David Seville: "Witch Doctor"

April 28, 1959 (1 week)

""Witch Doctor" was the first of three novelty song to go to number one in 1958," Fred Bronson states in The Billboard Book of Number One Hits, "making it the most successful year for this genre". Too true. The Americans would soon cool to the charms of the novelty pop smash though it's something that has carried on over the generations over in Britain. There have even been a handful — Lieutenant Pigeon's "Mouldy Old Dough", Doop's eponymous 1994 hit celebrating the charleston...damn, my brain can't conjure up a third example — that are actually rather good. Yet a trilogy of "comedy" singles that topped the charts Stateside proved to be more than enough — and given the overall quality, is it any wonder?

Canada's CHUM chart could differ from what was soon to become known as the Hot 100 south of the border. Close to half of the entries in this space have been Canadian number ones that came up short in the US. Yet, our country's obsession with trying to prove that we're not exactly the same as our neighbours to the south didn't apply when it came to the novelty pop invasion of '58. The one time we just had to follow suit...

In a vacuum, "Witch Doctor" is fairly tolerable and it's clearly the best of a poor crop. The fact that the high pitch is used sparingly certainly helps. That said, it couldn't be anything but a novelty song. Those horns that guide it along could be straight out of a silly old pratfall video. Creator Ross Bagdasarian (the real name for singer David Seville who would, confusingly, then become a cartoon character when he began managing an unruly trio of rodents) also has an ideal voice for children's music, which begs the question: did he always sound like a pop star for kids or does it just seem like it because everyone who has come along since sounds just like him? (See? It isn't just The Velvet bloody Underground who are influential!)

Bronson says that its infamous refrain of "Oo-ee, oo-ah-ah. ting-tang, walla walla bing-bang" is the sort of thing you'll wind up bursting into when doing a bit of dusting round the house but I respectful disagree. Rather, I'd say it's what you end up singing out loud while in a grocery store or in IKEA as it's playing over the PA — until you catch yourself, possibly when an attractive girl suddenly laughs at you singing along with what amounts to the Chipmunks. It would be fine if the scourge of "Witch Doctor's" earworm only affected us in the privacy of our own homes but it's real purpose is to humiliate us in public.

To its credit, "Witch Doctor" doesn't manage to get on the listener's nerves until pretty close to its conclusion. (Plenty of a other big novelty hits are not able to come close to the two minute mark before the desire to hurl a brick at whatever or whomever is playing it becomes overwhelming, as, indeed, we'll see shortly) Not much of a recommendation but sometimes not hating something is an achievement of sorts. Sorry to be hammering the point home but it could've been worse so well done David Seville and the weirdly squeaky-voiced shaman he went to see: you didn't suck. Not this time at any rate.

Score: 5