October 25, 2024 —– Chart #269
Hello Music Friends,
Hey folks, welcome to another edition of Chart of the Week. Well friends, it’s almost Halloween. I have resisted featuring this song for several Octobers in a row, but now we are going with it. “Monster Mash” is a 1962 novelty song by Bobby “Boris” Pickett. The song was released as a single on Gary S. Paxton’s Garpax Records label in August 1962 along with a full-length LP called The Original Monster Mash, which contained several other monster-themed tunes. The “Monster Mash” single was number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart on October 20–27 of that year, just before Halloween.
“Monster Mash” has sustained a lasting impact in various recordings, film inclusions, and re-releases since its initial release. In 2021, nearly 60 years after its release, “Monster Mash” re-entered the Billboard Hot 100 chart at number 37. As of 2023, the song was generating $1 million annually in royalties.
Pickett was an aspiring actor who sang with a band called the Cordials at night while going to auditions during the day. One night, while performing with his band, Pickett did a monologue in imitation of horror movie actor Boris Karloff while performing the Diamonds’ “Little Darlin’.” The audience loved it, and fellow band member Lenny Capizzi encouraged Pickett to do more with the Karloff imitation.
Pickett and Capizzi composed “Monster Mash” and recorded it with Gary S. Paxton, pianist Leon Russell, Johnny MacRae, Rickie Page, and Terry Berg, credited as “The Crypt-Kickers.” (Mel Taylor, drummer for the Ventures, is sometimes credited playing on the record as well, while Russell, who arrived late for the session, appears on the single’s B-side, “Monster Mash Party.”) The song was partially inspired by Paxton’s earlier novelty hit “Alley Oop,” as well as by the Mashed Potato dance craze of the era. A variation on the Mashed Potato was danced to “Monster Mash,” in which the footwork was the same, but Frankenstein-style monster gestures were made with the arms and hands.
The producers made extensive use of sound effects in the recording; the sound of a coffin opening was imitated by a rusty nail being pulled out of a board. The sound of a cauldron bubbling was simulated by water being bubbled through a straw (The Beatles would later do the same on their hit “Yellow Submarine”) and the chains rattling were simply chains being dropped on a tile floor.
The song is narrated by a mad scientist whose monster, late one evening, rises from his slab to perform a new dance, with a name implying it is inspired by the Mashed Potato, a popular dance of the early 1960s. The dance becomes “the hit of the land” when the scientist throws a party for other monsters, among them classic 1940s horror film icons such as the Wolfman, Igor, Count Dracula, and his son.
In addition to narrating the song in the Karloff voice, Pickett also impersonated fellow horror-film actor Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula with the line, “Whatever happened to my Transylvania Twist?”, and character actor Peter Lorre as Igor (a role Lorre never played, though he did play numerous deformed eccentrics). The mad scientist explains that the twist has been replaced by the Monster Mash, which Dracula embraces by joining the house band, the Crypt-Kicker Five. The story closes with the mad scientist inviting “you, the living” to the party at his castle.
We have all heard this song many times, but you may not have watched the video with Pickett’s animated face. Family friendly fun from a bygone era, for sure. Enjoy this one.
Keep Rockin’,
Stan Bradshaw