Saturday, February 1, 2014

Bubblegum Archives: Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep

A few years back when I was blogging here more often, I occasionally wrote about one of my favorite pop music genres, bubblegum music. I defined it here and promised I would write more later. I did write about a handful of my favorite bubblegum songs but never got back to the subject on a regular basis. Here's hoping I will now.


I was moved to think about this yesterday when "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" played on my iPod. Here in the States, that song was a top 20 hit in 1971 for Mac and Katy Kissoon, a brother and sister act from Trinidad (pictured above). Here in Columbus, that version got a lot of airplay and I bought the single. It's a cute... well, chirpy little song about a baby bird, or so I thought. The original version, by a Liverpool singer named Lally Stott, never made it past #92 on Billboard though it was a hit in Australia and his is the one I have on my iPod, as it was the only one available digitally some years back when I bought it. A third version by a Scottish band called Middle of the Road was a #1 hit in England. According to Wikipedia, the Scottish version is in the top 40 of all-time best-selling singles (pre-digital era), yet I have never heard the song on an oldies station. Hearing it again after all these years made me wonder why it was such a big hit then and seems to be so forgotten now.


The verse, repeated 3 or 4 times, sounded to me like this: "Where´s your momma gone?/Little baby boy/Where´s your momma gone/Far far away." This alternates with a verse that substitutes "Poppa" for "Momma." The chorus: "Last night I heard my momma singing this song/Ooh wee chirpy chirpy cheep cheep/Woke up this morning and my momma was gone/ Ooh wee chirpy chirpy cheep cheep/Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep chirp." I assumed this was about a baby bird waking up one morning to find his mom and dad gone. The lyrics are just too sad to think about, but the melody is upbeat and, well, chirpy, so you wind up singing along without giving the meaning of the lyrics much thought.

But, is it really about a bird? The title line is the only reference to birds, and it's actually ambigious; it could just as easily have been "Le-dee-da-dee-da, da" or "Yippei-yippie-yo-yo" or any other nonsense syllables. There is also some confusion about one of the lines. Instead of "Little baby boy" as I heard it, some Internet sources give "Little baby gone," though most give "Little baby Don." There is a video of Middle of the Road performing it and she is clearly singing "Don." 

So, what the hell? Is this a horrifically sad song about a little boy named Don whose parents are no longer around? Are they dead? Did they get drunk and stay the night somewhere else? Have they broken up and forgotten about Don? Or is is about a bird named Don whose parents were killed as prey? The more I think about it, the creepier it gets. It actually reminds me of a 90s hit called "The Way" by Fastball about parents who leave their home and family never to return because they're looking for "eternal summer slacking." Ask.com confidently states that it is about an abandoned bird, though I kind of like the implication given by another answerer: "That's the way my ex started out. At first he was chirpy, then...."

No matter what interpretation you accept, it's an awfully sad song. That's what I get for thinking too hard about bubblegum lyrics. As for why the song is forgotten now, well, that's probably a topic for a longer blog post about the oldies canon, but generally the more nursery-rhymey the song was, the more likely it is to plunge towards oblivion, no matter how popular it was at one time. The Fifth Estate had a big hit with a Wizard of Oz song, "Ding! Dong! The Witch is Dead" but you never hear that, either. Come to think of it, most of the classic bubblegum songs of the 60s are missing in action ("Chewy Chewy," "Yummy Yummy Yummy," "Gimmie Dat Ding") except for the Archies' "Sugar Sugar." I'll have to chew on this and chirp some more on the subject later. The Mac & Katy Kissoon version is below:



7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The rumour circulating at the time was that it concerned the slave trade. Bubblegum, indeed. It's not played much now because everybody got sick of it and it became the epitome of "naffness". It gets chucked in by writers as a quick and unchallenging way of establishing the period.

I need not remark on the Dead Witch Song's sudden rise in popularity almost two years ago (!) suggesting that these songs are far from forgotten and lie in a lot of us just beneath the surface.

Unknown said...

Actually, Lally Stott wrote and recorded "Chirpy" in early 1970 for Philips in Italy. It was a hit in Europe and Australia. When Philips would not release it in the UK, he offered it, and assisted in its production, by Scottish band Middle of the Road, at RCA Italiana in September, 1970. It was released in Italy in December, and in the UK in January, 1971. It took BBC1's Tony Blackburn playing the song after it tore up Europe through the early part of '71 to get it going in the UK, where it took about four weeks to zip up the charts to 1 in June. Meanwhile, UK producers Miki Dallon and Tom Parker (Apollo 100) hired the Kissoons to record another version in London. ABC Records in the US purchased the master for release here in early 1971; it hit 20 in the spring. RCA belatedly released "Chirpy" in the US in Summer 1971, but the Kissoons' cover had already been out four months and had all but left the charts by then. MOTR did get some US airplay in early '72 with "Sacremento", which hit for awhile on some West Coast stations. So, the releases were Stott's, MOTR's, then the Kissoons'. MOTR's was the most successful, selling nearly 11 million worldwide.

Anonymous said...

My thoughts as well. Started to think about the lyrics since it was palyed as paus music druing the handball WC.

Anonymous said...

Fun review, thank you! I have the Middle of the Road version on my iPhone (4S, which shows you how stuck in the past I am!) and it popped up on shuffle. I've always been fascinated by the question of just what the heck is this song about.....now I'd a tad closer! (:-)

Anonymous said...

I always thought it was about alien abduction.

Perhaps it was an early forerunner of Left Behind.

S. Yogin said...

Since it was for the Italian market, the word "Don" obviously has a Mafia connotation. A little baby Don is a Mafia don or made man in training. Perhaps his mama and his papa were the victims of Mafia hit? Either way, it can't be a coincidence that the word is Don and it was recorded for the Italian market.

Anonymous said...

Yes I loved this song, still do, in June 1971 when I was 6 years of age I could not stop myself singing it. It had been 6months after my mother was killed in a car crash on Christmas eve 1970.
My family could not get me to shut up singing the song