Source: Uncle John's Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader, pg. 157
The Witch Doctor
In 1957, a 38-year-old songwriter named Ross Bagdasarian (stage
name: David Seville) was sitting in his study when an idea for a new
song came to him.
"I looked up from my desk and saw a book called Duel with
the Witch Doctor," he recalled. "All the teenage records seemed to have one thing
in common back then - you couldn't understand any of the lyrics. So I decided to create a
witch doctor who would give advice to the lovelorn in his own language - a kind of qualified
gibberish."
Bagdasariaqn quickly wrote and recorded the song... but was stumped about what kind
of voice to use for the witchdoctor (whose advice consisted of: "Oo-ee, Oo-ah-ah, Ting-tang,
Walla-walla Bing-bang.")
Finding a Voice
One day, Bagdasarian was fooling around with a tape recorder, playing with the speeds.
He sang into the machine while it was running at half-speed... and then played back at full-speed.
The result: it sounded like he swallowed helium... or played a 45-rpm record at 78rpm. It was
exactly the voice he'd been looking for.
Bagdasarian brough his finished tape to Liberty Records. "They flipped," he said.
Before 24-hours had elapsed, "The Witch Doctor" was on its way to record stores. Within
wekks it was the #1 song in the nation. In all, it sold 1.5 million copies.
The Singing Chipmunks
A year later, Liberty Records found itself in financial trouble. So they asked
Bagdasarian to come up with another song like "The Witch Doctor." He agreed to try.
He decided to turn the Witch Doctor's voice into several different characters.
As his son recalls: "He didn't know whether to make them hippos or elephants or beetles or
what. He came up with the idea of chipmunks when he was driving in Yosemite National Park and
this chipmunk almost dared him and his huge car to drive past. My dad was so taken by
their audacious behaviour that he decided to make these three singing characters
chipmunks. He named them after three executives at Liberty Records. (Alvin: Al Bennett, the
label president; Simon: Si Waronker, vice-chair; Theodore: Ted Keep, chief recording
engineer.)
"Then he took the song he'd written, 'The Chipmunk Song,' to Liberty and the president,
Alvin's namesake, said, 'We need hits, not chipmunks.' My dad said, 'You have nothing to lose, why
don't you put it out?' In the next seven weeks, they sold 4.5 million records."
Ultimately, the first Chipmunk record sold more that 7 million copies; at the time, it
was the fastest selling record in history.
Life After Death
The chipmunks outlived Bagdasarian. He died in 1972 of a heart attack; 11 years later,
in 1983, the Chipmunks emerged as stars of their own Saturday morning TV cartoon show. Today, they
rank as three of the most lucrative characters ever created in a pop song.
