Nov. 2, 2025

HALLOWEEN - Bobby 'Boris' Pickett - "Monster Mash"

Show Notes
Transcript

Welcome back to Hitmaker Chronicles! I'm your host, Garrett Fisher. Today, the Halloween novelty song that refuses to die - a graveyard smash written in half an hour that's been charting for over 60 years. We'll trace how an aspiring actor's Boris Karloff impression during a doo-wop song became the most enduring Halloween anthem ever recorded, complete with DIY sound effects and a BBC ban for being "too morbid." It's a story about failed actors, dance crazes, and how a joke song recorded in an hour is still generating a million dollars a year. Let's do the Mash.

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Caalaroga Shark Media. I'm Garrett Fischer and Bobby Pickett never

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wanted to be a singer when he moved to Hollywood

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in nineteen sixty. His ambition was to be a movie actor.

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He'd grown up in Somerville, Massachusetts, watching horror films for

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free because his father managed the local theater two three

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times a day. Young Bobby would sit in the dark

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watching Boris Karloff lumber across the screen as Frankenstein's Monster,

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as the Mummy, absorbing every gesture, every inflection of that

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cultured English voice playing monsters. By the time Picket got

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to Hollywood after a stint in the army in Korea,

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he had perfected a dead on Karloff impression. He'd been

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winning talent contests back in Massachusetts with a four minute

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comedy routine about monsters twenty five dollars a pop, which

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was good money for an unemployed XGI in nineteen fifty nine.

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But in Hollywood the acting jobs weren't coming, so on

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weekends to make ends meet, he sang with a doop

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group called the Cordials at local clubs, sometimes literally singing

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for their supper spaghetti dinners at an Italian restaurant on

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Pico Boulevard. The Cordials had a regular number. They did

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Little Darln by the Diamonds, a nineteen fifty seven hit

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with a spoken word section in the middle. One night,

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Pickett asked bandmate Leonard Kpezzi if he could do the

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monologue as Boris Karloff. The audience went wild. Capizzi pulled

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him aside after the show, that's a great voice for

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a novelty record. Pickett wasn't interested. He was an actor,

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not a recording artist. But then his agent died of

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a heart attack. The acting gigs dried up completely, and

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suddenly a novelty record didn't seem like such a bad idea.

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One Saturday morning in May nineteen sixty two, Pickett went

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to Kapizzi's house. Capizzi sat at the piano and started

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playing a simple four chord progression G E, minor C

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and D. What do you think of this riff, Kapedesi asked,

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I don't know, Pickett said, but maybe we should base

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something on the monster getting up and doing the latest dance.

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The latest dance in nineteen sixty two was the mashed potato,

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popularized by Dede Sharp's mashed potato time. It involved a

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heelto action with your feet while making various arm movements.

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James Brown had been doing it in his live performances

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since nineteen fifty nine. It was everywhere. Within half an hour,

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they had written Monster Mash. The song tells the story

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narrated in Karlov's voice, of a mad scientist whose monster

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rises from his slab late one night and starts dancing.

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Soon all the monsters join in, vampires, zombies, wolfman, Dracula,

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asking about the Transylvania twist. It's a monster party and

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the dance they're doing is the monster mash, basically the

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mashed potato with Frankenstein arm gestures. They recorded a demo

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on a Woollensack tape recorder and took it to Gary S. Paxton,

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who'd had a hit two years earlier with Ali Oop

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as lead singer of the Hollywood Argyles. Paxton, all of

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seventeen years old but already one of the hottest producers

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in Hollywood, listened once and said, I want to produce this.

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This is a hit record. The recording session was as

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makeshift as the writing. Less than an hour start to finish,

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the session musicians included a young piano player named Leon Russell,

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who showed up late and only played on the B side.

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The ventures drummer Mel Taylor might have been there. The

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backing singers Johnny McCrae, Ricky Page, and Terry Berg were

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credited as the crypt Kickers. The sound effects were pure

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Dey magic. The coffin opening a rusty nail being pulled

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from a board, the cauldron bubbling water being blown through

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a straw, a trick the Beatles would later use on

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Yellow Submarine. The chains rattling, actual chains being dropped on

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the tile floor. Total production cost about two hundred dollars.

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Every major record label turned it down four rejections. Then

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Packson decided to release it himself on his tiny Garpax

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Records label, with distribution through London Records. Released in August

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nineteen sixty two, Monster Mash climbed the charts just in

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time for Halloween. On October twentieth, nineteen sixty two, it

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hit number one on the Billboard Hot one hundred, where

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it stayed for two weeks. The BBC immediately banned it

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two morbid for British airwaves. They declared the ban only

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made it more popular. The song would return to the

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charts again and again in August nineteen seventy, May nineteen

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seventy three, when it hit the top ten again, and

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then in twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, and twenty

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twe twenty three. As of twenty twenty three, the song

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was generating one million dollars annually in royalties. Not bad

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for a half hour's work. The real Boris Karloff loved it.

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He performed his own version on the Halloween episode of

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Shindig on October thirtieth, nineteen sixty five. When a record

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promoter ran into Karloff at a music store buying the album,

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Karloff told him it was wonderful. The Monster approved of

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his Monster. Pickett tried to capitalize with follow ups Monsters

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Holiday for Christmas nineteen sixty two, which hit number thirty,

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Monster Swim, Werewolf Wa two Z, Monster Motion. In nineteen

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eighty five, as rap was emerging, he released Monster Rap

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teaching the Monster how to Talk through hip hop. None

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captured the magic of the original, but here's what makes

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Monster Mash immortal. It's a perfect joke that never gets old.

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Every Halloween somewhere in the world a d reaches for

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it every October. It creeps back onto the charts. It's

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been covered by the Beach Boys, the Misfits, and countless others.

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It spawned dance crazes, merchandise, even academic studies about novelty songs.

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The genius is in its simplicity. Its monsters doing a

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popular dance. That's it. That's the whole joke, but wrapped

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in Pickett's perfect Karloff impression, backed by those homemade sound effects.

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Riding the wave of a dance craze, it became something

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more than a novelty. It became tradition. Think about what

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Monster Mash represents. It's a failed actor doing an impression

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of another actor who played a character from an eighteen

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eighteen novel, set to a variation of a dance popularized

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by James Brown and Dede Sharp, recorded with sound effects

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made from household items, rejected by every major label, banned

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by the BBC, and yet immortal. Pickett once said about

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the recording, my attitude towards this project was, yeah, sure,

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it's a hit. Just give me a check and some

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copies for my friends and family and I'll be happy.

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He thought it was just a lark, something a few

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Boris Karlas freaks might enjoy. Instead, he created the Halloween Anthem,

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the song that every October rises from its grave, does

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its dance, and returns to the charts, a graveyard smash

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that literally will not die more in a moment. Picket

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passed away in two thousand and seven from leukemia. In

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his autobiography Monster Mash Have Dead in Hollywood, he wrote

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about death with the same dark humor that made his

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song immortal, even quoting Bela Lugosi's Dracula about how being

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really dead must be glorious. But Bobby Boris Pickett isn't

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really dead. Every Halloween, in every time zone, at every

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costume party and school dance and radio station, his voice

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rises again. The mad Scientist creation still dances, the monsters

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still mash, and somewhere a new generation of kids learns

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those Frankenstein arm movements, continuing a dance that started as

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a joke in nineteen sixty two and became forever. The

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Mash Potato dance craze died by nineteen sixty three. Deede

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Sharp faded into obscurity. The Twist, the Watousi, the Frog

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all forgotten, but the monster mash that dance is eternal,

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because unlike those other crazes, this one comes with its

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own mythology, its own season, its own reason to exist

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beyond just being a dance. It's the only dance craze

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that's also a ghost story, a comedy routine, a horror movie,

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and a Halloween tradition. Written in half an hour, recorded

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in an hour, rejected by everyone who should have known better,

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and still here, still playing, still making a million dollars

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a year. As Pickett used to say when he performed

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it live wearing his blood splattered lab coat. The monster

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isn't Frankenstein. That was the doctor. The monster was the creation,

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and sometimes, just sometimes, the creation outlives its creator in

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the most spectacular ways. Every Halloween, when you hear that

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familiar Boris Karlov voice starting the story about working in

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the lab late one night, remember you're listening to a

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failed actor's impression of a British actor playing a German

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monster doing an American dance at a party that never ends.

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That's not just a graveyard smash. That's immortality.