Tracks Unwrapped
Flight Of The Foo Birds
Exploring the stories behind the music
Trumpeter, composer and arranger Neal Hefti wrote Flight Of The Foo Birds in the late 1950s apparently for a Count Basie band recording for Stars for Defense , a series of radio transcriptions recorded for the United States Federal Civil Defense Administration from 1956 to 1967. Commercial radio stations were instructed to broadcast the content of those transcriptions at certain specified times assigned by the Civil Defense Administration to help Americans prepare for possible disasters, like a nuclear attack (details here).
The tune was released on The Atomic Mr Basie album, recorded in 1957 and released in 1958. The album was originally called Basie, and subtitled E=MC²=Count Basie Orchestra+Neal Hefti Arrangements. (E=MC² is a scientific formula about energy and mass, e.g.: The Sun, which generates its energy by converting mass directly into light and heat through nuclear fusion). The album was reissued in 1994 as The Complete Atomic Basie.
Flight Of The Foo Birds is also a contrafact (based on) the song Give Me The Simple Life.
The tune features solos by Frank Wess (alto sax); Thad Jones (trumpet) and Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis (tenor sax).
Here is the recording:
The Basie band was filmed playing the tune at a very fast pace in 1965 for a BBC Four television programme. It must have been a challenge for the musicians named with the video.
So what about the name of the tune? What is a 'Foo bird'? As far as I know, we have no references direct from Hefti or Basie, and we cannot ask them now. Perhaps they did tell someone and the true idea could emerge at some time. There is no bird called a Foo bird. The generally suggested reference is to an old story which has been told in various forms, and I like to think the title was either the origin of the tune, or appeared after the tune. The story goes back many years and so it could be the origin.
A man went to Africa to do some game hunting. While there, he hired a young native to accompany him as his guide. Soon, a large flock of birds flew overhead and the hunter took aim. The guide grabbed his arm and said “Oh, no! Those are foo birds and to shoot one means terrible things will happen to you!” The man decided that this was just a superstition, ignored the warning, and shot one down. A moment or two later, the rest of the flock returned and pooped all over him. He yelled at the guide: “Please get me some water to wash this mess off”. The boy said “Oh no! To wash the crap of the foo bird off means sudden death immediately!” Again the hunter ignored the warning, found water and got cleaned off. Sure enough he dropped dead then and there. The moral of this story is “If the foo shits, wear it. ”
This play on the saying "If the shoe fits wear it" applies nicely to the tune where whichever musician is called to play a solo has to 'wear it' - a bit like as in the tune Every Bottom (every tub has its own bottom).
This is all well and good but the word 'Foo' was being used earlier. In the early 1930s, cartoonist Bill Holman used 'Foo' in his Smokey Stover (The Foo Fighter) cartoon strips which were run daily in the Chicago Tribune. Smokey Stover's catch phrase was "where there's foo, there's fire". Smokey wears bright red (or yellow) rubber boots and a clownish striped "helmet" (always worn back-to-front), which he sometimes ties to his nose with string, in lieu of a chinstrap. His trademark helmet also features a prominent hole in its hinged brim, which he occasionally uses as an ashtray for his lit cigar.
Although most of the sequences in the strip (and the occasional comic book) centre on Smokey's escapades with the Chief, the loose "plots" and situations are mainly a framework to display an endless parade of off-the-wall verbal and visual humor. Smokey rides ‘an impossible two-wheeled “Foomobile” (a single-axle fire engine which resembles a modern Segway with seats, or an independent sidecar).
A novelty song based on Smokey Stover - 'What This Country Needs Is Foo', with words and "FOOsic" by Mack Kay, was recorded by Eddie DeLange and His Orchestra on Bluebird Records in 1939. Holman illustrated the cover for the sheet music. You can listen to the recording with Elisse Cooper taking the vocal here:
Other suggestions of derivation are a Foo Fighter - a World War II term for a class of unidentified flying objects seen from warplanes over both European and Pacific areas at the time.
Later use of 'Foo Fighters' include American guitarist Dave Grohl on forming the rock band Foo Fighters after the band Nirvana broke up in 1994. Apparently when Dave recorded the first Foo Fighters album, he was reading books about UFOs and aerial anomalies. On the album, Dave played every instrument himself on the record as a solo project following Nirvana. He chose a plural name from his UFO reading materials so people would think it was a full band rather than just one guy. He later joked that it was the "stupidest band name". There have been personnel changes over the years but they are still recording and touring. Their latest album is Your Favourite Toy (2026). Here they are playing the title number on the Graham Norton Show in February 2026:
The words ‘Foo’ and ‘Bar’ are also apparently used by computer programmers who get them from ‘FUBAR’ -' f**ked up beyond all recognition'. A computer programmer might understand "Foo Bird" to mean - "any kind of bird you might think of will do here"...The acronym ‘FUBAR’ has been around in the military since at least 1944 - perhaps Hefti originally wrote it as "Flight of the FUBAR" but cleaned it up to put it on the record sleeve? – but that is pretty unlikely.
Returning to the Hefti/Basie tune, Flight Of The Foo Birds has become a popular tune in the repertoire of big bands. Apart from its heritage, the tune, taken at a variety of tempos, offers a good opportunity for ensemble playing and for solos. In particular it offers musicians the opportunity to take different solo approaches. Here is the WDR Big Band in 1922:
From a younger big band, here is the Hickman High School band from Missouri:
Flight Of The Foo Birds is one of those memorable numbers that has carved out its place in the jazz story and deserves repeated visiting. It makes us remember just how much music Neal Hefti contributed in all his writing from the Batman Theme and Barefoot In The Park to the enduring Li'l Darlin' and Splanky. Too play us out of this article, you might not have picked up on the drums in the examples we have included, so here is a 10-year old drummer from Japan's Kobe Academy:
© Sandy Brown Jazz 2026.10