“Cow Cow Boogie” — Get along, get hip! little doggies
October 5, 2009
[Above] “Cow Cow Boogie” performed by Ella Mae Morse, with Freddie Slack and His Orchestra.
(Please note this song is deliciously politically incorrect about race and drug usage. It was written by and for adults. If you’re offended by that, just move along).
Say kids, if you liked this tune by Ella Mae Morse you’re sure to love her version of “40 Cups of Coffee” here and “Mr. Five by Five” here.
Out on the plains down near Santa Fe
I met a cowboy ridin’ the range one day
And as he jogged along I heard him singin’
A most peculiar cowboy song
It was a ditty, he learned in the city
Comma ti yi yi yeah
Comma ti yippity yi yeah
Get along, get hip, little doggies
Get along, better be on your way
Get along, get hip, little doggies
And he trucked ’em on down that old fairway
Singin’ his cow cow boogie in the strangest way
Comma ti yi yi yeah
Comma ti yippity yi yeah
(Chorus)
Singing his cowboy songs
He’s just too much
He’s got a knocked out Western accent — with a Harlem touch
He was raised on Loco Weed
He’s what you call a Swing half-breed
Singing his cow cow boogie in the strangest way
Comma ti yi yi yeah
Comma ti yippity yi yeah
[Below] Dorothy Dandridge (with Dudley Dickerson) perform “Cow Cow Boogie” in a 1942 ‘Soundie‘ — one of a series of three minute musical shorts produced between 1940-1946 starring Jazz, Swing, Big Band and Be-Bop legends. These included Fat
s Waller, Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Louis Jordan, Stan Kenton, The Mills Brothers, Jimmy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, and my special favorite singer, Anita O’Day.
Soundies were the original music video, they played on an ice box sized machine called a Panoram (left). Only the bigger clubs and bars had them. The Panoram was a coin-operated video juke box delivering film loops from a projector, shown via mirrors and rear projection on to an opaque glass screen.
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