Season of the Witch: A Halloween Playlist Volume 2

Whoooooo! it’s that time of the year again folks! The fall season is upon us and that means it’s almost time to celebrate Halloween! Today’s post is about some of my favorite spooky songs that always make an appearance on my annual Halloween playlist. Over the years, I’ve often been surprised at exactly how many cool spooky tunes are in existence.

Many 20th century horror films feature large string arrangements, including the iconic 1960’s horror flick, Psycho. The strings from Psycho are an example of the importance in creating a spooky atmosphere. In the 1960’s, Psycho frightened its listeners with the shrill stabs of violins.

Halloween songs began to rise in popularity during the 1920's, 1930's and 1940's with the release of such songs as Haunted House Blues (Bessie Smith, 1924), Dead Man Blues (Jelly Roll Morton, 1926), The Ghost of the St Louis Blues (Emmett Miller, 1929), Haunted Nights (Duke Ellington, 1929), Haunted House (Ray Noble and His All Stars, 1931), Ghost in the Graveyard (The Prairie Ramblers, 1935), Mr. Ghost is Going to Town (Louis Prima and His New Orleans Gang, 1936), Ding Dong the Witch is Dead (The Glenn Miller Orchestra, 1939), Dry Bones (Fats Waller, 1940), That Old Black Magic (Glenn Miller, 1942), and Ghost Riders in the Sky (Gene Autry, 1949).

By the time the 1950’s rolled around, novelty Halloween songs were the order of the day. The love of B-movie monsters and graveyard rock carried through into the early '60s, as Americans tuned in to The Munsters and The Addams Family in their living rooms. In short, there was no better time to be a trick-or-treater!

One particular aspect of the fifties novelty Halloween songs I grew up with was the prevalence of many of these songs arose from the surf music scene. I have yet to find any concrete info on why this came to pass and to this day, the surf music genre is still heavily connected to Halloween music.

These days, my favorite Halloween songs are a mix of a wide variety of genres; some basic rock, some surf-arama tunes, some cocktail lounge ditties and some ridiculous sounding tunes that just seem to capture that good old Halloween vibe.

Here’s some songs on my Season of the Witch: A Halloween Playlist Vol. 2

Vincent Price Trivia: “According to Price, when he and Peter Lorre went to view Bela Lugosi's body at Lugosi's funeral, Lorre, upon seeing Lugosi dressed in his famous Dracula cape, quipped, 'Do you think we should drive a stake through his heart just in case?'”

This bizarre Halloween nugget always seems to pop up on almost every Halloween compilation I've come across over the years. I contacted various record collectors and no one seems to know anything about the group and who produced the song. Hmmm....another Halloween mystery I guess!

One of the greatest combos that celebrated the Halloween vibe were The Cramps. The Cramps were an American punk rock band formed in 1976 and active until 2009. The band split after the death of lead singer Lux Interior. Their line-up rotated frequently during their existence, with the husband-and-wife duo of Interior and lead guitarist and occasional bass guitarist Poison Ivy comprising the only ever-present members. The addition of guitarist Bryan Gregory and drummer Pam Balam resulted in the first complete lineup in April 1976. They were part of the early CBGB punk rock movement that had emerged in New York. The Cramps were one of the first punk bands, and also widely recognized as one of the prime innovators of psychobilly.

Another scary gem is No Costume No Candy by the Swinging Neckbreakers. From the All Music site: "Brought on together by brothers Tom and John Jorgensen in 1992, the vintage rock of The Swingin' Neckbreakers debuted in their hometown of Trenton, New Jersey with Don Snook on guitar. Along with Tom taking on the bass and vocal duties while John handling the drums, the three piece comfortably set themselves amongst the trash rock company of Southern Culture On The Skids, The Lyres, Flat Duo Jets and The Wooglers. Immediately signing to Telstar Records, the Neckbreakers debuted with the single Diggin' A Grave, followed by their first album Live For Buzz in 1993. Following a European tour and a number of singles that were released on various labels throughout 1994, The Neckbreakers' second album Shake Break came out the next year on Telstar. After Don Snook's departure from the band in 1996, Jeffery Lee Jefferson eventually filled in on guitar and debuted on the 1997 album Kick Your Ass. Return of Rock and Live Live Live were released in 2000."

Next up in this parade of spooky tunes is Ghost Train by The Swanks!

From the Chuck DePrima blog: "Ghost Train was composed by The Swanks (Jack Revelle, lead guitar (age 17), Otha Libby (age 19) rhythm guitar and Bobby Jones (age 18) drums) in 1964 at Riposo Studios in Syracuse, New York. They had been rehearsing at the Jones’ family home in Brewerton, NY on a Saturday morning in preparation for a recording session at Riposo that afternoon. They were going to be recording a vocal song called My College Cry (which is nothing to write home about). About an hour and a half before they were scheduled to leave for Syracuse, they realized they had no material for the flip side of the 45 rpm record they would be recording. They began to jam and trade ideas back and forth, and the result of their effort over the span of that hour and a half, and three takes at Riposo Studios, was Ghost Train. Ghost Train was originally released on Charm Records but has since been reissued as a bootlegged on at least two dozen 1960’s instrumental compilations. It has also been used on the soundtrack of a French film, “Violent Days” & the original Frankenstein movie. Original copies of the song on the Charm label are crazy rare and can command almost $2,000 on e-bay.

These days Otha Libby is a retired police officer and college professor living in Seattle, Washington. Jack Revelle played professionally for over 20 years and retired from an automobile sales career and lives north of Syracuse, NY. During a recent interview Otha Libby said: 'It is the recording The Swanks did at Riposo Studios in Syracuse in 1964. It has been knocking around for 45 years and some kid in (I think) South America put it up as the sound track behind this piece of footage from the original Frankenstein’s Monster movie. There is an interesting story behind how this song came to exist, which I won’t bore you with unless you are interested. It has appeared on numerous compilations of American instrumental rock and was even used in the sound track of a French film.'"

The next Halloween song is one that has become popular over the last 5 years or so. John Entwistle’s Boris The Spider recorded by The Who. Boris The Spider is a great John Entwistle song which was, in fact, the first tune he ever wrote for The Who. From the Classic Rock website: “Entwistle was his own influential force within The Who. He was the only member to have had any formal musical training, and was also proficient on multiple brass instruments, as well as being an adept arranger. When he wrestled the platform from Pete Townshend, he was also a capable songwriter. Starting with A Quick One in 1966, almost every album that Entwistle made with The Who included one or more of his songs. They were distinctive for being gruesome, steeped in pitch-black humour and populated by such characters as degenerates, depressives, prostitutes and, in one memorable instance, an arachnid named Boris. That latter song, Boris The Spider, was the most requested that The Who played on stage, which piqued Townshend no end.”

Besides scary tunes, I’ve always loved humorous Halloween tunes.

One of my favorites is Mr. Ghost Goes To Town by the 5 Jones Boys!

"THE FIVE JONES BOYS, an Illinois group that relocated to Hollywood in the 1930s, were part of a long tradition of African-American tight harmony vocal groups that emerged from gospel. Using simple percussion and a careful blending of voices, African American a cappella vocalists were able to duplicate the sounds of a larger band — even impersonating musical instruments (Mr. Ghost Goes to Town contains several convincing horn solos). Bands such as the Ink Spots and the Mills Brothers were able to find national audiences using such techniques, but none ever duplicated the strangeness of this number.

Mr. Ghost Goes To Town has an infectious melody based around a deceptively simple bass line, over which the Jones Boys occasionally let out unearthly howls. The lyrics cheerfully tell of a dapper specter’s careful preparation for a night of stepping. ‘He’ll shake his bones to hot saxophones,’ the Five Jones Boys inform us, calling to mind Ub Iwerks famous 1929 cartoon “The Skeleton Dance,” in which row after row of corpses pull themselves out of their graves to shimmy to a jazz band. The Jones Boys end the song with a little capper to let listeners know how entertaining this all must be to their titular spook: The lead singer launches into peals of sinister, hysterical laughter." (The Dr. Mysterian blog)