“Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers

Long before the Halloween slasher film franchise began in 1978, pop culture’s slant on the holiday traditionally dedicated to remembering the dead was showcased on the dance floor — to the tune of “Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers.

The “Boris” added as Pickett’s middle name on the album cover pays homage to
Boris Karloff, an actor known for his roles in horror films.

The “mash”– short for the “mashed potato” dance moves — had just come into its own in 1962. It followed the first worldwide dance craze – the twist — which  it vaguely resembled. The difference became clear in the repeated sideways steps that mimicked whipping up a batch of spuds with our feet. (Yes, I’m speaking from adolescent experience here.) Pickett’s novelty hit “Monster Mash,” released the same year, added ghoulish arm and hand gestures to our practiced footwork.

You’ll catch on in a flash 
Then you can mash 
Then you can monster mash

The upbeat ballad has become as much of a staple of the October airwaves as “White Christmas” is to December’s. Fans recognize it even before the first note plays, thanks to some low-budget sound effects: the creak of an opening coffin (created by a rusty nail being pulled out of a board) and a boiling cauldron (which is actually water being bubbled through a straw).

Pickett would tighten his facial expression to form an eerie visage while performing  the tale of a mad scientist whose monster, late one evening, rises from his slab to perform a new dance. When the scientist throws a party for the monsters that reside nearby, it becomes “the hit of the land.”

From my laboratory in the castle east 
To the master bedroom where the vampires feast 
The ghouls all came from their humble abodes 
To get a jolt from my electrodes

It’s all meant to be great fun as zombies rock out, joined by headliners Wolfman, Dracula and his son. The storyline ends in anticipation of coffin-bangers “about to arrive / With their vocal group, “The Crypt-Kicker Five.”

Yes, Pickett put his band members center stage in the plot. Through the years, this little ploy has raised the riddle of the “Monster Mash, revealed in this observation tweeted just a year ago. “You’ve never heard the actual Monster Mash. You’ve just heard a record *about* the Monster Mash.” In other words, is the recording merely a tribute song to a tune we will never know?

This, however, requires way too much overthinking for me, based on pronoun inconsistencies through the pop ballad. I draw the line of useful interpretation at the notion that sometimes we have to embrace the macabre and laugh in the face of death. Isn’t that what Halloween gives us permission to do with its array of dancing skeletons, approachable grim reapers and translucent spirits? That and reminiscing about “mash-potatoing” to “Monster Mash” in my bobby sox and saddle shoes over 50 years ago are more than enough reason to revisit the tune.

Here’s a blast back to a long past performance  of “Monster Mash” by Bobby Pickett on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.