To indicate a lack of lyrical sophistication in a song, a music critic often describes its lyrics as being of the “moon in June” variety.
This phrase originates from the Tin Pan Alley era, during which even renowned composers like Irving Berlin produced numerous uninspired Moon/June songs for each original classic such as “Blues Skies” or “Puttin’ On The Ritz.” In the realm of rock and roll, a comparable pair of clichéd lyrics would be “Baby” and “Maybe”—a rhyming duo most notably highlighted in the early rock classic “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” which was recorded on this day in 1956 by the legendary rockabilly artist Gene Vincent in Nashville, Tennessee.
The origins of the simplistic lyrics in “Be-Bop-A-Lula” are wrapped in a degree of controversy.
Officially, co-writing credit goes to Gene Vincent’s business manager, Bill “Sheriff Tex” Davis, yet Sheriff Tex, a shrewd 40-year-old from Connecticut, seems an improbable source for such a naïve classic.
Conversely, the more believable account attributes the creation of the song to a young man named Donald Graves, a friend Gene Vincent made while in a Veterans Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia. Vincent, who was born Vincent Eugene Craddock in 1935, had just reenlisted in the U.S. Navy in the spring of 1955 when he suffered a severe leg injury from a motorcycle accident. This injury landed him in the hospital for over a year, during which a fellow patient recalls Vincent and Graves collaborating on the song that would eventually achieve classic status.
However, by the time Gene Vincent’s demo tape made its way to Capitol Records the following spring, Graves had been bought out of his share in “Be-Bop-A-Lula” by Sheriff Tex, for reportedly a mere $25.
The rapidity with which Capitol signed Vincent and brought him into the studio can be attributed not solely to the brilliance of “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” but also to the striking similarity between Gene Vincent’s voice and that of Elvis Presley.
In fact, when Vincent and his Blue Caps recorded “Be-Bop-A-Lula” on May 4, 1956, it was meant to be the “B” side of a now mostly forgotten track titled “Woman Love.”
However, once disc jockeys began “flipping” Vincent’s debut single, “Be-Bop-A-Lula” soared to success, climbing to number 7 on the pop charts and selling over 2 million copies within its first year of release.
