Harmon’s Histories: Purple People Eaters Unite! Bring back novelty songs
By Jim Harmon
Pardon me for mangling a classic line from the 1967 movie "Cool Hand Luke," but I must say of today’s music: “What we've got here is failure to create novelty songs!”
The 1940s and 1950s – even the 1960s – were filled with happy, hilarious novelty songs.
In 1946, "Shaving Cream" by Benny Bell was a hit with lines like, "I have a sad story to tell you, It may hurt your feelings a bit, Last night when I walked into my bathroom I stepped in a big pile of ... shhhhh ... aving cream."
Ray Stevens was one of my favorites in the 1960s. Remember "Gitarzan" and "The Streak?" Then, there were “It’s Me Again, Margaret” and “Ahab the Arab.”
The lyrics of “Ahab the Arab” most likely wouldn’t pass muster today: “Let me tell you about Ahab the Arab, the Sheikh of the burning sand,” who stole away each night to visit Fatima of the Seven Veils, described as the “swinging-est, grade A, No. 1, U.S. choice, dancer in the sultan's whole harem.”
She had, "Rings on her fingers and Bells on her toes and a bone in her nose ho, ho."
Ray Stevens (real name: Harold Ray Ragsdale) had a serious side, as well, turning out Grammy hits like "Everything Is Beautiful" and "Misty." The 86-year-old still performs at the “CabaRay” in Nashville.
Another artist, Sheb Wooley, had a hit called “The Purple People Eater.”
According to Wooley’s IMBD page, he got the idea for the song “when a friend of his mentioned that his young son came home from elementary school with a joke he had heard: "What has one eye, one horn, flies and eats people?" "A one-eyed, one-horned flying people eater!"
Wooley was an actor, as well. “For a number of years he had a regular role as scout Pete Nolan on the hit TV series Rawhide (1959). He worked infrequently as an actor after that, concentrating on the music business.”
His country song, "That's My Pa" reached No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Country chart in March 1962.
Meantime, insanity was a popular theme in a number of one-hit wonders like “Monster Mash” by Bobby "Boris" Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers and “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” by Napoleon XIV.
According to Genius.com “Napoleon XIV was the pseudonym of American singer-songwriter-record producer Jerry Samuels, who wanted “to use a stage name for the record. He wrote in a memoir: I picked XIV strictly because I liked how it looked next to Napoleon. Rumors were rampant about hidden meanings, but there were none, at least not consciously.” Samuels died just two years ago.
Today, Al Yankovich is one of the few around to fill the satirical void and he’s been extremely prolific with hits like "Addicted To Spuds," "The Night Santa Went Crazy," "I Lost On Jeopardy," "Living With A Hernia," and "Amish Paradise."
Alas, the novelty song (other than Trump-trashing tunes) seems a thing of the past.
But we have so many great memories, like David Seville ("Witch Doctor") and his Chipmunks ("The Chipmunk Song").
The Coasters contributed “Along Came Jones” while the Hollywood Argyles recorded “Alley Oop.”
Then there was the battle of the Cadillac and the little Nash Rambler in a song called, “Beep, Beep.”
“The Rambler pulled along side of me as if we were going slow; The fellow rolled down his window and yelled for me to hear, Hey buddy, how can I get this car out of second gear.”
Scottish-born Englishman, Lonnie Donnigan asked the question on all of our minds: “Does Your Chewing Gum Loose Its Flavor On The Bedpost Over Night?”
And in 1973/74 Loudon Wainwright III crooned of a “Dead Skunk In The Middle Of The Road,” a song he penned “in 15 minutes,��� after driving over a road-killed varmint.
In our current era, we certainly could use some good laughs, so come on, lyricists!
I await 2025’s contribution to the happy novelty songbook.