Do you find inspiration in music? My husband and I do—but we sometimes get distracted by something within the music or lyrics, which usually winds up sending us to do research, because that’s the way we roll (and it may be part of why he’s so good at trivia and why I should be better than I am).
Richard and I have this burning question that spurs ongoing discussions, especially when we listen to “our” music—otherwise known as golden oldies. The scary thing about these conversations is that we have them quite often. This one comes up every time we hear a song with nonsense words in it.
We both grew up with parents who grew up in the depression, which means we are old enough to have picked up their music as well as ours. This means some of the many songs we like are really oldies. But the burning question that keeps us awake nights is this: How and why did someone decide that nonsense words (and which nonsense words) would work in a popular song? I mean, really. What made Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich think, maybe if we write a song about a girl walking down the street singing, she should be singing “Doo Wah Diddy Diddy Dum Diddy Do.” Or when Frank Sinatra sang about strangers in the night, did he just improvise those famous non-words, “Doo-bee-doo-bee-doo, Doo-doo-dee-dah, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah”? And on another, unrelated note, do you think Scooby Doo was named after those lyrics? Just thought I’d ask.
When I looked up how to spell “Doo be doo be doo” (or is it “bee”?) for this post, I found that some lyrics sites leave that part out completely or just say, “Doo be doo be doo and other scat to end.” “Scat” is what a lot of these gibberish phrases are called. So having brought that up—unless you’re as old as I, you may not know what scat singing is. The scat style deliberately uses nonsense syllables as a musical device. According to vintagenews.com, the “improvised melodies and rhythms” create the equivalent of an instrumental solo. There are lots of fun scat songs by other musical giants such as Louis Armstrong (arguably the most influential scat singer), Bing Crosby, Cab Calloway, Scatman Crothers, and Ella Fitzgerald, plus some I hadn’t heard of. Louis Armstrong’s song, “Heebie Jeebies” seems to be the first recording of scat, in 1926. The story goes that Satchmo dropped the sheet music while recording the song and, not wanting dead air in the recording, just started singing nonsense syllables. To his surprise, everyone liked it and they kept it in the recording. You’ve always wondered about that, right?
Then there’s Little Richard with his song Tutti-Frutti, including these lyrics: “A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom,” which seems to have ushered in the doo wop era in 1955. It was sort of like Jazz’s scat translated to rock and roll. In the mid-60s he recorded “Bama Lama Bama Loo,” inspired by the Beatles, who sang several of Little Richard’s songs and credited him as one of the big influences on their music.
Another fan favorite of the late 50s was “Witch Doctor,” a novelty song by Ross Bagdasarian (from Fresno, stage name David Seville), who speeded up the recording to get the “chimpmunk” sound he also used later when creating Alvin and the Chipmunks. He named the fictional Chipmunks’ manager David Seville, in case you recognized the name. In the song, the singer tells the witch doctor he is in love, but his love doesn’t return the feeling. The witch doctor’s sage advice is, “ooo eee ooo ah ah, ting tang walla walla bing bang.” I think maybe this goes beyond scat and doo wop. I mean, it’s probably his native language, right? But was his advice good? Never having met a witch doctor, I just have to assume that those nonsense words are witch doctor-ese for… oh, who knows?
Anyone who plays the piano probably learned to play “Heart and Soul” and the “Blue Moon” ballad (they share the same accompanying chords in the same rhythm) not long after they learned “chopstick”—that is, if you had someone to play the other part. Just wanted to set the stage for a doo wop version of “Blue Moon” by The Marcels from 1961 that makes me think doo wop may have been the precursor to beat boxing —with nonsense syllables rather than percussive sounds. The intro and “chorus” goes like this: “Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom, Bom ba ba bom ba bom ba bom bom, dang a dang dang ding a dong ding, blue moon,” ending satisfactorily on a deep base note. But don’t take my word for it, you can listen to it here.
Who even comes up with this stuff and then believes it will work in a hit song? That’s the mystery we will never solve—but it’s fun to think and talk about all the songs with nonsense words that obviously have stood the test of time. And, clearly, others have thought about this before us.
One of our favorite fun songs talks about the crazy words in songs, and it is so singable that you’ll have a hard time not singing along if you know it. You’re welcome. You can thank the Platters, too.
“Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp?
Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong?
Who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop?
Who put the dip in the dip da dip da dip?
Who was that man? I’d like to shake his hand.
He made my baby fall in love with me.”
Not sure why or how that made his baby fall in love (Was it the bomp? The ram? The bop? The dip?)—but then, who knows what makes anyone fall in love?
One of our favorite groups, The Carpenters, sang about the same phenomenon:
“Every Sha-la-la-la, Every Wo-o-wo-o still shines. Every shing-a-ling-a-ling that they’re startin’ to sing so fine…”
Most people would agree that Karen Carpenter could make anything sound good. I still feel, though, that if I wrote a song I would not have the chutzpah to add something like “rama lama lama lama lama ding dong” to the lyrics and assume it would hit the Billboard Hot 100. Or even the top 1000. But honestly, thinking of songs (mostly oldies) that have crazy lyrics provides us with hours of entertainment, as we also like to play them once we think of them. We are easily entertained. I just can’t get over how they would ever imagine those phrases would sell. But sell, they did! Wonder if Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night” would have been a flop If he had sung “scooby doo be doo“ instead of “ doo be doo be doo”? I guess we’ll never know.
What nonsense lyrics make you scratch your head or roll your eyes? If you haven’t really noticed them before, I bet you will now! I’d love for you to share them in the comments below. And raise your hand if you sing along…
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Made me think of ‘itty bitty fishies in the itty bitty poo’. That always made me smile. I think Bing Crosby sang that one.
Oh my goodness, JoAnn, thanks for the memory! That’s one of the few songs I can remember my mom (as opposed to my dad) singing to us. Love it! 😊
🤟🏻 Becky
Three Little Fishies in an IittyBitty Pool is another one.
That’s a good one—boop boop diddum daddum wattum chew! That also makes me think of Mairsey Dotes!