Tell Them Boris Sent You ...

I'm not much on learning seasonal songs -- "Greensleeves," aka "What Child is This?" is pretty much my entire Christmas repertoire, and past that and Chanukah, most other secular holidays don't have much music attached to them. Beyond me to do the 1812 Overture on the guitar for Fourth of July ...

Hallowe'en has one, though. Bobby "Boris" Pickett, doing "The Monster Mash."

This little ditty, from 1962, has Pickett imitating Boris Karloff as Dr. Frankenstein, as well as Bela Lugosi's Dracula, complete with creaky doors (nail being pulled from wood) and a bubbling cauldron (somebody blowing through a straw into a glass of water.)

It was a simpler time, in the pre-British music invasion days, when radio stations were still playing Gene Vincent's "Be Bop a Lula," and the Beach Boys were cranking up their first single, "Surfin' Safari."

"Monster Mash," basic four-chord structure (I, vi, IV, V), went to Number One with a bullet, just in time for Hallowe'en.

Why do I bring this up? I woke up this morning, for some reason, mentally listening to this song, and since I can do a fair imitation of both Karloff and Lugosi, I figured, what the hell, I might as well learn this one ...