Song of the Day 2/29: David Seville, “Witch Doctor”
In a DL exclusive, sources tell us this guy was in serious consideration to be appointed Coronavirus Czar in the Trump White House, but aides couldn’t convince the president that the “witch doctor” and David Seville were the same person. They also had difficulty getting Trump to accept that “oo ee oo ah ah” had no therapeutic effect. They never even bothered trying to explain that Seville was really Ross Bagdasarian, a cousin of the novelist/playwright William Saroyan whose first success in songwriting was “Come On-a My House,” which he wrote with Saroyan based on an Armenian folk melody. He spent most of the ’50s acting in bit parts in Hollywood, but struck gold when he fooled around with a two-speed tape recorder and wrote this song. It hit No. 1 and sold 1.5 million singles in 1958, so Ed Sullivan found a way to get Bagdasarian on stage to pantomime it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iA_TZ15ruA
The popularity of “Witch Doctor” made a follow-up inevitable, and Bagdasarian timed “The Christmas Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late)” perfectly. He also wisely gave his “chipmunk” voices names, and he didn’t look far for inspiration — Alvin Bennett and Simon Warnoker were the the heads of Liberty Records, Ted Keep the recording engineer for the session. The rest is annoying cartoon history.
The craziest thing about Trump’s lunatic response to this is that a crisis of this scale presents an opportunity for a leader to forge some superordinate goals and bring people together.
He is fucking bonkers.
Bonkers? Kinda, more like he’s out of his league and his usual lies, insults and insane claims won’t work now. As noted he could have played this right and enhanced his chances in November, instead he’s a made the situation far worse for himself. See? A bright side to everything.
Hugh Masekela’s Witch Doctor is excellent as well. Very clever putting it together.
45’s power lies in dividing people and pandering to the bigoted resentments of his POS followers