The Day The Music Arrived

Witch Doctor Vs. Purple People Eater and So Much More

The music arrived when I was eight years old, and not a moment too soon. It was the summer of 1958, and we were upstairs cleaning up a new dormer that replaced the attic in our small home in Franklin Square, Long Island. Until that moment, I had a mind that tended to drift. If I wasn't playing ball or flipping baseball cards, I liked to lay on my back on the lawn on warm days, look up at the sky, and watch cloud formations. There was nothing going on at all.

I liked my family okay, but from a young age, at breakfast Sunday mornings, I would look around the table at my younger brother David, and our parents, and I would think: They seem like nice people. I wonder who they are?

A radio was playing, and two songs back to back shook me to attention: "Rockin' Robin," by Bobby Day, and "Cherry Lips," (an oldie from 1955) by a group called the Robins. I identified with the names: as a pint-sized kabbalist, I read meaning into names and patterns. I thought maybe we were related to the Robins. We were not, but I did discover later that the Robins were related to another group, and song, from the summer of 1958: The Coasters' "Yakkety-Yak." But I loved the smooth harmonies of the Robins, the smacking kiss sound lovingly tossed into the vocal arrangement. I could almost imagine what it was to smooch that girl wearing that particular shade of lipstick. Kissing was good, it seemed to me. It was as sweet and intoxicating as wine, according to the song. Wine sounded good, too.

My mother insisted we were not related to the Robins

“Rockin’ Robin,” by Bobby Day, was also thrilling. Its handclap beat, its dazzling speed, its lyrics of rockin’, boppin’ and singing his song, soaring above the trees, made me feel that sense of freedom.

I was totally enthralled. I asked my mother, What kind of music is this? She answered: "Rock and roll."

I felt great joy, as a part of my identity cemented. I had a favorite baseball player, the New York Giants incomparable Willie Mays. I had a favorite book series, the ingenious detectives The Hardy Boys. And now, I announced, I had a favorite music: Rock and roll.

This fondness, I realized, had started a few months earlier. On weekends I would wake up early, in our chilly house, and go to the warmest place I could find: the heating vent. With a transistor radio and my blue blanket, I would tune around and invariably find "Witch Doctor," by David Seville. This was really my first favorite song. Seville created the Chipmunks by speeding up the master tape of the recording so it sounded like voices on helium. The Chipmunks, to break out later that year with "Alvin's Harmonica," were the unnamed stars of "Witch Doctor," singing the high-pitched chorus: "Ooh, wee, ooh-hah-hah, ting-tang, walla walla bing bang..."

To use what later became a rock critic truism, this was a song that "spoke to my condition." Teens found the same siren call in Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti": "A wop bop a loo bop a lop bom bom." There was something meaningful, a secret language that kids understood that grownups could not.

Adults got very upset about such nonsense songs, saying it was music for eight year olds. Well of course it was!

Mere weeks after the chart run of "Witch Doctor," the actor and comedian Sheb Wooley came out with "Purple People Eater," which at first struck me as a knock off. An imitation, even to the point of having a Chipmunks-style high voice represent this creature from outer space, singing: "I wouldn't eat you because you're so tough." As it turns out, the alien is friendly: he came here to get a job in a rock and roll band! To show off his props, the PPE cited the gospel of Little Richard: "It was a crazy ditty with a swingin' tune/Sing a bop-bop aboopa-lopa, loom bam-boom."

But the more I listened to "Purple People Eater," the better it got. Not only did it poke fun at other novelty songs, such as "Short Shorts" and "Tequila," but the music at the end blew with terrific fury. This was not played through the "one-eyed, one-horned" creature's hole in his head: It was a saxophone solo played by Plas Johnson, a top-notch jazz and R&B session man. It gave the "Purple People Eater" some musical credibility. ("Gravitas" may be too strong a word.)

I fell in love with the Everly Brothers that year. For a birthday gift, a wise uncle bought me both The Everly Brothers Best, and The Fabulous Style of the Everly Brothers, which I did not appreciate enough at the time because much of it was covers of other people's songs. The first side was a little middle of the road for me: "Let It Be Me," "Take A Message to Mary." But the B-side rocked with covers: Little Richard's "Rip It Up," Gene Vincent's "Be Bop a Lula," Titus Turner's "Hey Doll Baby."

But Best included "All I Have to Do is Dream," which I took as evidence of the validity of my tendency to daydream. And "Bird Dog": What a record! Ostensibly, a bird dog is the canine you'd take on hunting trips, an activity a kid on Long Island couldn't imagine. That's why the lyric, "hey bird dog, get away from my quail," had me baffled for years, until at least sixth grade when I understood that quail was a kind of bird that hunters would shoot and, hopefully, eat; the bird dog would locate the downed quail in the woods and bring it back to the shooter.

But really, it's about telling this guy, Johnny, a joker, a dog, a hound, to stay away from the singer's girlfriend. The pride of Southern manhood, complete with guns, disguised as a song about a bird with four legs and paws. Isn't that a bird dog?

There was another rock and roller from the South who was popular when I was eight: Elvis Presley. In my twenties, with the release The Sun Sessions, I acknowledged the primacy of the King, got to see him perform in Denver, write about him in the Boulder Express, or Boulder magazine, and embraced his 1970 Las Vegas concert movie, That's the Way It Is as the great Elvis Presley singer-performer movie.

But when I was eight, Elvis had already gone Hollywood, his ballads like "Love Me Tender" sounded square, and his presentation on uptempo songs unappealing. My baby sitter Susan played for me a new Elvis record she was ga-ga over, "Wear My Ring Around Your Neck." I wasn't buying it. His hubba-hubba voice sounded to me like he was throwing up. And the song made no sense: the lyrics made me envision National Geographic photos of African tribal women with big rings around their necks.

No, no, Susan explained. When a girl goes steady with a boy, she gets to wear his school ring on a chain, around her neck. I said, OK, then why isn't the song called "Wear My Ring On a Chain Around Your Neck"? And by the way, if the purpose is to "show the world/I'm yours by heck," what the heck does "yours by heck" mean? Nobody says that!

Susan kind of tip-toed away while I was dismantling this song.

There were other great songs that year, perhaps no greater than "Get a Job" (released at the end of 1957) by the Silhouettes. A true one-hit wonder by a Philadelphia vocal group hardly ever heard from again, the background vocals of "Get a Job" go "sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na-na-na." That's where the 1960s mock greaser doo-wop group, Sha Na Na (they played Woodstock) got their name. Sha Na Na covered it. So did Neil Young & Crazy Horse, on Americana. It was on the American Graffiti soundtrack. But it's not about nonsense syllables at all. "Get a Job" is a protest song, about the terminal challenges faced by young black males seeking job opportunities. Give it a listen.

My friend's brother is my brother. In memory of Lane Grossinger, 1958-2021