I wasn’t sure how to title this thread, but maybe the description here will help to clarify what I’m after.
When I was in high school in the late 50’s the band was special. I never played in a band anywhere but if had ever wanted to it would have been that band. They won awards all over Alabama and the South and were years ahead of even some of the college bands of the era.
One of the tunes they played on a regular basis at football games was something with a title like “We Go For Bop” and it was indeed a jazzy arrangement of a swinging tune. Something makes me think the band director wrote it. I have searched every way I know how to try to find the written music for it, all with no results.
I’m not really hoping some of you can help with this specific tune (though that would be gravy) as much as I am curious if you have similar “lost music” that you can’t even describe accurately, that haunts you after many intervening years. I can pick this tune of mine out on the piano and guitar, but even with those websites where you can hum the tune or use some code to try to simulate how it sounds, I get nothing. And yet it bothers me not to be able to hear it for real.
Whenever somebody posts about “help ID this song” or the like, I’m drawn into the search even when I’m better than 90% sure I haven’t the first clue because of its genre, period, artist, whatever. So I’m not so much looking for help with the tune itself as I am with some sense of how strong this desire to recapture “lost music” is with others.
If the general notion I’m trying to express strikes a chord in you, and if your version of this phenomenon has other noteworthy features, feel free to add to the OP’s intent. Otherwise, this is more for the comparing of notes on this concept.
Okay, I’ll bite the zombie: kids TV show called Wonderama; there were two pieces of music I’ve been trying to find (not losing any sleep, though) for 45+ years–one was instrumental, the other had lyrics:
Your mouth goes chitterly-chatter-chatter, chitterly-chatter-chatter
Talkings all you ever do
I don’t know what’s the matter-matter, what’s the matter-matter
What’s the matter with you.
I wish I had a penny for every word you say
For if I did then surely I would be a millionaire today
Sorry to be of no help there, burpo the wonder mutt, and it looks like this notion is arcane enough to explain the zombie nature of the thread.
But there are still fragments of old tunes that don’t rise to the level of being earworms but that remain teasers all the same. I’ve wondered from time to time if a clever hypnotist could arrange to have them surface, but I always wonder how that would work.
Zeldar, you said you thought the “band director” wrote it. Is this a marching band you’re talking about? I’ve never heard the phrase “band director” used with any group other than a marching band or school band - definitely not for bands that play at nightclubs, county fairs, etc. Just hoping for some clarification.
As for the zombie status, yes. I had the thought of “We go for bop” while I was watching an old YouTube video from the early 60’s. In those days, unless you were a real jazz fan, “bop” was not in common parlance and often had other connotations that didn’t pertain to music of any kind. So I looked to see if other references to “bop” might be around and here we are! The swell of interest justifies the bump in lieu of a new thread.
And yes, it was a high school band best known for its football game halftimes but with a concert group, too. They even had a little combo of some of the standout players who provided music for proms and other dances. I haven’t kept up with any of the players or I might get some input from one or more of them.
The director of the bands went on from high school to college work and was well regarded at least in the state.
As luck would have it, I found this under the band leader’s name: 85-year-old band director still inspires. I’m happy to see he was still around when the article was posted.
FWIW, I recall that rock and roll music was referred to as “bop” for a short time in the late 1950s (I was in junior high in Massachusetts and later in upstate New York). Maybe before the term “rock & roll” caught on? The term “be-bop” was associated strictly with jazz.
Yes. Bop (in my school at least) was a dance form that spun off from jitterbug and such dances where being up close and personal was frowned on. Uptempo syncopated music was the common ground with either horns or electric instruments playing the leads. There were variations (referring to innovations by adventurous types) that included the “cigarette bop” and the “dirty bop.” My memory is that the timing of Elvis’s version of RnR was just a few years (if that much) on either side of that “craze” – mid 50’s anyway.
There was even the “horizontal bop” that probably derived from the “horizontal tango.”
There was also the term “rebop” that had nonsense connotations. Amazingly enough, that issue was addressed in Bebop / Rebop some time ago.
