The Cuban Missile Crisis ended, as Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev began dismantling nuclear missile bases in Cuba. The term "personal computer" was first used by the media. Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? opened on Broadway. The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was one month old, and Walter Cronkite was finishing his first six months as anchor of The CBS Evening News. And on screen, Robert Preston and Shirley Jones starred in The Music Man - using the same sets for the town of River City that would be used years later for TV's Dukes Of Hazzard.
And on the charts at number one, a song that took just eight weeks to get there and became the biggest selling novelty tune of all time. In fact, it's the only tune ever reach the Hot 100 three seperate times for the original artist. It came from the frontman of a nightclub band called The Cordials and his good friend Lenny Capizzi. In the act, the two men would frequently immitate movie stars - and both were huge fans of horrow movies. One day during rehearsals, Capizzi played a few bars on his piano as Robert Pickett adlibbed some lyrics - and combining that with Mashed Potato dance craze of the day - a hit was born. And while most people know that Bobby "Boris" Pickett's famous song used a rusty nail pulled from a plank to get the sound of a coffin opening and bubbles through a straw to achieve the laboratory effects, they don't know that Pickett's back-up band The Cryptkickers actually included stars such as Gary Paxton and Leon Russell. Moreover, the song was performed live on TV's Shindig in 1965 by William Pratt - a humble English truckdriver who'd stumbled into an acting career playing heavies and gangsters in the early 30's. In fact, most of his neighbors knew him only by that name years after he'd originated one of film's most memorable characters - never knowing that the kindly gentleman up the street who offered candy and stories every Halloween was not only a huge fan of Pickett's song, but Boris Karloff himself.
Today's Southwest Airlines Freedom Break on 98.7 KLUV, Bobby "Boris" Pickett & The Cryptkickers with The Monster Mash.
E-Mail Story
Print Story