Chords for Peter Cook & Dudley Moore - "Bo Dudley"

This evening we have taken our not only but also cameras to the heart of London's West End
where at a nightclub, La Maison Sophistiquée, we see the opening of the great coloured jazz singer, Bo Dudley.
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_ _ _ [Ab] _ _ [Gm] _ _ _
[D] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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_ [Gm] _ _ [D] _ _ _ [G] Well, I better turn you on, baby.
You better not doubt me. _ _
[Eb] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ [N] _ _
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Absolutely terrific.
Did you like it?
Yes, I thought it was tremendous.
Now, Bo Dudley, or may I call you Bo?
Bo, call me Bo.
I think for the benefit of English viewers, it would be a help if you could actually explain some of the lyrics,
which I think the slang is a little hard to understand.
Could we go through the song verse by verse?
Be delighted, yes.
Good.
[Gm] Mummy's gonna bring you [G] back, yeah.
Mama's got a brand new bag, yeah.
[Ab] _ _ This is fairly self-explanatory, isn't it?
It's a simple [D] story.
Mama, the sort of Harlem mother, has gone [Ab] out into the streets and she's seen this bag, which is [N] very nice,
and she's bought it, and that's it.
She's got a brand new bag.
What kind of a bag would that be?
Well, of course, in the old days it probably would have been a carrier bag.
Yes.
[Gm] In these days of scientific advancement, it's probably a gaily [D]-coloured plastic bag.
A gaily-coloured plastic bag, which she has bought [F] and it's brand new.
Yes.
And the song goes on.
It goes on.
[G] We're gonna groove it the whole night long, baby.
We're going to [F] groove it the whole [Eb] night long, baby.
Now, this presumably is a reference to the fact that the mother, having bought the bag,
decides to make some [Gm] indentations on it, to make some grooves on the bag,
a sort of decorative pattern, presumably.
It's a [E] darky decorative process.
[Ab] Is it?
Yes.
How is it done, the grooving?
It's done with a groover.
With [N] a groover? Yes.
Of course, in the old days, when they used to have knife grinders and watermelon sellers in the streets,
they used to have groovers.
Mississippi Groover!
They used to call out, you know.
And, well, in fact, it's now a purely domestic occupation.
It's done by the mama.
By mama.
By mama.
By the darky mama.
We're going to groove it the whole night long.
It takes a long time.
It takes a long time to groove [Abm] your bags, yes.
No, baby, it's for the baby.
Is it the child's anniversary or something?
Probably the child's anniversary or the first tooth being cut, that sort of thing.
And so the bag is grooved [Dm] by the mother all night long.
It's a long process.
Exactly.
And it goes on,
We're going to work it out, baby.
We're going [Gb] to work it out, baby.
_ _ [N] This is a little surprising, isn't it, that having grooved the bag,
she should then decide to work it out.
Isn't that rather_
Well, it's rather putting the chicken before the china shop, isn't it?
Because she's grooved the bag and then suddenly she decides to work it out.
Work it out a little late.
A bit too late there, isn't it?
Because [Eb] the bag is already grooved.
And far too late, she should have [Ab] worked it out before she grooved it, shouldn't she?
Yes.
And this presumably is the explanation of the_
The_
The end, isn't it? The exasperation.
She goes on to say,
[G] We're going to shake it tonight.
[G] We're going to shake it tonight.
We're going to shake it tonight, presumably in frustration, the fact that she's grooved the bag.
Grooved the bag badly without having worked it out properly.
So in her sort of frustration, she shakes the bag.
Yes.
Shakes it all night.
Out of exasperation.
Then of course, exhausted by all this, she goes on and says,
Stretch out now.
Stretch out, baby.
Stretch out.
[E] She wants to stretch out and fall into a_ Fall asleep.
[Abm] And then, unfortunately, she [Gm] says,
I hear you talking.
I hear you talking now.
What's that?
The [Ab] neighbours next door?
The neighbours chatting next door, yes.
[N] Through the paper-thin wall_
Through the paper-thin wall.
_comes
the sound of the neighbours talking just when she wants to go to sleep.
Exactly.
[D] Then she goes on to say,
Do you turn me on, baby?
[N] This is a sort of jive, jazz boogie-woogie abbreviation of,
Turn the light on for [E] me, baby.
Turn me on, baby.
Turn for me, in parenthesis, the light on [N] baby.
Oh, I see.
Oh, a linguistic trick.
Rather like the German, I out of the door go must.
Exactly.
Similar.
Boogie-Harlem thing, is it?
Boogie-Harlem, darky jazz rhythmically cuckoo thing.
Yes.
And how does it go [Gm] on?
It goes on,
You're burning up now, baby. _
_ [N] _ _ You're burning up now, baby.
You're burning up now, baby.
You're burning up now, baby.
The [E] baby's turned the lights on, fused the whole house in the [Eb] wigwam. _
In flames.
[Ab] In flames.
The whole igloo's set [Ab] on fire.
You don't think any of these lyrics could be in any way connected with making love or sex?
Oh, [N] good Lord, no.
In any way.
I wouldn't sing that sort of garbage.
_ Well, to summarize, basically this is a simple story.
The mama [Eb] has gone out into the gay, bustling streets of Harlem.
She's seen a brand new bag.
She's bought it, this [Gm] gaily-colored plastic bag.
She brings it home, spends the whole night grooving it [G] for her child.
Then she discovers she's grooved it badly.
She hasn't worked [N] it out.
And so in her rage, she shakes all night, attempts to go to sleep, but the neighbors start talking.
She asks her child to turn on the light, but she fuses it, and the holy igloo or wigwam goes up in flames.
And we're left with the underlying question.
Was it right for the mother to squander her money on these gaily-colored plastic bags?
Wouldn't she have better spent it in re-wiring the entire house?
And isn't one left also with the question,
should there be legislation to prevent the sale of these bags to people who aren't quite ready to [E] use them?
I wonder.
[G] [D] My man got a brand new bag.
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