Ba-Ba-Re-Bop" was credited to Hampton and his drummer Curley Hamner, it was essentially a partial rewriting of Helen Humes' 1945 R&B hit "Be-Baba-Leba", which in turn was closely related to "Ee-Bobaliba" by Jim Wynn.

The song "Be-Baba-Leba" was recorded by Helen Humes with the Bill Doggett Octet in August 1945, in Los Angeles, and rose to number 3 on the Billboard R&B chart at the end of the year.

[3] Pianist Jelly Roll Morton said that "Be-Baba-Leba"'s riff was "so old it's got whiskers", and it is close to the one on "Boogie Woogie" recorded by Jimmy Rushing with Count Basie in 1937.

[3] However, the scat wording apparently derives from "Ee-Bobaliba", a song performed by saxophonist and bandleader Jim Wynn in the early 1940s with his band, the Bobalibans.

Their arrangement was similar to Jim Wynn's but added a call and response element between Hampton and his musicians, and replaced Humes' salacious verses with nonsense rhymes like: "Matilda Brown told old King Tut, 'If you can't say rebop keep your big mouth shut', say hey ba-ba-re-bop...".

[3] The use of nonsense syllables to convey excitement was passed on in later years in such songs as Gene Vincent's "Be-Bop-A-Lula" and Little Richard's "awopbopaloobop alopbamboom" in "Tutti Frutti", both in 1956.