40s – Halloween Shindig

TRACK #332:

On October 31 (Halloween Song) by Bob Hannon

So now it’s finally Halloween, but we’ve definitely already blown our Hall-load for the year and we’re 2 songs outside of a 10-slot for the big day. Where does that leave us?

Well, there’s always that old fallback, the Halloween Date Track. First and last seen on Halloween of 2018, when Acid Witches’ sinister October 31st took the holiday position.

This one reminds me of Kaye Lande’s Halloween, in that it’s set to a piece of classical music. In fact, all the Songs For Little Folks are, that was the whole point, I guess.

For Kay Lande it was Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns Danse Macbre.

In the case of Bob Hannon, it’s Evard Grieg’s In The Hall of the Mountain King, which is no stranger to being used and abused.

As far back as Fritz Lang’s M and further, and as recently as this years ad for the Bob’s Burgers movie, and countless commercials, trailers, video games, cartoons and TV shows in between, In The Hall of the Mountain King has been ringing in your ears your whole life. You know the tune.

The song is even said to have inspired the Inspecter Gadget theme, which – now that they mention it – yeah, fuckin-a it did!

But what is it?

Well, it was a piece of incidental scoring from the 1867 Henrik Ibsen play, Peer Gynt. The play is all about trolls or whatever and this dude named Peer enters their mountain abode with the Mountain King’s daughter or something. The King wants them to bang I think, which is weird, and that act will turn Peer into a Troll, which is good for the King somehow. I dunno, it was in Norwegian, Mac, I didn’t understand.

At any rate, for our final song of Halloween 2022, here’s On October 31 (Halloween Song) by Bob Hannon.

Thanks for tuning in, everybody! We’ll see ya soon with some new additions to the site, some rare finds and some new episodes of Shindig Radio!

Have a Happy Halloween!

TRACK #270:

Halloween by Bing Crosby, Boris Karloff & Victor Moore

Many of you are no doubt familiar with Bing Crosby, if only as the narrator of Disney’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow or from White Christmas. Already, no Holiday slouch.

Well, back in October of 1946, ole Bing here started hosting Philco Radio Time, a program sponsored by the Philco Corporation, who made phonographs back then. This program was known for being the 1st pre-recorded radio show in America! This was no doubt due to Philco’s influence as pioneers in the recording and reproduction of sound. Pretty neat

Like the variety television shows that would follow in its footsteps, this programm featured Bing and various musical guests performing songs and skits. Mostly though, it featured ads for Philco phonographs, unsurprisingly.

On October 29th 1947, Bing invited Universal Horror star Boris Karloff onto the program for a little festive spice. You can listen to the entire program here, if you’ve got a thing for old timey radio.

That night, stage actor and comedian Victor Moore was also on hand and the 3 of them decided to sing everybody a song for Halloween.

Now, this song was later released on a Bing Crosby compilation with much better audio quality then what’s available on the full program. However, I’ve taken the intro from the full episode to give the song a bit more context, which will explain the sudden shift in audio quality.

Long sitting in the Shindig Bullpen, 2020 seemed like an appropriate to year to finally add a song about folks being too afraid to leave their houses for Halloween.

I’m not sure what next week is gonna look like, mostly because I’m writing this under quarantine 5 months before Halloween. But also because, in this moment, it’s hard to imagine folks opting to have their children walk up to several dozen houses and grab fistfuls of unsanitized candy from the communal bowls of complete strangers. We’ll see I suppose.

However society ends up handling this already anemic autumnal activity, I’m sure it’ll be a thing straight out of 2020. So, let’s hear the newest oldest track on Halloween Shindig. But first, as the old Silver Shamrock ad says…

It’s Time…It’s Time….

Put on your mask…