“Hey ba ba re bop” “Hey ba ba re bop” That’s from a Lionel Hampton song from 1946. I was listening to 1940’s music the other day. Lionel would sing the line and his band would sing it back. “Climbed a mountain to look at the sea and find that cat that took my woman from me.” Don’t know if I got that lyric correct. The “Hey ba ba re bop” ended up a cheer in the 1960’s. This is a tale about cheerleaders.
Some of the first sporting events I went to had cheerleaders with big long skirts. Seems like the skirts went down to about two inches above the cheerleader’s ankles. There was a big letter G for Greeleyville. When the cheerleaders would spin around the skirts would flare out. If the cheerleaders spun fast enough you might catch a glimpse of the red shorts they wore under the skirt. Wow! Can you believe how things have changed? It was pretty risqué back then.
Some of my friends were cheerleaders and they did the Hey ba ba re bop cheer. I asked about that. They really just said the words over and over. I don’t know if they were supposed to get feed back from the fans. They merely repeated the line and quit after several times. Of course Lionel Hampton’s song was now twenty years old and maybe people had forgotten about it. The sixties was a time of big changes. Those changes could have easily spilled over into the world of cheerleading.
Now things are a lot different. Take cheering now. More than likely a group of cheerleaders will do more of a dance routine than a cheer. Attention deficit disorder has crept into cheers. Now a dance routine might last thirty seconds and have lyrics from five songs. Whew! Something that fast and action packed doesn’t let you even remember what songs were being played.
Now all my cheerleader friends are Grandmothers or Great Grandmothers. It is fun to talk with people and ask about cheerleader exploits. “Weren’t you a cheerleader?” “Do you remember any cheers?”
This is a fun and handy conversation starter. It is refreshing to relive some of the great times of being in school and going to sporting events.
Most people still remember the fun times they had back then. They all recall that things changed so much in their lives since that time when they were at a sporting event and cheering, watching or playing a port and reviling in fun of being young. “If you had told me then that my life would turn out like this, I would have told you, you were crazy.”I did talk to a friend the other day that remembered one of the old cheers. The cheer was about cranking an old car by hand. “Step on the starter, crank old lizzie, come on boys let’s get busy.” The cheerleaders pretended they were stepping on a starter and then bend over and crank the car. Hardly anyone will remember seeing a car started by hand. The Lionel Hampton song is almost eighty years old.
Cheering is still going strong. Almost any sporting event has lots of cheering in one form or another. The cheer uniforms are different and the music is certainly different. It still amounts to fun and just for a little while the excitement of pulling for your team with friends and foes alike. It is also a time that you can just have fun and not worry about how your life might turn out.
