Beyond The Monster Mash: A Handy Guide to Halloween Music

Hosting a Halloween party and don't know what to play?  Here's some suggestions.

Greatest  all-around Rock 'n' Roll Spookmeisters:  Roky Erikson. Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Screaming Lord Sutch, The Cramps, Alice Cooper, (especially his early stuff), Rob Zombie, Angry Johnny & The Killbillies.

Best album to use when greeting trick or treaters at your door: Blood by Stan Ridgway & Pietra Wextun. (This is instrumetnal music that's a hundred times creepier than your typical "haunted house" soundtracks.

Best Vampire Song: "Bloodletting" by Concrete Blonde

Best Werewolf Song: Warren Zevon would rise from the dead and  rip my lungs out, Jim, if I didn't say "Werewolves of London" (though "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" by The Cramps is up there too.)

Best Ghost Song: "Ghostriders in the Sky" (So many artists have done this one I did a Tune-up column on it a few years ago. My favorites still are the versions by Lorne Greene and New Mexico's own Last Mile Ramblers.

Best Frankenstein song: "Frankenstein Conquers the World" by Daniel Johnston & Jad Fair. Honorable Mention: "Frankenstein Meets the Beatles" by Dickie Goodman.

Best Satan Songs: Tie: "Satan's Bride" Gregg Turner and "I Lost My Baby to a Satan Cult" by Stephen W. Terrell. (The Devil loves cheesy self-promotion. See video and Soundcloud post at bottom of this post)

Best Country spook song besides "Ghost Riders": "Long Black Veil" written by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkin,  originally recorded by Lefty Frizzell and later recorded by The Band, Johnny Cash and many others. Honorable Mention: "(It Was a) Monster's Holiday" by Buck Owens.

Best Classic Blues Halloween song: "Haunted House Blues" by Bessie Smith

Best Halloween Jazz Vocal: "Halloween Spooks" by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross

Best Voodoo Rock : Gris-Gris by Dr. John, The Night Tripper (1968). Honorable mention: "Papa Legba" by The Talking Heads from True Stories. (Seek out the version with Pops Staples on vocals.)

Classic Halloween albums from this Century: Mondo Zombie Bugaloo by The Fleshtones, Southern Culture on the Skids and Los Straitjackets; Zombified by Southern Culture on the Skids; Rob Zombie presents Captain Clegg & The Night Creatures (haunted honky-tonk performed by Texas country singer Jesse Dayton); Buy a Gun, Get a Free Guitar by Deadbolt (an earlier version of this album was called "Voodoo Moonshiner"); Garage Monsters: The Best of the Garagepunk Hideout Vol. 9.



My own (free!) online Halloween contributions: On my monthly Big Enchilada podcasts, I've been doing annual Spooktaculars since 2008. Find them all HERE And for users of Spotify, check out my Halloween Spook Rock playlist.




Here's the latest Big Enchilada Spooktacular

BIG ENCHILADA 77: Spooktacular 2014 by Steve Terrell on Mixcloud

And here's some other Satanic madness

The Spookiest Song Ever

In this season of Halloween, there's much debate about what is the spookiest song ever recorded.

It certainly ain't "The Monster Mash."

I believe in my heart that honor belongs to The Flamingos’ “I Only Have Eyes For You.” This is a ‘50s classic that I first heard as a very young child.

Its ghostly but gorgeous melody and the harmonies are nothing short of otherworldly. But even more strange are the do-wop nonsense syllables that sound like jungle chants Are they saying Beelzebub at the end of every line in the verses? Or are they just singing "she-bop she-bop" ? You decide.

Back in 1994 when reviewing Rhino Records' first Doo-Wop Box, Here's what I said about this song:

... one night last winter I was driving alone on a rainy night, listening, for reasons I don't remember, to an oldies station, which happened to play "I Only Have Eyes for You" by The Flamingos.

There's a strumming of three guitar chords, followed by the steady beat of a piano. Singer [Nate Nelson] comes in singing effortlessly, "My love must be a kind of blind love/I can't see anyone but you," as if he's got to justify what he has to say.

Then the group responds with unintelligible, almost discordant syllables, like some kind of eerie voodoo chant. All this before Hunt starts the first verse, invoking celestial bodies.

By the end of the song, all five Flamingos are gushing the beautiful melody, the falsetto going nuts as if possessed by the loa of high register. It almost seems that the group is having the aural equivalent of a simultaneous orgasm, right there in the echo chamber.

But way before the song got to this point on that rainy Santa Fe night, I was transported into the past, reliving a buried memory of being a 5-year-old kid, listening to a radio late at night to a sound that was alluring and forbidding at the same time ...

The official Flamingos web site describes how the arrangement for this song came to be:

 [Singer and guitarist Terry Johnson] lamented to Nate Nelson about what to do with the song, to which Nate suggested incorporating the Russian anthem “Song of the Volga Boatmen.” Nate, whose nickname was “lips,” was known for his snide jokes and wry sense of humor. Terry disregarded the remark and went back to his room at the Cecil [a hotel in Harlem] to try to figure out an arrangement on his guitar. Laying in his bed with the guitar across his body, he fell asleep. “By the time I awoke,” Terry recalls, “God had given me the arrangement in a dream.” A few chords Terry had been strumming before he dosed off, a bass-line variation of the “Volga Boatmen” song and an ethereal vocal background idea came together quickly after Terry had woken his colleagues to muster for an impromptu rehearsal. The evolution of Terry’s arrangement of “I Only Have Eyes For You” was at first met with ridicule from the other Flamingos, then mild reluctance from the record label, but shortly after release, the record began to garner airplay in Philly. If any other recording by any other artist had been claimed to come from God, in a dream, the story would likely be quickly dismissed. Listening to The Flamingos’ version of “I Only Have Eyes For You,” its origin almost seems obvious.

As for the songwriters, "I Only Have Eyes for You" was written by the team of Harry Warren and Al Dubin, who are best known for Broadway show tunes. The two also are responsible for "Lullaby of Broadway" and “We’re In the Money.”

Warren also wrote “That’s Amore,”  “Chattanooga Choo Choo,”  “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” (with Johnny Mercer) and, for television, “The Legend of Wyatt Earp.”

Dubin, back in the 1920s,wrote "Tiptoe Through the Tulips."

Wherever it came from, "I Only Have Eyes For You," as performed by The Flamingos still gives me the shivers.

TERRELL'S SOUND WORLD PLAYLIST

Sunday, October 25, 2014 
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's the playlist below

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Subscribe to The Big Enchilada Podcast! CLICK HERE

THE SANTA FE OPRY PLAYLIST

Friday, October 24, 2014 
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM 
Webcasting! 
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell 
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org

Here's my playlist below:


Like the Santa Fe Opry Facebook page 

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Steve Terrell is proud to report to the monthly Freeform American Roots Radio list

BEYOND BORDERS PLAYLIST

Monday, October 20, 2014 
KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 
10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time 
Host: Steve Terrell Substituting for Susan Ohori
Webcasting!
101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org

Here's the playlist below:

Babalu Music! by Desi Arnaz
Break the Spell by Gogol Bordello
Rock El Casbah by Rachid Taha
Galbi by Ofra Haza
Harlem Shuffle by The 5.6.7.8's
Ma Cherie by Omar Konate

Afours Afours by Tinariwen
The Rats by Growling Tiger
Pretty Thing by Nightlosers
Awungilobolele by Udokotela Shange Namajaha
Antory Peça by Cankisou

I Speak Fula by Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni ba
I Speak Fula (Bonus Track Version)
Siki, Siki Baba by Kočani Orkestar
Dum Maro Dum by Asha Bhosle & Usha Iyer
Material Girl by Petty Booka
Aijö by Värttinä
Some Say the Divil Is Dead by Wolfe Tones
Belt of the Celts
Fun Tashlikh by The Klezmatics

Fraulein by Bobby Helms
Made In Japan by Buck Owens
Where Has My Country Gone? By Ondar with Willie Nelson
Pastures of Plenty by Cedar Hill Refugees with Dave Evans
The Burden by Terry Allen
Kaw-Liga by Silver Sand
Dirt in the Ground by Yehu Yaron

Confusion, Pt. 1 &2 by Fela Kuti

I Wanna See You Bellydance by Red Elvises
Family Busines by Dengue Fever
Landing Cocek by Söndörgő
Idiot from Here by Kult
Medley: Buke E Kripe Ne / Vater Tone / Kalaxhojne by 3 Mustaphas 3
Bat macumba by Os Mutantes

Black Heart Man by Bunny Wailer



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