Swingin' the Alphabet

rdf:langString Swingin' the Alphabet

rdf:langString "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. 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", "H", "J", "K", "L", "M", and the "Curly's a dope" line were omitted, and new lyrics featuring the letters "N," "P", "Q", "R", "S", "T", "V", "W", "X", "Y", and "Z" were added. 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.