Sure, the ‘munks did cover versions, too, like their gonzo deconstruction of “Ragtime Cowboy Joe” and their galloping “rock and roll” take on “Whistle While You Work,” but the group’s best, most famous songs were Bagdasarian originals: “Alvin’s Harmonica,” “The Alvin Twist,” “Alvin’s Orchestra,” and the satirical “ Alvin for President,” in which the group’s tiny lead singer allows his political ambitions to sabotage a recording session, much to Dave’s chagrin. On that record, Ross himself played four distinct characters: obsequious, tittering Theodore goody-goody, know-it-all Simon selfish, anarchic Alvin and hot-headed Dave Seville, a seething cauldron of rage. That first hit was credited to “The Music of David Seville.” When Ross ditched the witch doctor character and attributed the squeaky voices to singing chipmunks instead, he did so through another self-penned smash hit, “The Chipmunk Song,” a Christmas tune that pokes a little gentle fun at the materialism of the holidays. What’s crucial about “The Witch Doctor,” which reached #1 in 1958 and prevented Elvis’ “Wear My Ring Around Your Neck” from topping the chart, is that it’s one of the original, newly-written songs upon which Bagdasarian the elder built his high-pitched empire. Liberty Records didn’t care they were up to their necks in tax debt and needed a hit badly, according to The Wacky Top 40. The only extant references to a book called Duel with the Witch Doctor, for instance, come from Bagdasarian himself. How much of that origin story is true is dubious. So I decided to have the witch doctor give advice to the lovelorn in his own language – a kind of qualified gibberish. All the teenage records that were selling seemed to have one thing in common – you couldn’t understand any of the lyrics. I looked up from my desk and saw a book, Duel with the Witch Doctor. As for a hit song in which to apply his gimmick, The Wacky Top 40 cites a vintage interview with Ross, Sr.: My mind was a little madder than its normal semi-orderly state of confusion. stumbled upon the squeaky-voiced gimmick that would make him famous. It was while screwing around with that contraption, of course, that Ross, Sr. In The Wacky Top 40 by Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo, Ross Bagdasarian, Jr., the songwriter’s son and eventual inheritor of the Chipmunk franchise, remembered his dad spending $190 of the family’s last $200 to buy a tape recorder. It was desperation, in fact, that made Ross a star. during the middle Eisenhower years to make it in showbiz. He’d already tried and failed to become a Fresno grape grower like his old man before moving to L.A. None of those adventures, however, had made Bagdasarian a lot of money, and this was a man with a wife and three children to support. Under his own name, he’d acted on Broadway, co-written (with respected playwright William Saroyan, his cousin) the loopy, harpsichord-tinged “Come On-A My House,” which hit #1 for Rosemary Clooney in 1951, and appeared in such classic films as Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 (1953) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), sharing screen time with Hitch himself in the latter. The “Seville” part was a reference to the city in Spain where’d he’d been stationed while in the Air Force. Nearly 40 when he found fame and success, Ross had lived a pretty interesting life before ever billing himself as David Seville, a WASP-y sounding pseudonym he took on at the behest of Liberty Records executives. In reality, the seemingly deathless franchise began with a multi-talented and somewhat experimental singer, songwriter, producer, and actor from Fresno with the unwieldy Armenian name of Ross Bagdasarian (1919-1972). In its current, much slicker incarnation, the group has a successful series on Nickelodeon, the CGI-created ALVINNN!!! and the Chipmunks, and a fourth live-action feature film, The Road Chip, scheduled to be released this December.Īnd all this from just speeding up the vocals on otherwise-ordinary pop song covers? Not quite. In their original heyday, which lasted from roughly 1958 to 1969, the ‘munks scored three Top 40 albums, six Top 40 hits (eight in total if you count two re-entries of their first single, “The Chipmunk Song”), 30 million record sales, and their own prime time TV series. The novelty act’s official site calls him “the Chipmunks’ adoptive father, confidant, and songwriter.” The fictional backstory of David Seville is that he was a singer-songwriter who discovered the helpless animals by pure happenstance, took them into his home, adopted them, dressed them up in cute little outfits, and turned them into singing sensations. He serves as their caretaker as well as the Brian Epstein to their Beatles, feeding and clothing them as well as shepherding their career in the music industry. Dave, of course, is the human adjunct to those famous singing rodents, Alvin and the Chipmunks. David Seville never really existed at all, and yet there have been at least three of him in the last 60 years.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |