrumental compositions "Honky Tonk ...

Octet in August 1945, in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

, and rose to number 3 on the ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...

R&B chart The Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart ranks the most popular R&B and hip hop songs in the United States and is published weekly by '' Billboard''. Rankings are based on a measure of radio airplay, sales data, and streaming activity. The chart had 100 ...

at the end of the year. The writing of the song was credited to Humes, who wrote the lyrics, such as: "He thrills me in the morning, thrills me in the night, the way he loves me makes me scream with delight, oooh oooh oooh baba-leba....". The vocal choruses are interspersed with saxophone breaks by

Wild Bill Moore William M. "Wild Bill" Moore (June 13, 1918 – August 1, 1983) was an American R&B and jazz tenor saxophone player. Moore earned a modest hit on the Hot R&B charts with "We're Gonna Rock, We're Gonna Roll", which also was one of the earliest ro ...

, who was brought in by Doggett for the session. Pianist

Jelly Roll Morton Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe ( Lemott, later Morton; c. September 20, 1890 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American blues and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer of Louisiana Creole descent. Morton was jazz ...

said that "Be-Baba-Leba"'s

riff A riff is a short, repeated motif or figure in the melody or accompaniment of a musical composition. Riffs are most often found in rock music, punk, heavy metal music, Latin, funk, and jazz, although classical music is also sometimes based ...

was "so old it's got whiskers", and it is close to the one on "Boogie Woogie" recorded by

Jimmy Rushing James Andrew Rushing (August 26, 1901 – June 8, 1972) was an American singer and pianist from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S., best known as the featured vocalist of Count Basie's Orchestra from 1935 to 1948. Rushing was known as " Mr. Five by ...

with

Count Basie William James "Count" Basie (; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and the ...

in 1937. However, the scat wording apparently derives from "Ee-Bobaliba", a song performed by saxophonist and bandleader

in the early 1940s with his band, the Bobalibans. By that time, the term "

bebop Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early to mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo (usually exceeding 200 bpm), complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerou ...

" or similar terms like "ba-re-bop" were becoming popular among musicians to describe the new forms of

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...

being performed by such musicians as

Dizzy Gillespie John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie ( ; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and singer. He was a trumpet virtuoso and improvisation, improviser, building on the virtuosic style of Roy El ...

. Wynn recorded his song, with vocalist Claude Trenier, after Humes recorded "Be-Baba-Leba", and it did not make the chart.Dave Penny, "Jim Wynn", ''Black Cat Rockabilly''
Retrieved 30 November 2016

Lionel Hampton recording

Once Humes' record had become a hit,

Decca Records Decca Records is a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis (Decca), Edward Lewis after his acquisition of a gramophone manufacturer, The Decca Gramophone Company. It set up an American subsidiary under the Decca name, which bec ...

rushed Lionel Hampton into the studio to record a similar song, which became "Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop". Their arrangement was similar to Jim Wynn's but added a

call and response Call and response is a form of interaction between a speaker and an audience in which the speaker's statements ("calls") are punctuated by responses from the listeners. This form is also used in music, where it falls under the general category of ...

element between Hampton and his musicians, and replaced Humes' salacious verses with nonsense rhymes like: "Matilda Brown told old King Tut, 'If you can't say rebop keep your big mouth shut', say hey ba-ba-re-bop...". Hampton was already a popular and established musician, at a bigger company than Humes'

Philo Philo of Alexandria (; ; ; ), also called , was a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher who lived in Alexandria, in the Roman province of Egypt. The only event in Philo's life that can be decisively dated is his representation of the Alexandrian J ...

, and his version soon knocked Humes off the charts and went to number one on the R&B chart for 16 weeks (a record broken at that time only by

Joe Liggins Joseph Christopher Liggins Jr. (born Theodro Elliott; July 9, 1916 – July 26, 1987) was an American R&B, jazz and blues pianist and vocalist who led Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers in the 1940s and 1950s. His band appeared often on the ''Bi ...

' "

The Honeydripper "The Honeydripper (Parts 1 and 2)" is an R&B song by Joe Liggins and his Honeydrippers which topped the US ''Billboard'' R&B chart (at that time called the "Race Records" chart) for 18 weeks, from September 1945 to January 1946. History Liggin ...

" and

Louis Jordan Louis Thomas Jordan (July 8, 1908 – February 4, 1975) was an American saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and bandleader who was popular from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "Honorific nicknames in popular music, the King ...

's "

Choo Choo Ch'Boogie "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie" is a popular song written by Vaughn Horton, Denver Darling, and Milt Gabler. The song was recorded in January 1946 by Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five and released by Decca Records. It topped the R&B charts for 18 weeks f ...

"). The song is viewed in some respects as a precursor to

rock and roll Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock-n-roll, and rock 'n' roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from African ...

. Reviewer Lindsay Planer wrote of Hampton's recording:

The cut immediate gets fired up with Hampton's trademark two-fingered piano lick as it beckons to hipsters of all stripes. He is joined by the rhythm section, which establishes a solid boogie-woogie tempo leading up to the catchy chorus. The verses are offered in a halting style, with the combo accenting the first downbeat, then laying out for the other three in the measure. This effective technique would later show up as a sonic hallmark of blues arrangements. The lyrics are presented in short rhymes... Between the second and final couplet there is an extended instrumental break, giving the trumpet and clarinet room to wail. Hampton returns with some improvised scat vocals and another round of the chorus before heading into the concluding lines and one last coda of the chorus.

Later versions and influence

Hampton was also responsible for recording another version of the song, "Hey-Ba-Ra-Re-Bop", by

Wynonie Harris Wynonie Harris (August 24, 1915 – June 14, 1969) was an American blues shouter best remembered as a singer of upbeat songs, featuring humorous, often ribald lyrics. He had fifteen Top 10 hits between 1946 and 1952. Harris is attributed by ...

, which was released on his Hamp-Tone label, though Hampton himself did not play on the session. The song was also

covered Cover or covers may refer to: Packaging * Another name for a lid * Cover (philately), generic term for envelope or package * Album cover, the front of the packaging * Book cover or magazine cover ** Book design ** Back cover copy, part of ...

Tex Beneke Gordon Lee "Tex" Beneke ( ; February 12, 1914 – May 30, 2000) was an American saxophonist, singer, and bandleader. His career is a history of associations with bandleader Glenn Miller and former musicians and singers who worked with Miller. Hi ...

with the

Glenn Miller Alton Glen "Glenn" Miller (March 1, 1904 – December 15, 1944) was an American big band conductor, arranger, composer, trombonist, and recording artist before and during World War II, when he was an officer in the United States Army Air Forces ...

Orchestra, as "Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop", which reached number 4 on the pop chart in 1946. Other versions, though technically listed as different songs, included Dizzy Gillespie's "Bob A Lee Ba" and Tina Dixon's "E-Bop-O-Lee-Bop". The use of nonsense syllables to convey excitement was passed on in later years in such songs as

Gene Vincent Vincent Eugene Craddock (February 11, 1935 – October 12, 1971), known as Gene Vincent, was an American rock and roll musician who pioneered the style of rockabilly. His 1956 top ten hit with his backing band the Blue Caps, "Be-Bop-a-Lula", is ...

's " Be-Bop-A-Lula" and

Little Richard Richard Wayne Penniman (December 5, 1932 – May 9, 2020), known professionally as Little Richard, was an American singer, pianist, and songwriter. He was an influential figure in popular music and culture for seven decades. Described as the "Ar ...

's "awopbopaloobop alopbamboom" in " Tutti Frutti", both in 1956.

Holger Czukay Holger Schüring (24 March 1938 – 5 September 2017), known professionally as Holger Czukay (), was a German musician who co-founded the krautrock group Can. Described as "successfully bridg ngthe gap between pop and the avant-garde", Czukay a ...

recorded several versions of a track "Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop", inspired by a live recording of Hampton's performance in Hamburg in the 1950s; Czukay's version appears on the album Rome Remains Rome.

References

{{authority control 1946 songs Decca Records singles Lionel Hampton songs

Precursors

Lionel Hampton recording

Later versions and influence

See also

References