This Day In Music History: Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers The Monster Mash

Actually this day in music history began 7 days ago. I can’t let this Halloween season go by without mentioning that starting on October 20, 1962 for the next 2 weeks the #1 song in the country was the Monster Mash by Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers. It all started when Bobby was a little boy. His Dad managed the local movie theater and Bobby got to see all the movies he wanted. Many of them were Boris Karloff movies. He decided to become an actor and learned how to do many voices. His best was his impression of Boris Karloff.
After a stint in the Army as part of the Signal Corps in Korea he came back to the states and moved to Hollywood. He was trying for an acting career but in the process met some old high school friends and they started a singing group called the Cordials. They preformed at a local restaurant on Friday nights. One of the songs they did was “Little Darlin’” In the middle of the song Bobby did a monologue in his Karloff voice. The rest of the group thought they should write a novelty song about a dancing monster and record it. Bobby wasn’t interested. He wanted to get his acting career started.
However, an acting career was not in the cards for Bobby at that time. He did sign with an agent but the agent died two weeks later. So Bobby put his acting career on the back burner and got together with his friend from the Cordials, Leonard Capizzi, and they wrote the Monster Mash. Bobby and Lenny got Gary Paxton, the Cordials were under contract to him, to hear the song. He loved it and signed Bobby to a recording contract to his Garpax label. The song was quickly recorded and Bobby thought he would never hear the song again. That changed when the record sold over a million copies and bumped the Four Seasons song Sherry from the #1 spot on October 20th 1962. The popularity of the song has spanned the years as on August 29th 1970 the song entered the charts again and peaked at 91. In May of 1973 it entered the charts a third time to peak at #10. With this song Bobby Pickett became a star. He had a Christmas follow up with Monster’s Holiday and later with a more serious song called Graduation Day. On that last song he didn’t include the name of Boris. He only uses that in connection with the Monster Mash.
While the song was a huge hit in America in 1962 it was banned from the airwaves in England. That is until 1973 when it was played there and became a #3 hit on the British charts.
Thanks to the song Bobby even got his acting career going for awhile. In 1964 the LA radio station KRLA hired him to do Saturday night monster shows from 9pm to midnight. He used many of his voices to play characters like Dracula, Igor, Zombie the Surfer and of course…Karloff.