Novelty Song: Witch Doctor

Welcome to Rock and Roll Flashback!  I'm Jumpin' John, and we'll be looking back at some of Rock and Roll's greatest artists, songs, and stories.  This podcast episode will introduce a new series here on Rock and Roll Flashback:  Novelty Songs.  Specifically, I will discuss the 1958 tune, "Witch Doctor", Ross Bagdasarian and his stage name of David Seville, and Seville's virtual band Alvin and the Chipmunks!

All podcasts on the Rock and Roll Flashback Podcast are produced by brothers-in-law Bill Price and "Jumpin' John" McDermott.  The Podcast Theme Song, "You Essay", was written by John.  It was initially recorded by Bill and John on April 1, 2004 with several revisions since then. 
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Rock On!

Transcript

Thank you for that introduction, and welcome to Rock and Roll Flashback!  I'm Jumpin' John, and we'll be looking back at some of Rock and Roll's greatest artists, songs, and stories.  This podcast episode will introduce a new series here on Rock and Roll Flashback:  Novelty Songs.  Specifically, I will discuss the 1958 tune, "Witch Doctor", Ross Bagdasarian and his stage name of David Seville, and Seville's virtual band Alvin and the Chipmunks!

Ross Bagdasarian was born on January 27th, 1919, in Fresno, California to an Armenian-American family.  After he graduated from Fresno High School in 1937 he went to New York City with the intention of becoming an actor.  When World War II started, he enlisted and served four years as a control tower operator and rose to the rank of a staff sergeant in the Army Air Forces.  He spent time in England, France, and Spain.  His later stage name, "David Seville", originated from the fact that he was stationed in the city of Seville in Spain and he liked the city.

After the war, Ross returned to Fresno to get married and then moved to Los Angeles where he started a career as a songwriter.  Bagdasarian appeared in minor roles in several films, such as 1952's Viva Zapata!, 1953's Stalag 17, and 1953's Destination Gobi.  In 1954 Ross acted as the lonely composer at the piano in Alfred Hitchcock's Academy Award nominated thriller, Rear Window.  Acting in 1956's The Proud and Profane, he also composed and performed the tie-in song The Ballad of Colin Black.

Bagdasarian's first major success with songwriting came with the Armenian folk song "Come On-a My House", a song he had co-written with his cousin, William Saroyan, back in 1939.  Mitch Miller of Columbia Records came across the song and persuaded Rosemary Clooney to record it.  It became a million-selling hit for her and launched Clooney's career.  "Come On-a My House" reached #1 for six weeks on the Billboard chart and was #4 on Billboard's year-end top 30 singles of 1951.  In 1954, Bagdasarian also wrote "Hey, Brother, Pour the Wine", which was the lead single on Dean Martin's 1964 compilation album of the same name.

In 1955 Bagdasarian signed with the then newly established Liberty Records.  In early 1956 he had a transcontinental hit with the novelty record "The Trouble with Harry", inspired by the Hitchcock film of the same name.  The song was credited to Alfi & Harry, although Alfi & Harry was just one person, Bagdasarian himself.  It reached #44 on the Billboard chart and was a bigger hit in the United Kingdom where it reached #15.  In 1956, he wrote an instrumental "Armen's Theme" named after his wife. The executives at Liberty Records suggested that he adopt a pseudonym, as they thought his last name was too difficult to pronounce.  So in December 1956, he charted with his first record credited to his David Seville pseudonym, when  "Armen's Theme" reached #42 on the Billboard chart.

Around this time Bagdasarian spent $200 on a specialized tape recorder that could adjust the speed of recordings.  Ross had been inspired by a book titled Duel with a Witch Doctor on his bookshelf and planned to write a song about a witch doctor.  While experimenting with his new tape recorder, he had an idea of recording his voice at a different speed to create a dialogue between himself and the witch doctor.  He sang in his own voice as normal, and then overdubbed the song with the voice of the "witch doctor".  That squeaky voice was in fact his own voice, sung slowly but recorded at half speed on the tape recorder, then played back at normal speed.  Bagdasarian recorded the music first.  Then he experimented with the process for creating the singing voice for two months before recording it in the studio.  The witch doctor's high-pitched nonsense incantation on the song would turn out to be infectious.  Released by Liberty Records in early April 1958, the song became a hit and rescued Liberty Records from near-bankruptcy.  The catchy refrain is an earworm that sticks in your head, and it seemed to be everywhere in the Spring of 1958.  I would go to friend's house and hear it on the radio.  I can remember hearing fellow students at Wardcliffe Elementary School singing it in the hallways and during outdoor recess.  "Oo-ee-oo-ah-ah, ting-tang, walla-walla-bing-bang."  

On April 28th "Witch Doctor" reached #1 in the Billboard Top 100 chart and held the #1 position for three weeks.  It also ranked #1 on the US Cashbox Top 100, #1 on the Billboard R&B chart, and #11 on the UK singles chart.  

Here is David Seville's version of "Witch Doctor":

By year's end the "Witch Doctor" single had sold 1.4 million copies in the United States and was ranked by Billboard as the #4 song for 1958.

The same technique used to create the voice of the witch doctor was used in Bagdasarian's next song "The Bird on My Head", which was released on June 19th, 1958.  However, "The Bird on My Head" was less successful, only reaching #34 on the Billboard chart.  

Bagdasarian would go on to even greater fame at the end of the year.  Encouraged by Liberty to come up with another novelty song, he conceived the idea of a virtual band called The Chipmunks.  The Chipmunks were named, as an inside joke, after executives at Liberty Records:  Alvin after Al Bennett, Simon after Simon Waronker, and Theodore after Ted Keep.  The resulting song was "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)".  Bagdasarian performed as both David Seville and the voices of all three Chipmunks.  The single was released on November 17th, 1958 and credited to David Seville & The Chipmunks.  "The Chipmunk Song" spent four weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart from December 22nd, 1958, to January 12th, 1959 and remained on the charts for 13 weeks.  The novelty record was highly successful, selling 4.5 million copies in seven weeks, and eventually selling millions more copies.   "The Chipmunk Song" earned three Grammy Awards.  It was later adapted into a short for The Alvin Show, a half-hour TV cartoon show broadcast on CBS from October 1961 to September 1962.  In 2007, following the release of the live-action Alvin and the Chipmunks film, the song reappeared on the charts nearly five decades after its initial success.  "The Chipmunk Song" ended up being the 23rd most performed Christmas song of the 20th century and has became one of the best-selling singles of all time.

In the next four years, The Chipmunks released several more hit songs.  Among them were 1959's "Alvin's Harmonica", 1959's "Ragtime Cowboy Joe", 1960's "Alvin's Orchestra", 1960's "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer", and 1962's "The Alvin Twist".  In 1964 they released an album entitled The Chipmunks Sing the Beatles Hits.  Bagdasarian's Chipmunk Enterprises also sponsored Chipmunk-related products and, by 1963, some 15 companies were using or planned to use Alvin figures.  Also in 1963 Billboard magazine estimated the total income from the Chipmunks' record sales and record club sales to be around $20 million.  David Seville and the Chipmunks would release several more records over the following decade.  Through the successful franchise, the Chipmunks became one of the most successful children's artists of all time. The franchise has garnered two #1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, won five Grammy Awards, had four Top 10 albums on the Billboard 200, and achieved three certified platinum albums.  In 2019, The Chipmunks received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Ross Bagdasarian died from a heart attack in his Beverly Hills, California, home on January 16th, 1972, eleven days before his 53rd birthday.  Bagdasarian willed the Chipmunks franchise to his wife and three children.  The franchise was revived in 1973, with the characters' voices provided by his son, Ross Bagdasarian, Jr., and the latter's wife, Janice Karman.

Let me return to my discussion of the "Witch Doctor" song.  Although it was initially released under David Seville alone, "Witch Doctor" would also be released under the name of David Seville and The Chipmunks.  So "Witch Doctor" gained even further popularity due to multiple covers performed by Alvin and the Chipmunks.  The first was for their 1960 album Sing Again with The Chipmunks.  That version would be released as a single and adapted into a musical segment in The Alvin Show, which in turn was included on The Alvin Show soundtrack album from the animated series.  In 1983, they performed the song on the Alvin and the Chipmunks episode "The Chipmunk Story" and for their 1984 album Songs from our TV Shows.  The "Witch Doctor" song was used for the opening of the 1990 TV special Rockin' Through the Decades, with each verse being sung by one of the Chipmunks in the style of a different artist.

Bagdasarian's tape speeding up technique was also imitated by other recording artists, such as Sheb Wooley in "The Purple People Eater".  Sheb Wooley's 1958 hit will be the feature of a future episode on Rock and Roll Flashback.  The Big Bopper, who will also have a future Rock and Roll Flashback episode, parodied both songs on "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor".  Big Bopper's song was originally released as a single, but it was its flip-side, "Chantilly Lace", that became the huge hit.

Thank you for listening to this episode in the Novelty Songs series here on Rock and Roll Flashback!  I will close out this podcast with David Seville & The Chipmunks version of  "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)".  So, fellow travelers, may your path be smooth and your music always be rockin'!  And until next time...Rock On!