"Swingin' the Alphabet" is a novelty song sung by The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Howard) in their 1938 short film Violent Is the Word for Curly. It is the only full-length song performed by the trio in their short films, and the only time they mimed to their own pre-recorded soundtrack. It contains a censor-baiting line; when the singers start ringing the changes on the letter "F" it seems as though an obscene word will result, but it does not. [1]
For their 1959 album The Nonsense Songbook, the Stooges re-recorded the song (retitled as "The Alphabet Song") with Moe, Larry, and Curly-Joe DeRita (filling in for Curly Howard, who died in January 1952). The letters "G","J","L", "M" and the "Curly's a dope" line were omitted, and new lyrics featuring the letters "N," and "R", were added. [1]
In 2005, Stooge film historian Richard Finegan identified the composer of the song as Septimus Winner (1827–1902), who had originally published it in 1875 as "The Spelling Bee". Septimus' own version, though, appears to have been based on an earlier version called "Ba-Be-Bi-Bo-Bu", which has a centuries-old tradition. [2]
The lyrics of Septimus Winner's "Spelling Bee" (a.k.a. "Ba Be Bi Bo Bu") were slightly different. [3] A number of schools like Harvard University used this as one of their traditional songs, which itself may have originated centuries earlier in typesetting, as a very similar song or chant was used to help train apprentice printers in the structure of language, a tradition being described as "ancient" even as early as 1740: [4]
Whilst the Boy is upon his Knees, all the Chapellonians, with their right Arms put through the Lappets of their Coats as before, walk round him, singing the Cuz’s Anthem, which is done by adding all the Vowels to the Consonants in the following Manner.
B a - ba; B e be; B i - bi; Ba–be–bi; B o - bo; Ba-be-bi-bo; B u - bu; Ba-be-bi-bo-bu — And so through the rest of the Consonants. [5]
The Three Stooges were an American vaudeville and comedy team active from 1922 until 1970, best remembered for their 190 short-subject films by Columbia Pictures. Their hallmark styles were physical, farce, and slapstick comedy. Six total Stooges appeared over the act's run ; Moe Howard and Larry Fine were mainstays throughout the ensemble's nearly 50-year run, while the "third stooge" was played in turn by Shemp Howard, Curly Howard, Shemp Howard again, Joe Besser, and "Curly Joe" DeRita.
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Isham Edgar Jones was an American bandleader, saxophonist, bassist and songwriter.
Charles Joseph Parrott, known professionally as Charley Chase, was an American comedian, actor, screenwriter and film director. He worked for many pioneering comedy studios but is chiefly associated with producer Hal Roach. Chase was the elder brother of comedian/director James Parrott.
Ted Healy was an American vaudeville performer, comedian, and actor. Though he is chiefly remembered as the creator of The Three Stooges and the style of slapstick comedy that they later made famous, he had a successful stage and film career of his own and was cited as a formative influence by several later comedy stars.
The Mandaic alphabet is a writing system primarily used to write the Mandaic language. It is thought to have evolved between the second and seventh century CE from either a cursive form of Aramaic or from Inscriptional Parthian. The exact roots of the script are difficult to determine. It was developed by members of the Mandaean faith of Lower Mesopotamia to write the Mandaic language for liturgical purposes. Classical Mandaic and its descendant Neo-Mandaic are still in limited use. The script has changed very little over centuries of use.
A hornbook (horn-book) is a single-sided alphabet tablet, which served from medieval times as a primer for study, and sometimes included vowel combinations, numerals or short verse. The hornbook was in common use in England around 1450, but may have originated more than a century earlier. The term (hornbook) has been applied to different study materials in different fields but owes its origin to children's education, represented by a sheet of vellum or paper displaying the alphabet, religious verse, etc., protected with a translucent covering of horn and attached to a frame provided with a handle.
Septimus Winner was an American songwriter of the 19th century. He used his own name, and also the pseudonyms Alice Hawthorne, Percy Guyer, Mark Mason, Apsley Street, and Paul Stenton. He was also a teacher, performer, and music publisher.
"Little Brown Jug" is a song written in 1869 by Joseph Eastburn Winner, originally published in Philadelphia with the author listed as Winner's middle name "Eastburn".
"A-Ba-Ni-Bi" was the winning song in the Eurovision Song Contest 1978, performed for Israel by Izhar Cohen and Alphabeta.
Violent Is the Word for Curly is a 1938 short subject directed by Charley Chase starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges. It is the 32nd entry in the series released by Columbia Pictures starring the comedians, who released 190 shorts for the studio between 1934 and 1959.
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The Three Stooges is a 2012 American slapstick comedy film based on the 1934–59 film shorts starring the comedy trio of the same name. It was produced, written and directed by the Farrelly brothers and co-written by Mike Cerrone. It stars Chris Diamantopoulos, Sean Hayes, and Will Sasso, re-creating the eponymous characters played by Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly Howard.
Non-lexical vocables, which may be mixed with meaningful text, are a form of nonsense syllable used in a wide variety of music. Common English examples are "la la la", "na na na" and "da da da".
If a Body Meets a Body is a 1945 short subject directed by Jules White starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges. It is the 86th entry in the series released by Columbia Pictures starring the comedians, who released 190 shorts for the studio between 1934 and 1959.
Three Stooges Scrapbook is an unaired 1960 television pilot starring The Three Stooges. In the opening title and Hollywood trade ads, the show's title is spelled without "The," including a promotional photograph of the Stooges holding an oversized scrapbook. The pilot featured the slapstick trio getting evicted from a rooming house for cooking in their apartment, looking for a new place to live, finding refuge in the home of a mad inventor, and presenting an animated short called The Spain Mutiny that imagines the funnymen as part of Christopher Columbus’ crew.
La Courte Paille, FP 178, is a set of seven songs for voice and piano, composed in 1960 by Francis Poulenc on poems by Maurice Carême. The duration of the work is roughly 8 minutes.
Basahan script, also known as Guhit, is the native name used by Bicolanos to refer to Baybayin.
Ba is a consonant of Indic abugidas. In modern Indic scripts, Ba is derived from the early "Ashoka" Brahmi letter after having gone through the Gupta letter .
The Rohingya Arabic Alphabet is a modified Arabic script for the Rohingya language. Rohingya today is written in three scripts, Hanifi Rohingya script, Arabic Alphabet, and Latin (Rohingyalish). Rohingya was first written in the 19th century with a version of the Perso-Arabic script. In 1975, an orthographic Arabic script was developed and approved by the community leaders, based on the Urdu alphabet but with unique innovations to make the script suitable to Rohingya.