The writing of the music is credited to Gene Vincent and his supervisor, Invoice “Sheriff Tex” Davis. Evidently the music originated in 1955, when Vincent was recuperating from a bike accident on the US Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia. There, he met Donald Graves, who supposedly wrote the phrases to the music whereas Vincent wrote the tune. (Cf. “Cash Honey” by the Drifters, 1953). The music got here to the eye of Davis, who allegedly purchased out Graves’ rights to the music for some $50 (sources range as to the precise quantity), and had himself credited because the lyric author. Davis claimed that he wrote the music with Gene Vincent after listening to the music “Don’t Deliver Lulu”. Vincent himself typically claimed that he wrote the phrases impressed by the caricature, “Little Lulu”: “I are available in useless drunk and stumble over the mattress. And me and Don Graves have been taking a look at this bloody e book; it was referred to as Little Lulu. And I mentioned, “Hell, man, it’s ‘Be-Bop-a-Lulu.’ And he mentioned, ‘Yeah, man, swinging.’ And we wrote this music.”
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 turned a much bigger hit when recorded by Lionel Hampton as “Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop.” This phrase, or one thing very related, was extensively utilized in jazz circles within the Forties, giving its identify to the bebop fashion, and probably being in the end derived from the shout of “Arriba! Arriba!” utilized by Latin American bandleaders to encourage band members.