Tuesday, July 09, 2019

SWINGIN’ THE ALPHABET: The Three Stooges B-I-Bicki as Big Band’s B-I-BI


Listen to THIS guy Swingin' the Alphabet! He doesn't exactly look like MOE, though, does he?

One of the most beloved musical moments in 30’s film comedies, right up there with Groucho singing “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” and W.C. Fields warbling ("Poor Young man) a British Music Hall ditty in “The Fatal Glass of Beer,” is The Three Stooges “Swingin’ The Alphabet” in the 1938 short “Violent is the Word for Curly.” (The title was a pun on the 1936 movie “Valiant is the Word for Carrie,” with Gladys George in the title role of Carrie Snyder.  

Professor Moe Howard, with able help from Larry and Curly, instruct a bunch of hot-looking coeds on how to sing some weird variation on Pig Latin. It was based on the 1875 song “The Spelling Bee,” written by the amusingly-named Septimus Winner. Winner apparently based it on a college chant, “Ba-Be-Bi-Bo-Bu.” Bu-bu-bu-borrowing tunes was quite popular in the days before copyright and is even MORE popular now that the Internet has made defending copyright difficult and unpopular.

Only three years after the Three Stooges swung the alphabet with their B-I-Bicki-Bye, some Bi-sexual stooges created “Bi-I-Bi.” The numbskulls: Sydney King Russell (S.K. Russell as he preferred) plus two babes, Judy and Beverly Freeland. Oddly, “Bi-I-Bi” was VERY popular as sheet music. Any hipster cruising into a department store for something more interesting than “Tenement Symphony” (from the Marx Brothers 1941 film “The Big Store”) could find “Bi-I-Bi” on sheet music with either Beverly Mahr, The Harrison Sisters, The Tune Toppers, Ray Bloch or Hal McIntyre on the cover. Yes, FIVE different cover versions on this piece of…sheet music. 

The song was recorded by quite a few orchestras, including ones helmed by Horace Heidt (Columbia) and Guy Lombardo (Decca). However, RCA’s Bluebird version from Bob Chester and his Orchestra (vocal refrain by Betty Bradley and Bob Haymes) seems to be the only one captured on film. Just click the link above and hear how some of it is WAY TOO CLOSE to the Stooges’ song. 

Interest in botching the alphabet for nonsense syllables didn’t end with the shellac whacks of 1941. In 1957, Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps released "B. I. Bickey Bi, Bo Bo Go" which was b-b-based on Don Carter’s song "Bi I Bicky Bi Bo Bo Boo.” When Gene grabbed it and adapted it, Carter got a co-write credit. You might recall that Gene had already dazzled the public with "Be-Bop-A-Lula.” 

Don Carter may have dimly recalled the Three Stooges song when he wrote his ditty, but it’s more of a dopey Roger Miller-type square dance tune: “B.I. Bickey Bi, Bo Bo Boo, Grab your gal and go go go, you love me, and I love you, B.I. Bickey Bi, Bo Bo Boo.” 

I know, this MAY be too much information, but it's original research and not stolen off ALL MUSIC by some asshole in Croatia pretending to know what he's talking about. Nothing here is album cover and a link with a moronic line, "I love music, I love sharing, and I love being in a third world country and thinking I'm hip! if anyone objects, let me know, and if my blog is taken away because I'm a douchebag, I will get another one and keep doing it." 

In 1959, the revived Three Stooges (with Curly Joe DeRita) released “The Nonsense Songbook.” The very middle-aged trio offered “The Alphabet Song” among the mild novelties. In 1985, Malcolm McLaren recorded a punk-disco take called “B.I. Bikki.” And that covers the B-B-Basics. It’s a bit sad that the original Three Stooges never had a chance to join Spike Jones in putting out bizarre 78 rpm music massacres. The discs that came later…by the Big Band bozos, by Malcolm McLaren and others…are a bit sad, too. Should anyone request a treatise on “Hut Sut Song” or “Mairzy Doats” - go ask someone else.

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