Doo Wop She Bop

Today we're all going to talk about a popular song by composer Harry Warren and lyricist Al Dubin, written in 1934 for the film Dames, where it was originally sung by Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler.

Peggy Lee, Billie Holliday, Frank Sinatra, and more all tried to do right by it, but it would have been nothing special or grown beyond an ego-massager for a radio crooner had it not been picked up by a couple of doo-wop birds called The Flamingos.

First, unfortunately, we have to have a little talk about Dames. I don't want to depress myself by finding out what the actual story line is, so let's cut right to the number: "I Only Have Eyes For You," which in the musical is nine wacky minutes long, which is at least two minutes too long.


The singers all have clear articulation (you can hear Dick Powell rolling the "R" of "For" for more 'proper' diction), the dancers have nice legs, and there's this big boring band backing everything up. In the number, a young couple are taking the subway. The young man, suddenly overcome by love, earnestly begins to sing all about it, as all the ads on the subway start literally turning into Ruby Keeler's face as he looks at them. Stay with me. We must assume he falls asleep (mid-song?) and enters a world only a guy named Busby Berkeley could have dreamt up, where hundreds of copies of his love's head are bobbing endlessly against a black screen, and a giant gaggle of woman in goosewhite dresses are wearing Ruby Keeler masks and spinning in circles, and all the Big Lebowski fans are suddenly getting another joke.

Technology was not invented back then, so let's just take a moment and realize that everybody actually had to do this, and wear those sweltering masks (which meant they all knew they wouldn't be seen and given credit,) and listen to stupid Busby Berkeley, who at this point was on his fourth wife (out of six), shouting at them through a megaphone to get their legs higher. In any case, clearly the song was made so that big boy Busby Berkeley could let loose and have a big boy Busby Berkeley production number in the middle of the musical, plot be dammed for one two three four five six seven eight f'ing nine minutes. Which is fine, and sort of fun. Clive Hirschhorn describes the dance: "Highspot of the number is the jigsaw made by the girls as each, equipped with a board on her back, bends over so the boards interlock to form a giant-size picture of Ruby." I wish I could choreograph something like this for my funeral.

The song could not be in anything but that most cheerful of keys, C Major, in A1/A2/B/A3 song format. The A1 section ascends from scale degree 1 to 3, and then falls back to 1, while A2 adds neighbor notes and extends the rhythm into triplets for variation, basically trying to dictate something to sound like improvisation. The B section, "I only have eyes for you", attends to downward scalar motion, first ending major and then minor when the song heads into a brief bridge. In the 1934 Dames version, the song is in duple meter, with each word receiving almost the same amount of time; only the word "eyes" gets held for longer than a beat. It keeps the song somewhat conversational, which is only exemplified by the lyrics, which the lyricist apparently overheard in a bar: "Are there stars out tonight? I don't know if it's cloudy or bright; I only have eyes for you." It's cheeseball, but they're going to make a production out of it, damn it.

The Flamingos have never heard of Busby Berkeley, or if they have, they don't let on, thank God. They realize it's actually important to respect the accompaniment rather than bigbanding it to death, just to accentuate a crooning movie star. Every instrument in the Flamingo version is integral to the sound world of the song; an electric guitar plays a short two chord intro (V, II[?! major II? I think I'm in love!]) before resolving on the tonic, the piano gently keeping staccato time in octaves while a snare accentuates the downbeat with brushes. Most importantly, there are three gorgeous tenor voices singing one of the most famous harmony accentuations in 20th century history: "doo-wop-she-bop" on quick 16th notes at the beginning of every other measure, the recording echoing the sound. I have no words for this. It makes the entire song, is completely original, and immediately hands the song over to the Flamingos for all time. It's the part of the song that sticks, and I don't know that I even knew any other lyrics besides "I only have eyes for you" before analyzing this song; I couldn't even remember ANY lyrics to the song at first, I could only remember that persistent, startling, did-they-do-that-oh-they-just-did-it-again harmony from the back-up singers. Then, at the chorus, they all come together in gorgeous, taffy-stretched four part harmony, as the engineer falls asleep just listening to them and forgets to adjust the equalizer, making the song even more caramel-like.






The tempo slows, the accompaniment is hypnotizing, the boys are she-bopping, and I feel like I'm falling in love with a vampire. This is what I want from this song. This song was not born to be a big spectacle, it was born to be eerie and seductive and dreamy and catchy, like (you guessed it!) love. When I fall in love, I want everything to suddenly mute except for the slow moving, almost feminine melody sung by Sollie McElroy on vocals (I don't know that I knew this was a man until I watched the youtube video).

Dames Version: B for Big Boy Bad Boy Bad Boy Whatchu Gonna Do When We Come For You and Your Legions of BackUp Dancers Busby Berkeley, D for everything else

Flamingos version: A++++++++++++++++++++++

And let's not forget that regal eye of parody, Looney Tunes, which was on the right track with its cute little caper by the same title, released on March 6, 1937 and directed by Tex Avery. "I only have ice for you".