Midweek Music Break: “The Swingin’ Shepherd Blues”

Alto saxophonist and flautist Moe Koffman had been kicking around the Canadian and US jazz world for years by the time — in 1957 — he composed a number for the jazz flute he originally called “Blues à la Canadiana.” His producer suggested a title change; ever since, it’s been known as “The Swingin’ Shepherd Blues.”

Whether “Swinging” should or should not include the terminal “g” seems never to have been answered authoritatively; but the sheet music I’ve seen always omits it, and that’s how I’ve always remembered it anyway. As for the shepherd who swings, my assumption has always been that he’s supposed to be tootling this on panpipes.

The song’s initial album release was on Koffman’s Cool and Hot Sax (1958), whose cover is shown at the top right for some mid-’50s atmosphere. As a single, it got up to #23 on the Billboard pop charts that year.

Which, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t all that high. Yet it was enough to really solidify Koffman’s career and his place in jazz history. And without a doubt, it left its mark in my brain, becoming — thanks to its playing and replaying on Philadelphia-area radio stations — possibly my very first introduction to what I’d later know as earworms. (Eventually of course something else supplanted it. Maybe, a few years later, it was Pepsi’s takeoff on “Makin’ Whoopee,” the “Now It’s Pepsi (For Those Who Think Young)” theme song (which just now popped into my head and is threatening to lodge there).)

Here’s Koffman’s original version of the tune. (Later, for 1967’s Moe Koffman album, he recorded it again, this time at five minutes-plus — mostly by adding a lot of free-form flourishes that don’t have the same, uh, earworm power.)

[Below, click Play button to begin The Swingin’ Shepherd Blues. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:14 long.]

When I began this post, I assumed the song had been covered many times, and so it has — some accounts say by “over 100 artists,” some say in “over 300 versions,” so take your pick. But I didn’t know that it had ever included lyrics. These were added some time later, and were recorded by Ella Fitzgerald, among others. Below, Natalie Cole gives it a scatty big-band treatment:

Lyrics:

Swingin’ Shepherd Blues
(music by Moe Koffman;
lyrics by Rhoda Roberts and Kenny Jacobson;
performance by Natalie Cole)

Along the mountain pass
There is a patch of grass
Where the swingin’ shepherd plays a tune
His sheep never stray
Dancin’ all day
Until they see the pale’n yellow moon
And then he leads his flock
And homeward they all rock
To the tune of the swingin’ shepherd blues

[Chorus:]
This i-is something really extra special
A ditty we like to do just for you
It’s the onliest swinginest grooviest thingy [JES: !!!] that we’ve ever done
And if you like it then before we are through
Then you ought to move along groove and join this song and I don’t have to repeat
It’s swing!
Ah yes!
Now it’s complete. Wooh!

If you’re interested further in Moe Koffman, you can see him interviewed for this 2001 seven-minute mini-documentary from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s archives. (Interestingly, more people apparently know him now for his “Curried Soul” and “Koff Drops” — the opening and closing themes for the CBC news show As It Happens — than for “Swingin’ Shepherd Blues.” So it goes…) Good capsule biographies are available at the Canadian Encyclopedia and Musician Guide sites.