FROM THE VAULT: "The Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett: Everything You Didn't Know

Alex Hegel and I'm during Talk. And as you may have surmised from that intro, we are forging ahead with our special October Fest here at t M I with an installment on that deathless slice of sixties novelty music Cheese. It's the velveta of sixties novelty hits Monster Match by the aforementioned Bobby Boris p bar Bar's. I would ask you your personal history with it? Do you have one? No, Well,

you know what I do. You may not remember this, Uh, this song actually played a crucial role in our friendship and indirectly the creation to the show. Um, I don't think you know that. Maybe I've never told you this. For those of you who don't know, which I assume is all of you, because why would you know this.

I met Higel on my first day working at People Magazine in twenty sixteen, and I spent my first day, decorating my desk with posters of Who and the Beatles and asking loudly if there was any chance I could interview Neil Young. And this was emphatically not the subject

matter that people covered. We were usually doing the ins and outs of Justin Bieber's love life, and I'm pretty sure the first interview I ever did there was either Josh Groban or Harry Connick Jr. But my boss, the wise and wonderful Sarah Ma Schaud, quickly sized up the situation and said, Hey, there's someone who wants you to meet.

His name's Alex Heigel. And the unspoken subtext of this was he doesn't belong here either, and if you're gonna have any friends while you work here, you guys should connect. And we did, and it was an immediate bond, and you intimidated me greatly because you had tattoos and I had none, and you didn't suffer fools gladly and I do. And we got to know each other. We never really

worked together. I was an editor in the music section and you were more of a generalist writer reporter, I remember correctly, so our past didn't really cross on the day to day, but then one day I was assigned to edit one of your stories for the first time, and it was this compelling, amazingly exhaustively researched history of Monster Mash by Bobby bors Picket, And that was the moment that we connected on this level, the t M I level. I realized that you were just as much

of a freak as I was. So I actually will always think of you when I hear this song. I know that it was an amazing piece. It's still out there on people right now, on people dot com, so I got check it out. My parents got me. One of the tapes that I had as a kid was a compilation of sixties novelty songs. So it was like this and like chev Wouli, Purple People Leader, And I was trying to ask my dad this. He didn't remember. Do you remember what that song was? That's like music

concrete like style, cut up collage. It's a fake news bulletin about aliens coming to earth. But it's like cut up from single lines of like dozens of other songs. Oh man, it's not Joe Meek, is it? No? No sixties? And yeah, I don't know anyway. That's so. Yeah, this was one of my I used to play that tape

over and over again. It's one of my earliest musical memories. Yeah. So, from the possibly legally insane and wildly prolific producer behind this track, to the song's tenuous connection to James Brown to Bobby Boris Pickets dogged attempts to continually update his song with the times. Here is everything you didn't know about the Monster Mash Pickett was born in summer Real, Massachusetts. As he explained in one often aggregated interviews, he said,

you had two choices as a young man. You could either be a gangster when you grew up, or an athlete. Somerville was a tough place to live, but it was a place where you could leave your door open and no one would rob you. Well, maybe everyone knew everyone, even though it was a city three miles long. And if Somerville brings a crime related name for you, that's

because it's Winter Hill. Neighborhood where Bobby Boris Pickett grew up, was the principal operating area of Whitey Bulger, famous criminal head honcho famously fictionized by Jack Nicholson in The Departed. Bulger was born nine years before Pickett and was already a young man when the Winter Hill Gang was founded by James Buddy McLean In and the Winter Hill Gang fought a six year war with a group called the McLoughlin Gang uh and what's now known as the Boston

Irish Gang War. And that started when one guy hit on a rival gang member's girlfriend at Salisbury Beach. And following said war, the Winter Hill Gang became the most powerful Irish gang on the East Coast. This is all operating in Bobby boris Pickets backyard. Well pick it. Fond livercalls his childhood in Somerville not a place if I remember.

His father managed a movie theater, though, and he spent a lot of time taking in the horror hits of Universal Studios, watching Boris Karlov, Belle Legozi and Lawn Cheney Jr. Stocked the screen in iconic films like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and The Wolfman. At this point, the final Universal monster that anyone actually remembers came out in fifty four, The

Creature of the Black Lagoon. But prior to that, you know, this iconic period was kind of gone because they had spent the intervening decade, introducing that entire roster of iconic monsters to Abbott and Costello. I am not exaggerating that was like their whole nineteen forties and come to think that though that approach probably informed Pickett's entire life of

combining spooky stuff and cheesy humor. He did mention this distribution company called Real Art, which actually cherry picked a bunch of these old universal monster flack and reissued them

in the forties and fifties. And he also said that he loved the William Castle road Show extravaganzas guy who did Um House on hon Hill, where he had a gimmick where a fake ghost on a wire would fly from one end of the movie theater to the other, and the buzzing seats in The Tingler, Friend of the The Tingler making its third appearance on the t m I podcast. Oh I didn't realize. I put it that many times. Um Pickett did not actually have a musical childhood.

He didn't grow up singing. After a year and a half in Korea with the Army as part of the Signal Corps, he was actually on his way back that he got his first experience with a singing group. He said, on the ship we came back on, these guys were putting together a show and there were three or four of them who were singing doo wop and acapella stuff, and they needed a bass baritone. So I became a member of that group. But Boris wasn't exactly bitten by

the music bug when he got back to Massachusetts. Rather than forming a band, he started performing stand up at local places like the Irish American Club and Everett, performing an act that he freely admits he stole. He said, the first time I went on stage and Everett was to do a five minute stand up comedy spoof of monsters, which had kind of ripped off from a guy I had seen do it on a boat when I was returning from Korea in nineteen fifty eight. He did a

spoof of monsters. I just watched him and thought that's a great act. He was doing Boris Karlof and Bella Neegosti impressions. I said, you wrote that act, He said, no, I stole it from Jack Carter. I saw it on TV.

I said, okay, then you won't mind if I use it, and he said no, and pick it took that act and started winning weekly talent contests with it, and uh, I guess you get twenty five bucks a pop each time he one, which, as he said, it was a lot of money in those days for an unemployed x G. I. But pick it could not be kept in Summerville. No,

his ambitions were larger. He spent a year in Massachusetts before moving out to Hollywood to try and make it as an actor, during which time he apparently dated Chloris Leachman and Diane Kennon, the eventual wife of Carry grant Um. And this is just this is so funny. This is that truth is stranger than fiction. Stuff. Man, he happened to run into some other dudes from Somerville while he was bumping around Hollywood, with the astoundingly perfect names of

Lenny and Billy Capezzi. They grew up in winter Hill as well, and uh, he said that they had shown up in Hollywood at this time with two other Italian boys, Ronnie del Toro and Lou Toscano. Who's bat a thousand. This is the smell of olive oil suddenly came into my folks. I can say that, uh, and they were going to start a singing group called the Cordials, and they asked me if I wanted to join them. Um, we, he continued, We'd sing in a place called Alvo Turnos

on Pico Boulevard on Friday nights. We sang in the parking lot of Ben Frank's wherever we could get a paying gig. Uh. Interestingly enough, Alo Turno's was owned by Timmy Euro, who is a singer who counted Elvis among her fans. He bought a private table for her Vegas shows, and Morrissey, who announced her death on his website in two thousand four. Um she do you know these songs? It will never be over for me? And what's the Matter Baby? What's the Matter Baby was covered by The

Small Faces. It's the B side of their debut single in n There you have it, folks, we got to one degree of separation between Morrissey and The Faces and Monster Mash. That is the t M I guarantee. Jordan tell us about Ben Frank's. Yeah, Ben Frank's the place where I used to play in the parking lot. That was a well known hippie hangout in l A and the sixties. The advertisement that was soliciting actors to audition for The Monkeys in nineteen sixty five specified Ben Frank types,

which basically euphanism for long hairs. That was a Mels Diner on Sunset and they kept all the original architecture and everything. It's really cool. One of the songs that was in the Cordial set Bobby's early band was Little Darlin recorded by the Diamonds, a do wop classic. I love that song, uh, and I guess Pickett asked Lenny if he could do a Boris Karloff impression in the

middle of song, which apparently audiences immediately loved. I don't know how they would shoehorn that in there, but pick it's a monologue. There's like a monologue part in the beginning, like the middle of the song, and it's sung by the bass baritone. Pick It was like, Hey, but I do this probably this Boris Carlof impression. God. As much as I love most fifties Schmaltz, the whole phenomenon of like the midsong breakdown, where you know, the just doing

this are you lonesome tonight? Yeah? I wanted to tell you something. Yeah, I hate that. I just needed to let you know. Yeah, I guess he would. I guess, well, let's find let's find a little lyrics. Let's see if you can do a little little t M I reenactment of what this must have been like. What is the monologue? Oh my god? You know the guy who wrote this song,

Dave Summerville. No way, Yeah, okay, So the monologue in the beginning, in the middle, Uh, hang on, I was working in the lab, my darling, I need you to call my own own, never do wrong, to hold my in mind, your little hand, something like that. It sounded something like that, and lightning struck inexplicable way people loved it. Uh. Bobby's accounts for the rest of this timeline has varied

over the years. In one telling, the very night he did this bid on stage for the first time, his bandmate Lenny said to him, you know, we should record a novelty song like this, something like the Flying Purple People Eater, which had become a big hit around this time. Uh, doing that, just your cousin, Bobby Boris Pickett, you know

that news I was working in the lub. And another version of this story, Bobby says that the group was performing on a beach and after he did the Boris karl Off it and a girl came up to them and said, my old man produces records. He did the song Ali Oop. He would love you guys, He'll get

your record contract. And that old man was Gary Paxton, who had hits as part of Skip and Flip who I don't know and the Hollywood Argyles who did the song Ali Oop, which was the number one hit, And that song was actually referenced by David Bowie on the song Life on Mars. The lyric look at that Caveman Go is a line from Ali. There's also Mark Bowland, also referenced in a song called Truck on Tyke. Oh yeah, anyway, Gary Paxton, Gary s excuse me, Oh my god, this

guy's life is insane. I'm just gonna do the quick bullet point rundown. Paxton grew up with an adopted family on a Kansas farm with no electricity or running water. He started in music, started playing in bands, and twelve years old, I heard at one point backed Um Buck Owens or wait or Merle Haggard, some guy in Bakersfield, because he was part of the Bakersfield sound as well.

And he basically never stopped working in music. By the sixties, he operated a bunch of different labels that basically just existed to put out music that he made. I read one account that he owned and operated or at least operated five studios. Uh. He was involved with actual villain of the l A music industry, Kim Fowley. Yes, Kim Fowley worked with the Runaways and he put them together right. Yeah, but Jackie Fox, the bassist, accused him of rape years later.

Nobody has anything nice to say about Kim Fowley. But Paxton was a genuine eccentric. I've heard many people referred to him as just being dirty and long haired, even by sixties standards. Also, this is in the early sixties. This is pre like the hippie stereotype. He alienated musicians with his in studio demeanor and refused to play ball with other labeled executives when it came to getting his stuff played. People just put up with him because he

crafted hits. Phil Spector was reportedly literally actually frightened by him. I say good. Once after a radio station turned down one of his songs, Paxton assembled a protest parade down Hollywood Boulevard that started fifteen cheerleaders and a live elephant pulling a Volkswagen convertible. This got him arrested when the elephant pooped in the street. The song was called Elephant Game Parentheses Part one by Renfrow and Jackson for context

less Do you think he just got an unsolicited elephant? Uh? Paxston moved to Nashville the nineteen seventies and converted to Christianity after wandering into a church while stoned because he was in the middle of an existential crisis after his musical partner died. Uh. This failed to put a dent in his eccentricities. For nineteen seventy two Clone Affair, he shaved his head and eyebrows and started wearing a cape.

When his nineteen seventy five solo album The Astonished Ing Outrageous, Amazing, incredible, unbelievable Different World of Garry S. Paxton one a Grammy, he showed up to the ceremony wearing a sleeveless black vest and leather pants. At this time, it's important to note he had a large Mennonite beard and was going

around in a pseudo stovepipe hat. What the hell did he win a Grammy for Best inspirational album In Night, he was shot five times by men hired by a country star he was producing, who was supposedly attempting to get out of his contract or was simply mad about the terms of his contract. I don't remember which one was. This sidelined him for eight years, and he carried two bullets from the shooting in his body for the rest of his life. Nonetheless, he traveled to jail to forgive

the men personally. In The Washington Post reported that Tammy Faye Baker had developed a crush on Paxton around the same time that her husband Jim Baker has had the big scandal with Jessica Han, the secretary at the evangelical church the Bakers ran. Sadly, this basically ended Paxton's career in the gospel Christian music world because he was at the center of this Beeg infidelity scandal. In moved to Branson, Missouri, friend of the Pod Branson, Missouri, and began performing in

a mask and cape as Grandpa Rock. He died in He once estimated he had written two thousand songs. A sampling of my favorite titles include Jesus is My Lawyer in Heaven. If You're happy, notify your face and when I die, just bury me at Walmart so my wife will come visit me. Garius Paxton, everyone, I just want to pause and say, for all those for a moment, wow uh yeah. Everything that with no matter what I could say after that really feels like a ton of

this letdown. But but Bobby Pickett around this time actually quit the Cordials for a brief time his band, the Pursuit, work as an actor, explaining, at one point I got an agent after many, many months, and after two weeks of being with him, he died of a heart attack. So seeing that as some sort of a sign, he returned to work with the Corridinals to revisit the whole novelty song thing. Let's give you some context for the

monster craze. Well, let's just give you some context for the monster mash period by two, the monster craze of the nineteen fifties, which was aided by those reissues and television because all this stuff started getting syndicated on TV that had really blossomed. Three, a stymied actress named Malia Nermi created the character of Vampira, which is she created as a rip off of Mortitia Adams, and she launched a successful show that started the template of these horror

host shows. Basically in costumes. She would introduce these classic horror films and mock them. It was like a slash comedy show. And it was all this stuff that affiliates could get the rights to rebroadcast, either free or cheap, and so they would just do these buttons with her making fun of them and broadcast these and it was huge. I mean even though only ran for a year. Soon any regional television station that had the budget would have

one of these of their own. The one in Philadelphia was hosted by a guy named John Zacherley, who was a buddy with Dick Clark. Zachary actually cut a novelty single called Dinner with drack Um that climate to number six, as high as on Billboard in ninety eight, which is the same year that this very influential fan magazine called Famous Monsters of Film Land debuts. Adjacent to all of this is the atomic age monster movies of the fifties.

You have nineteen fifty ones, the day they will sort sill the War the World's nineteen fifty six is Invasion of the Body Snatchers and then right around the turn of the decade or becomes much more popular. We have these proto slashers like Peeping Tom and psyche Go. Both In the nineteen six Mario Bava directs Black Sunday, which is banned. This movie it's a witchcraft theme movie. It was banned for being I believe explicit or the occult themes.

And then Roger Corban puts out a series of these Edgar Allan Poe adaptations Mask the Black Death, Hitting the Pendulum, um, and those are all starring Vincent Price. It's amazing to think about this stuff in context because until the exploitation era, horror was like not disreputable. This was like cheesy popcorn entertainment. They were like the Marvel movies of their day. That's really interesting. What what change? Well, basically, I mean, this is kind of an armchair theory of mine, but I

feel comfortable putting it out there. Um, you started to get that wave of new Hollywood guys come out of the USC around this time. John Carpenter particularly, and Wes Craven is the other big one. And so in the seventies, well, they had four Bears. There's a guy named Herschel Gordon Lewis who was creating these violent exploitation movies. As early the sixties he had Blood feast Um. His nickname is

the Godfather of Gore. But then through the mid seventies the grindhouse circuit really kicks in, and that's when you do see these movies start to get way more explicit. And then the tail end of the seventies you have basically the kind of shots across the Bow, Our Last House on the Left, Texas, Chainsaw Massacre, and Halloween. And Halloween was the explicit inspiration for Sean Cunningham, who was directing porn, to make Friday, and that is really what

jump starts the slasher craze the eighties. And and then concurrently with that you have what's called the video Nasties in the UK, which was a bunch of band titles. So basically late seventies through the mid eighties is when it gets really gross. I mean also the practical effects advanced to the point where people like Tom Saffini or coming out of Vietnam and just going into Hollywood and

making horor effects that reminded him of his Vietnam. That is explicitly his inspiration for the stuff on the Georgia Marrow. He was like, Yeah, I was just doing all this stuff I saw in nom Wow. Anyway, don't ever prompt me about horror movies again, because you get a three minute monologue. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in

just a moment. Well, all of us to say back to the Monster Mash by the National Pump was primed for a guy to do an extended Boris Karloff riff in a novelty song and pickup remembers. The may or Sometimes June accounts very two writing session that produced Monster Mash. Thus Lee Lenny Capeezi said, yeah, come on over Saturday. I go over at the designated time, and of course

he's asleep. To wake him up, and he continued the account in his two thousand five autobiography, Lenny sat down at the piano and began futson with various four chord progressions, and I stood next to the piano like me. Lenny was a major horror movie fan from childhood. He loved Bella Legosia's Dracula. He knew I had a Boris carl Off voice pretty nailed although in retrospect I feel that what I actually had was a very cartoonish rendition of

that wonderful actor's voice. You say that Pickets two thousand five autobiography, which is called Monster Mash Half Dead in Hollywood, is extremely rare, and copies of it are selling for upwards of three on Amazon. Yeah, dude, not available digitally either. I would have read the whole thing. Lenny arrives at the classic doo Wop one minor six, four or five chord progression, and Pickett said it was his idea to capitalize on the monster craze and the novelty dance craze.

He said, at the time, I thought the Twist was the latest dance, but Lenny said, no, it's the mashed Potato. So I said, that's even better. We can call up the Monster Mashed Potato. We shortened it to Monster Mash and the rest was history. In about three hours, they cut a piano and voice demo on a Mono Woolen sack tape recorder and brought it to Paxton, who said, boys, you gotta hit on your hands. So Brian Wilson used to use the workouts harmonies in the early Beach Boys

song as an old Woolen sap tape recorder. Not the first time the Beach Boys are gonna come up here? YEA. Incidentally, Lenny was correct. Here's a history about the mash, not that you folks asked for it. Uh. D D Sharp's Mashed Potato Time had reached number one on the cash Box Top one hundred, Billboard R and BEA Arts in nine two, as well as the number two spot of the Billboard Hot one. Uh. There's a great article about monster Mash on Billboard that goes into the history of

the mashed potato. Billboard claims that this dance actually originated with James brown Baby, the hardest working man in show business in the late fifties. In his live shows, he released a top ten R and B instrumental call do the Mashed Potatoes In? I have that on forty five, I guess for contractual reasons, the recording was credited to Nat Kendrick and the Swans. Uh. And it's just a

wild song he got. I don't think it's him. I think it's like a local DJ he got to do the vocals for it, just screaming different types of potatoes over one four or five pattern. It's like sounds mashed potatoes. Yeah, it's it's pretty weird. You would have thought an Irish guy would have cut that song too. Sorry our first Irish potato famine joke. But in a post twist world

in nineteen sixty two, the label CAMEO Parkway. They wanted a song that would capitalize on the twist, on the order of Please Mr Postman, Marvolette nine hit, and in fact, Mashed Potato Time. That d D sharp song is so similar to Please Mr Postman that they had to share writing credit on it, and the lyrics to Ash Potato Time include references to not just Please Mr Postman, but the Tokens number one hit, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, and

Gary Bond's Dear Lady Twist. So you have a reissue of an older song that has been rewritten to sound like new songs, right, and references from other new songs. Yes, and this started a phenomenon of what you've very appropriately called recursive novelty dance numbers, in which pop songs begin referencing dance crazes that were themselves lifting from earlier dance crazes. James Brown responded to mashed Potato time with his song Mashed Potatoes USA, while Chris Montez is Let's Dance the

contours do You Love Me? Chris Kenner's Land of a Thousand Dances, and Connie frances is V A C A T I O N. And also Sam Cook's Having a Party All name dropped the mashed Potato dance and Sam Cook was probably the best at uh surfing this trend.

He calls out the mashed potatoes. Also the soul twist in his song Having a Party, which followed his own twist hit Twist in the Night Away, and Cook even worked the line about a cat named Frankenstein and was nine hit Another Saturday Night, Another Saturday Night, and I Ain't Got Nobody, which is absolutely a reference to the

Monster Mash. That means, somewhere in the world there is a this is probably an outtake somewhere of Sam Cook singing Monster Mash that I will pay good money for anyway, Gary s Paxton, Lenning Capezi and Bobby Pickett waste little time and getting into the studio to record Monster Mash. Uh. This is so interesting to me, this whole twisted origin of this song. I really went a little cross side

with It. Pickett has frequently repeated this notion that the Monster Mash session took place on the same day that Herb Albert was in the studio recording the Lonely Bull, which is the first single released on A and M Records, and Jimmy Rogers was there recording his hit Honey Home. So it has been said that Lonely Bull sessions took place at Conway Recorders in Hollywood. Gets deeper, though, George,

that is right. Meanwhile, singer Darlene Love, who is a legend in early sixties pop music, sang on He's a Rebel and Christmas Baby, Please Come Home. Like next to Ronnie Specter, probably the singer most famously identified with Phil Specter and the Wall of Sound type of stuff. She was part of a singing group called the Blossoms, who were sort of the first call backing singer group for

all sorts of uh. If you're familiar with The Wrecking Crew, the group of musicians who were the first call session players on all l A pop sessions at this time, they were sort of the singing equivalent. They sang on all sorts of stuff. Anyway, She claims that Monster Mash was recorded at gold Star Studios, which is where Phil Spector cut most of his records, again, not where Bobby

Pickett remembers cutting the song. Darlene says that incredibly super producer Lou Adler, who worked with The Mamas and the Papas and later produced Carol King's Tapestry album, told her about the Monster Mash for the first time, and in an interview with Billboards, she says she remembers thinking, oh, please a Halloween song. Who's going to do a song about Halloween? She said, quote, we sat down and listened to the song and try to figure out what the

background was going to be. And after the initial backing trucks were laid down, the vocalist came and sang live with Bobby Pickett. She said he had to sing his vocals so we could figure out where to come in. It made it more fun with him singing his line and then us answering him. It's just like the sun record scene from Walk the Line, but there's yeah, Sam Phillips, like you have fifteen minutes to sing me something that will strike me down to my very core. I was

working in the lab. I told you I polished that one that was good. If you were a loved one, help record Monster Mash. Please tell us where the hell

it was cut, because it's driving me nuts. Personnel wise, the band credited as the crypt Kickers on Monster Mash was the aforementioned Garius Paxton, a writing partner of his name Johnny Dog McCrae, who I guess I wrote songs for Ray Charles, George Jones, Reba McIntyre, possibly the Blossoms backup singers The Blossoms, and another session singer named Ricky Page. Leon Russell is often credited with playing piano and Monster Mash.

That is not true. Pickett said he played on the B side Monster Mash Party because he said he got to the session late. And this is what gives credence to the Herb Autpert thing, because Russell was a member of the Wrecking Crew and they are credited with playing on that Herb Alpert track. So I don't know, do with that what you will? Apparently Ricky Page is singing the line oh tennis shoe Wow Wow in the song's bridge and Pickaton dr Tamento and do thousand six. We

don't know. Why isn't that girl by the Beatles. John Lennon sneaked in. Um. Yes, instead of deep deep, he's

singing T T T because he was a child. Yeah. Meanwhile, adding to the insane early sixties pop superstardom, brew that when making this song, uh, drummer for the Ventures, you know walk Don't run fame incredible sixties surf guitar instrumental group The Ventures, Mel Taylor was credited with playing on Monster Mash and Taylor had moved from l A from his native Tennessee and was working as a meat cutter the Grand Central Market in nine When he wasn't busy

being adventure and through his gigs at night, he picked up session work during the day, including supposedly Monster Mash and The Lonely Bull by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, for which he was paid ten dollars to record on the very same day. Think about that, Thatcher's drummer Mel Taylor possibly recorded the very first single on and M Records and also a Monster Mash in a single afternoon

incredible day right yeah for a flat fee. Um. He may have been called on this session because of Paxton as well. I've heard some sources that credit him with playing the drums on alley oop um, but Gary Packson said that was not correct, So I don't know, man, I mean the whole thing about. I have to stop myself from going too far into this because these guys were making like seventeen songs a day, five days a week,

calling in whoever you know. UM pick its own account of the session, though, which costs a whopping three hundred bucks, is that it took between two and three hours and his vocals were done in thirty minutes. Gary Packiston did all the sound effects, he said, like a straw in into a glass of water to get the bubbling lab sound. He was he was pulling a rusty name ail out of a board to get the sound of the coffin creaking. Those are actual chains. He dragged chains across the floor

to get the sound of chains um. Once they were finished, mixes took a day, perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm shocked it took that long. Oh yeah, Uh. Paxton took the finish forty five around four major labels and they all turned it down, so he pressed up. I've heard between five hundred and a thousand records on his own label, gar Packs or I guess gear packs, uh, and drove north from l A, stopping in Ventura, Bakersfield, Fresnoe to hand distribute copies of

Monster Mash. DJ's Bigott said by the time Gary got back to southern California, his phone had been lighting up like a Christmas tree. London Records, which is of course one of the outfits that had turned him down, called and said they had changed their mind. Of course, the

records were being ordered on a massive level. Monster Mass debut on the Billboard Hot one hundred the week of September eight, and six weeks later the single not the Fourth Season Sherry from the top spot to begin a two week reign at number one that ended four days before Halloween, and it's returned to the chart multiple times over the years, including in nineteen seventy and also nineteen

seventy three. Uh, this is hilarious to me. The BBC famously bands Monster Mash upon its initial release for being quote to morbid, and it only lifted the band in nineteen seventy three when it hit number three in the UK. Did they even do Halloween over there? Like, oh, yeah, maybe not. I don't think it is as much of

a thing over since. Uh. The song obviously recharts digitally pretty much every October eighteen, Billboard reported that it appeared in two thousand and five, and also between two thousand and seven and two thousand eleven, and again between two thousand and thirteen and two thousand and seventeen. What would happened to the years when it didn't Just people weren't

feeling a Halloween spirit, thriller took over. Pickett appeared on American Bandstand to perform the song, and again in nineteen seventy three, the song recharted and Paxson duly sent him out on the road for sock hops and these other one off shows. Um. He said he would start in northern Maine and then do Jersey, Boston, New York. Uh, this is hilarious. I always used the house band wherever it was, much like Chuck Berry. Yes, Bobby, that is

how you were. Like Chuck Berry. I'd hit town, teach the band the chord changes my entire act, and we go on stage and do it. My favorite tour story of his is that his bust supposedly once broke down outside of Frankenstein, Missouri. No way, no way, that's too he's making that out might be the song launched fans and enemies, as we'll get to in a minute in

high Places. From an early live performance, Bobby Boris Pickett was backed by a then unknown Beach Boys, and there's a truly surreal clip of the band performing the Monster Mash with a I'll just say animated, you said, unhinged Mike Love on vocals, uh, visibly miserable. Brian Wilson introduces it as Mike's favorite song. History between Mike lev and Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys will know how loaded that exchange. It's probably was. Boris Karloff himself was apparently

a fan of the Monster Mash. Pick It later said one of the London Records promotion men, a guy by the name of George Sherlock, ran in the Boris Karloff at Wallacks Music City, which is a big record store in l a as he was buying a copy of the Monster Mash album. And in fact you can actually see Boris Karloff alongside Ted Cassidy, who played Lurch on The Adams Family, performing Monster Mash on the TV show

Shin Dig in nineteen, a music show. In other words, Boris Karloff is doing an impression of the guy who's doing an impression of him. Sadly, apparently Bobby, Boris Pickett, and Boris Karloff never actually met. That's a shame. But lest you thought that was as weird as it gets, you can see a of this song performed by Mike Tyson and Bobby Brown on Kimmel in two thousand five.

So if that's the thing that you want, go nuts. Um. There is an oft repeated line that Elvis Presley hated Monster Mash and I was able to trace this anecdote to a book that came out called The Wacky Top forty by guy's named Bruce Nash and Alan Zulo. These are Picketts words. I was a real Elvis fan. One day after the song had become a hit, I bumped into this girl who used to hang around Elvis's house in Los Angeles. So I asked her, how's the king?

She wrote? She said, well, he hates your record, Bobby. When I asked why, she told me he thinks it's the stupidest thing he's ever heard. So I said, well, whoever liked him anyway? I don't think he knew who Boris Karlov was to tell you the truth. Uh. Picky would often retell this story when performing the song live, ending it with if you're still out there listening Elvis, I'm still here, which is such a great shot across the bow. Apparently, Tiny Tim these two did a lot

of tours together. Pikett just mentioned talking about touring with Tiny Tim. He said, Tiny Tim thinks Elvis is still alive. It's arguably Bobby Boris Pickett and Tiny Tim of the two biggest novelty artists, I would argue, possibly of all time, certainly of the twentieth century. Oh kings of the novelty circuit. Tight Tim man, eccentric dude. He apparently used to drink bottles of salsa and what's going through your head? But I'm just just him like braiding a manager, like his manager.

But it's in the like Shutton, it's time to my three pm s So yeah, he as have had an undiagnosed maybe undiagnosed o c D. He used to use um not only paper towels, but a very specific brand of paper towels, Viva paper towels, whenever he went to hotels because he didn't trust that the towels were clean. So he would always dry himself off with paper towels after showers. Uh. He wore adult diapers when he was out because he didn't like using other people's bathrooms. Jesus.

And he applied oil of l A eight times a day. Um, yeah, yeah, Elvis. Elvis was very um. When he hated something, he let you know. There's a famous story about he apparently hated Robert Goulay. I don't know why she actually hated him, or it became a bit And whenever he'd be watching TV and Robert Gulay came on, he would just take out his gun and shoot the TV. And so the Graceland archive have all these TVs with gun shots in him from when was shot the TV out when Robert

gul was on. That is incredible. He's got no heart, That's what always used to say whenever he was on that. He's wild. Poebe and Jane Bacon sandwich in one hand and a still the other, just getting furious at Robert Coulay. As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more. Too much information after these messages. Anyway, Pickett was not able to successfully capitalize on that hit. In another example

of music industry throat cutting. John Zacherley, who you'll remember was one of the original TV whore hosts and predated Pickett with his own novelty hit Dinner with Drack, actually beat him to the punch to record a Monster Mash album, a full length Monster Mash. He released his own LP with a cover of Bobby Bores Pickett's song on Cameo Parkway before Pickett could get Capezi and packs And into the studio for a follow up, which is why Picket's

full length is called the original Monster Mash. But there's apparently no bad blood. You can see footage of the pair performing this song together on YouTube. Pick And said, Gary, like Lenny, was not a terribly professional individual, which is a tremendous understatement, so there would always be delays in areas of promotion and recording dates. By the time we had finished Monsters Holiday and Monster Motion, which was the follow up single, John Zacherlely on Cameo Parkway Records had

sold forty copies of a unit called Monster Mash. That's Taylor Swift numbers these days. Yeah, yeah, seriously, I blamed Gary, and I blamed London Records for not getting an LP out to follow the two singles. Getting Gary and Me into the studio was a laborious process. Once we got there, it was done in a rush and it was slip shot. It was amazing that anything got done at all. Monster motion.

That's gotta be a locomotion. Uh that he did move on, at least artistically, relatively quickly, at least in the moment. He attempted to pivot to teen idol style crooning with a gloppy ballad called Graduation Day, which he has repeatedly called embarrassing, although it did crack the Hot one hundred in June sixty three, which keeps him from being a true one hit wonder in the strictest definition of the word.

Oh that's a good song. That the Beach Boys did a version of that that was released as a bonus track. I love the fact that Mike Love was out there just agitating for Bobby Boris Pickett in the Beach Boys. It's like, we gotta do it a cover. When Star Trek came out into The Doctor Tremento Show twelve years later, Mike Love somewhere was like, it's a good song. Brian, get out of bed. I got a song for you. I'll give you a cheeseburger if you do this Star

Trek parody. They did, They know him the right songs with bags of cheeseburgers. Who among us? I mean, that's how you get me to do this podcast. A year later, Bobby rehashed the Carloff impression for cover of an old novelty Western swing song called Smoke, Smoke, Smoke that cigarette. You may remember, the original being in the opening credits of the Air and cart film Thank You for Smoking,

the band on that he christened to the Filter Tip Kickers. Sadly, that had the poor timing to be released just as the dangers of smoking were beginning to be made public, so whoops. He was, however, able to parlay his success into a run of guest spots on TV shows like Dr Kildair, Petticoat Junction, The Beverly Hillbillies, Bonanza, Bobby Bores but it was on Bonanza You Know It Wow, and

later t J. Hooker starring William Shatner. And he was also when commercials for things like Schlitz beer and lipped in iced tea just as it. I just can't imagine him appearing in any of these things without referencing the fact that he was the voice of Monster Match. I just love Bobby's work. Ethic man, you cannot accuse this guy of not getting out there and pounding the damp pavement, just covered in flop sweat, staggering from one commercial bit

part God of Him. But unfortunately, real success as an actor eluded him, though he continued to appear in regional theater wherever he lived throughout the rest of his life, including it an off Broadway performance in New York, and he would later co star with Tony Curtis in a movie that Orson Wells was supposed to have been involved with, Lobster Man from Mars. I have heard that Orson Welles was supposed to hurt I read this. I gotta stop

saying that. Sources tell me me googling things alone at three in the morning, and my pajama pants told me that Orson Wells was supposed to star in this movie and died, and Tony Curtis picked it up anyway. From the late sixties into the early seventies, pick It apparently pivoted to working in a folk duo with his then wife Joan Payne, working what he called the Ski resort

areas singing soft folk harmonies. There are photos or at least a photo of the two of them together doing this act as Picket and Paine on Sale and eBay. He has a must sash and long hair and looks like Lee hazel Wood. It's amazing. Uh. They supposedly toward Europe. I read somewhere that they got as far as Afghanistan. Then they both moved to New York in nineteen seventy two, where Picky was driving a cab and she was working

as a waitress before Monster Mash recharted again in seventy three. Uh, he said either to the Washington Post of the l A Times. I forget what he said. It was on the charts for six months before anyone told me that it had been re released, let alone charted. I called the head of London Records, Walt McGuire, and said, well, I hear the records doing well. He said yeah. I said, well, I'm driving a cab here in New York City. I was wondering if I could turn my cabin and come

get a check I have. Oh yeah, a little bit. Hey, Philip Glass drove a cab until I stand on the beach. He was driving a cabin instant on the beach came out. Oh yeah, um. I have read this and been unable to substantiate, but I dearly hope it is true that when Pickett took the crypt Kickers out again in seventy three, a teenaged Eddie Van Halen was among the musicians who backed him up the timeline tracks. And it would have been like eighteen or nineteen when they came through California,

so might have been in one of the pickup bands. Uh. He did pop sort of back into the main stream in the nineteen seventies with a truly truly star trek novelty hit called star Drek. I've never heard this. It's just like spoken word. It's awful. It's not even to like a like a recognizable tune. Uh. It appeared on Dr Demento and apparently became its most requested number. I dcor Demento was a huge I guess and dear friend, big fan and friend of Bobby Boris Pickett. He would

just play whatever Bobby put out. But in that song, the USS Enterprise is renamed the Booby Prize. I don't get it. I think Booby Prize was like it was like a gag prize. But I don't think it was like a boom. I don't think it was like a cleavage reference. But who's to say, Who's who's to say? Uh? The year after that, Bobby came out with you can't even say with the straight I can't because I, as you referenced, I thought it was gonna be an Elton

johnre so did. I'm so mad it wasn't. He came out with Kings with King Kong Your Song, which is sadly not a parody of Elton John's Your Song. It was right there. Who uh? In Bobby released Monster Rap, which is what you'd expect. Frankenstein's Monster is having trouble learning how to speak. So the scientist who takes the form of Bobby Boris Pickets bores call off impression teaches him how to rap, and amazingly, have you heard that? Did you listen to that one? Oh? It's so good.

It's actually like it's pretty funny because it's like there are in fact, like there's like drum programming and synths on it, so it it's like sort of sounds like hip hop of the time. Amazingly, Bobby bors. Picket kept this going into two thousand five, when he teamed with an environmental organization, Clean Air, and released Climate Mash, which that's that's a that's a stretch. It's Monster Mash, as you can imagine, with lyrics about climate change. A worthy cause, yes,

but and one near and dear to his heart. Yes, that's true. Just the year prior, in two thousand and four, he'd released Monster Slash. I'm sponsored by the Campaign to Protect America's Lands and the Feathers of Wildlife Action Fund, which encouraged citizens to write in against the proposal to permit logging, mining, and other activities and protected areas. God love him. One of his most common quips about the song was, it's paid my rent for the last insert.

However many decades it has been. He said that in every interview. Um, but the rights to the song we're messed up, you know, as you would expect for an early sixties novelty song cut by the likes of Garyus Paxton. So he's recut Monster Mash a few times. Um. When Paxiston was still alive, pick It told the l a Times this is an eight seven that the two had planned to re release Monster Mash in ninety seven. London Records had distributed the initial single. That label was later

bought by PolyGram, so pick It explained. The lawyers told us that PolyGram International held the rights, so we went to them, but they told us we don't own that song. So we went ahead and released it on Rhino Records, and PolyGram's lawyers call us and say, you can't do that. We own that record. It's been kind of that thing all along. A single that sells four million copies still

gets lost in the paperwork. Two years later, a guy by the name of Stuart Kirsch, who was the son of Marshall King, the resident hypnotist on the Howard Stern Show, began managing Picket and learned that he did not own the master recording of the original song, so they recut a note perfect recreation of the song, which they began marketing for licensing opportunities via a direct website www dot The Monster mash dot com, which is still live to

this day, and it features the promise we monstrously undercut Universal and Rheino for the other two people you would have to go through to license it. As I mentioned, is still up and it contains Hirsh's personal phone number and his email address, which is simply the nineteen sixties at a o L dot com. Incredible as think it was telling journalist jan Alan Henderson that I've worked more in the last five years than i have in fifteen or twenty, including a theme park called Spooky World. I

guess there were two of them. This was like an international thing and now I yeah, I don't know, I don't know. I was one in New Hampshire. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um. Around this time, another thing came, another thing rose from the dead in Bobby Pickett's life. Uh. He had written a musical called I'm Sorry the Bridge is out You'll have to spend the night with a guy named Shelton Allman, who is a television writer who also wrote the lyrics

to the George of the Jungle theme song. And they teamed up on this um and I guess it was picked up by some local theaters. At some point it came to the attention of the guys who co wrote toy Story, Joel Cohen not the one you're thinking of, and Alex Sokolow. They produced a movie called Monster Mash.

The movie of this which starts not only Bobby Pickett and Dr Demento, but John Waters, bit player, mink Stole, Fullhouse is Candice Camberon and the host of the View and Dancing with the Stars, Judge Carry and in Naba. Not the Joel Cohen you're thinking of, but you wouldn't be the first person to make that mistake. Bill Murray famously only signed on to do the Garfield movie because he saw Joel Cohen's name on the script and thought

it was the good one. As I mentioned earlier, Bobby Boris pickets autobiography is currently going for hundreds of dollars on E Day, so I was not able to get a lot of details about his personal life, but from what I was it seemed kind of sad. He and Joan divorced, uh and at some point in seventies their son drowned in a swimming pool when he was three years old. Um, you know, you want to put like review lens on this, but it does seem like this

guy's life had a lot of death in it. There was his agent who died two weeks after signing him. Is you know his son tragically drowned. And Lenny Capezi, who wrote the song with him died after battling heroin addiction. But there was an even bigger twist waiting in the

wings for Pickett. His manager Stuart Harrish told Vice inteen that at one point pick And made an offhand comment to him that he might have a daughter somewhere out in the world, and the pair undertook a search and found the likely candidate, but a DNA test proved negative. Soon after, a completely different woman contacted them, claiming to be Pickett's daughter. Incredibly, this happened a week before Halloween that year, of course, uh and Pikett's sister, Linda s Proctor,

said she remembered the day of the call. She told a newspaper that when Bigot hung up the phone that day, he said he knew she was someone special, that minity heard her voice, and his manager, Stuart Hirst added, they met up at the airport and they looked so similar that they didn't even have to do a DNA test, and pick It, he said, went from this loader to a family guy, and he loved it. And he spent the holidays with his newfound daughter and grandkids, and it

was beautiful. And the woman whose name was Nancy, who's h u U s she'd obviously heard the song Monster Match before. She told Billboard. When I found him, he was out of his mind, thrilled since he thought he was going to grow old alone. I still remember the night I told my kids that Grandpa is the Monster Match singer. Not every child gets to hear their dad on the radio every year. I feel blessed that story. Man just comes out of nowhere and it just gets me.

I just I love that our for him. Um. Bobby Pickett died in April of two thousand seven of leukemia. He kept performing live until November two thousand six. That's unbelievable. Hersch has this tremendous anecdote. He said that he he told Vice that he would call Picket at the hospital to check up on him after his regular blood transfusions, and Pickett would get on the phone and say, in his dracular voice, STU, there's nothing like fresh blood. This

guy commits to love it. Um. Nancy was at pickets side when he died, and true to form, Bobby Boris Pickett was able to get his name in the headlines one last time after he shuffled loose this mortal coil. She said in two thousand and seven, I saw a show about turning cremated remains into diamonds, and I immediately called my father and told him that I wanted to make a diamond from his cremated remains. He loved the idea.

H This company called Life Jem complied, creating a point forty four carrot colorless diamond from Bobby's remains, and she wears in a white gold solitaire ring to this day. They sent out a press release with this news and that quote, and everyone and their mother gleefully aggregated it because you can't keep Bobby Boris pick it down. I love this story. I love this song. There is something

so wonderfully American about the story of Bobby Pickett. Here was a guy, Here's a guy who wanted to be one thing, lucked into being another thing that he didn't love that much, which he stole in the first place, and then maintained an iron grip on that consolation prize for his entire life, choking every last bit of life out of it until the end of his own And now every year he rises from the grave with a gleeful laugh to help us celebrate Halloween. The most wonder

fulle American of all holidays. The day we stopped shutting death away and it's sterile cloisters, march it out into our streets and windows to stare it full in the eye and threaten ut, telling it to give us candy or we'll tp its house. God, I love Halloween. I'm glad I did the song pick it set in the interview because some people never get to do anything that's really sweet. That's God love him. Say it with us, folks. I was working in the lab one night. I'm going

horse with my enthusiasm for Bobby Boris Pickett. Jordan is staring into middle distance like a like a shell shocked, hollow version of himself. This has been too much information. Thank you for listening. Keep listening for more of our October Fest two right, Jordan, we got we got two more weeks. This yea believe so yes to keep the SOPs occupied for a little while. Thanks for listening, folks. Has been too much information. I'm Alex Heigel and I'm

Jordan Runt Talk. We'll catch you next time. Too Much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave

us a review. For more podcasts on iHeart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,