TRACK #343:

Horror Movies by Dickie Goodman

There’s so many “Hey, girls get scared at horror movies, so maybe I can cop a feel” tunes that they could probably sustain their own mini-playlist.

Hell, the most universally recognized and beloved song on this playlist is kinda exactly that sorta tune. Referential sure (if mostly in a generic kinda way) but really just about a girl getting so scared they let ya get to second base maybe without putting up too much of a fuss. Now, how believable all of that is coming from the King of Pop, I’ll leave for you to decide

For now, I’ll spare you that mini-playlist and even some of the songs that might be on it, but I’ll rock a block of these fuckers cause, hey, that’s just the kinda ship we run around here. And off the bow of a course-correcting jam from Skyhooks seems like the perfect time.

We mentioned Dickie Goodman a while back, and he’s a pretty big wheel down at the Novelty Monster Song factory. Hell, the guy could even be considered the Grandfather of Sampling. See, Dickie made it big releasing what he called “Break-In Songs.”

Dickie would conduct an interview of sorts, with say, Frankenstein, and the responses would be in the form of samples from popular music at the time. They were a pretty big hit.

As clever and innovative as that was for the time, it doesn’t necessarily make for good playlist listening. Thankfully for us, Dickie cut some real songs too, and one of them just happens to be Referential Monster Song.

However, if you happen to be a Novelty Monster Song fanatic, you might think this tune sounds strikingly similar to the 1964 Jekyll and Hyde tune, My Baby Loves Monster Movies

And that because it’s basically the same song. It was even written and performed by Dickie as well. Outside of some differences of arrangement, and the line “Horror Movies” being changed to “Monster Movies,” it’s pretty much the same tune. Now, why he did this and released it under a different name is beyond me, but it certainly seems to be the case. His son Jon released a biography about him in 2000 called the King of Novelty. Maybe there’s an answer in there somewhere. I’ll keep you posted.

Dickie continued to make Break-In records for the better part of 30 years, covering contemporary events from the moon landing to The Watergate scandal and films like Frankenstein and Jaws. His break-ins even reached into the 80’s with songs like Hey E.T. and The Return of the Jedi Returns.

Unfortunately, at the age of 55, Dickie took his own life in the winter of 1989. Though he did live to see sampling utilized in the most unprecedented of ways (and was himself sued for using unlicensed material) he didn’t quite get to see just how ubiquitous sampling would become or just how much legal controversy it would stir.

What he left behind though was a legacy of innovation, parody and fun and a Monster Song so nice, he went and recorded it twice.

Here’s the man himself, The King of Novelty, lamenting that he can’t compete with those gnarly monsters his girl just goes crazy over in Horror Movies.