Bob Sanders: Cow Cow Boogie with Ella Mae

By: Bob Sanders Columnist | Opelika Auburn News
Published: October 05, 2009

I just fell in love with Ella Mae Morse again. You will, too. Just follow the instructions of the old computer master.

Type in “Cow Cow Boogie, Ella Mae Morse” in the Google slot. You’ll come to a video of Ella Mae singing that song with Freddie Slack’s orchestra. I say, “video.” That’s what they’d call it today. I suppose it was one of those little fillers movie theaters used to use, a “selected short subject.”

By whatever name, it is delicious. The music is exactly the same as the record on the Wurlitzer at the Lamar Cafe, with one exception: they cut out a perfect trumpet solo. Still wonderful.

I gotta omit (as cousin Artie used to say) that when a band leader announces that the lovely Miss So and So is about to sing for us, I get a little queasy.

Many, many exceptions, of course, but my first reaction is, OK, let’s get back to the music.

But Ella Mae is perfect. No cutesy mannerisms. Just riding with the beat and the band, through modulations and all, totally at ease, enjoying all, as Freddie plays that beautiful piano, leading the band with his shoulders, lifting them slightly when the trumpets are supposed to come in, as if they didn’t know.

A little background: Will Bradley and Ray McKinley co-led a band that featured Freddie Slack at the piano. Out of that came maybe the greatest boogie-woogie piece of all time, “Down the Road A Piece.”

Slack left that band to form his own. His singer was Ella Mae Morse, 17.

About then, a new record company was being born. For years, the Big Three companies had been Columbia, Decca, and RCA-Victor. Johnny Mercer, the lyricist for countless popular music classics got together with a couple of other people to form Capitol Records. It would soon be part of the Big Four.

It quickly came out with “Cow Cow Boogie,” which became a huge hit, soon followed by the almost as popular “House of Blue Lights.” Later, artists like Nat Cole, Peggy Lee, Stan Kenton and Mercer, himself, would make very popular records. But in the beginning, it was Morse and Slack and “Cow Cow Boogie.”

Now, anybody who knows anything about classic popular music knows about the team of Jimmy Dorsey, Bob Eberle and Helen O’Connell.

They did those timeless boy/girl songs like “Amapola,” “Brazil,” “Green Eyes,” “Tangerine,” etc.

The reason Helen O’Connell was the girl singer with Dorsey was because he had to fire his previous singer, when he found out that she was just 14.
Ella Mae Morse ... how in the world do they get so good so quick?

Bob Sanders is a longtime radio personality with WAUD in Auburn and writes a weekly column for the Opelika-Auburn News.