MASH NOTES
Novelty Song Recalls Scariest Halloween Ever
By Mark Ellis

It was with sadness and a smile that I learned of Bobby "Boris" Pickett's April 2007 death from leukemia at age 69. I was always fascinated by monsters as a kid, especially Universal's "big three," Frankenstein, Dracula, and Wolf Man, so it figured that "Monster Mash" would be the first record I ever bought. I wore out the 45, and found stolen moments at school to listen to the ghoulish tune in heavy rotation on my transistor radio. I couldn't have known then that Bobby Pickett had spent a good part of his boyhood watching these strangely sympathetic icons of terror in his father's theater in Somerville, Massachusetts.

1962 saw the culmination of a resurgence of interest in the classic film monsters. Television had introduced them to a new generation. Comic books were breathing new life into old corpses, and Aurora was selling mass quantities of monster modeling kits. Even bubble gum cards were available with assorted creatures from beyond the grave. When aspiring actor and lounge act singer Pickett's novelty broke out like news of a secret all night party, the circle of horror was unbroken.

To teens raised by button-down Eisenhower parents, "Mash" sounded like a grand transgression, a gathering of "others" to whom they could wholly relate. It was arguably the first certified, recorded freak-out. Pickett's spot-on vocal was irresistible to the human ear, as creepy and ultimately human as the famous monster Karloff had portrayed. There were sound effects--a bubbling cauldron-and a drear, snaking, recurring melody line. The song inspired a delightfully horrible dance craze.

Fear was already a pervasive theme, the nuclear age having dawned and chilled into a mode of mutually assured destruction. The same kids who rocked with Frank, Wolfie, and Drac were crawling under their desks to prepare for a Soviet nuclear attack. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought it all inescapably home; Halloween 1962 was imbued with the sense that within thirty minutes of a Russian launch we could all be instantly incinerated. At the end of the day it seemed fitting to party down with old fiends. The collection who attended Pickett's party offered a defiant empowerment, a way to get down in the face of the ultimate death-makers.

Life also beckoned. Records like The Four Season's "Sherry" and Elvis' "Return to Sender" spun on my turntable. Girls, rather than monsters, began dancing in my visions. Pickett's Christmas 1962 follow-up, "Monster's Holiday" only climbed to number 30 on the Billboard Chart. By 1963 the sun-drenched Beach Boys had surfed onto the scene with surging anthems to summer, and the stage was set for a quartet from Liverpool, England. It was time to put away horrifying things. .

Yet Pickett's monsterific tune reentered the charts twice again, in 1970 and 1973. Through Viet Nam, Reagan, AIDS, Clinton and 9/11, one cultural constant remained unchanged: Halloween, and the "the Mash." And so it remains today.

With the news of Pickett's passing again knocking around in my memories, I'm tempted to follow the trajectory of his undying song to its logical conclusion. Bobby is happy now, mashing with that supernatural crew in the great beyond, and the party has just begun.

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Thank you, Mark. I hope all Bobby's fans read and enjoy your literary tribute.