The writing of the track is credited to Gene Vincent and his supervisor, Invoice “Sheriff Tex” Davis. Evidently the track originated in 1955, when Vincent was recuperating from a motorbike accident on the US Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia. There, he met Donald Graves, who supposedly wrote the phrases to the track whereas Vincent wrote the tune. (Cf. “Cash Honey” by the Drifters, 1953). The track got here to the eye of Davis, who allegedly purchased out Graves’ rights to the track for some $50 (sources differ as to the precise quantity), and had himself credited because the lyric author. Davis claimed that he wrote the track with Gene Vincent after listening to the track “Don’t Carry Lulu”. Vincent himself typically claimed that he wrote the phrases impressed by the cartoon, “Little Lulu”: “I are available useless drunk and stumble over the mattress. And me and Don Graves had been this bloody e-book; it was known as Little Lulu. And I mentioned, “Hell, man, it’s ‘Be-Bop-a-Lulu.’ And he mentioned, ‘Yeah, man, swinging.’ And we wrote this track.”

The phrase “Be-Bop-A-Lula” is just like “Be-Baba-Leba”, the title of a No. 3 R&B chart hit for Helen Humes in 1945, which grew to become a much bigger hit when recorded by Lionel Hampton as “Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop.” This phrase, or one thing very comparable, was extensively utilized in jazz circles within the Forties, giving its title to the bebop type, and presumably being in the end derived from the shout of “Arriba! Arriba!” utilized by Latin American bandleaders to encourage band members.