Dinner with Drac

I think I’ve mentioned before that I have family living in the USA, and occasionally they have visited here.

When I was a kid, my aunt came over – I think on her own, but possibly with my uncle and three cousins in tow – and she brought with her an album which she gave to my brother and I.

This would have been in the late 1970s, or early 1980s at the very latest, and the album in question was a compilation album called “Looney Tunes”.

I honestly don’t know what made her buy this for us; possibly she thought it was something to do with the home-to-Bugs-Bunny cartoon franchise of the same name.

It isn’t: “Looney Tunes” is an album which showcases several…well…odd, novelty records. If I told you that the opening track is Napoleon XIV’s “They’re Coming to Take Me Away (Ha Ha)” and that the closing track is David Seville& The Chipmunks’ “The Chipmunk Song”, and that also featured are songs by the likes of Nervous Norvous (who appears twice, singing “Ape Call”, and “Transfusion”, the latter an ode to car crashes), and The Rivingtons doing “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow” and “The Bird’s The Word” (two songs which were combined by The Trashmen 1963 as “Surfin’ Bird”, which many of you will know as a song later covered by The Cramps), then you’ll get an idea of what an odd album this is.

So anyway, there’s also a couple of Halloween type tunes on there, I thought I’d share one with you.

This is John Zacherle, an American television host, radio personality, and voice actor, best known in the States for his long career as a television horror movie host in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and completely unknown here in the UK, not even for this:

John Zacherle – Dinner With Drac

There’s touches of Bobby “Boris” Picket & The Crypt Kickers’ “Monster Mash” about that isn’t there? Well actually, no. It’s the other way round, “Dinner with Drac” was released in 1958, the “Monster Mash” in 1962.

Oh go on then.

Bobby “Boris” Pickett & The Crypt Kickers – Monster Mash

More (from this album, probably) soon.