A very happy birthday to Dizzy Gillespie.
Lets celebrate by listening to him perform “Groovin’ High” with Stan Getz, Chick Corea, Miroslav Vitous and Roy Haynes at the White House.
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Today’s Song Warren Zevon‘s Werewolves of London. Cause I like werewolves and think there should be more songs about them.
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I have a confession to make. Today’s song scared the crap out of me when I was ten. The first time I ever heard it was at summer camp. While it was being sung, two counselors were walking around the group dressed as a makeshift headless ghost. They were standing right behind me when they “Gave the mighty whoop.” It was traumatic enough that I was reluctant to go to camp ever again. Even now I’m not sure if I can appreciate the songs dark humor quite as much as, given my tastes, I should.
It’s kind of interesting that it was through this song that I ever even heard of Anne Boleyn and it is interesting how she grew from Ghost to tragic innocent victim, to the actual historical figure as my knowledge grew.
But anyway here is “With Her Head Tucked Underneath her Arm” performed by the Kingston Trio.
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What’s Halloween without Alice Cooper? So today’s song is “Welcome to My Nightmare” I was going to go with the version he did on the Muppet Show but then I stumbled over this 1975 version that guest starred Vincent Price.
Enjoy.
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Today’s song is “When the night wind howls” from Gilbert & Sullivan‘s Ruddigore.
I can’t say Ruddigore is my favorite Gilbert and Sullivan operetta for the most part it’s silly even by their standards but this is still one of my favorite songs from them and definitely one of the best bits of Halloween music I know.
This clip is from the version they used to play on PBS which is especially fun since it has Vincent Price as the “villain”, Sir Despard Murgatroyd of Ruddigore
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For the next item in our Halloween playlist we have the opening to The Nightmare Before Christmas composed by Danny Elfman.
I’m not a big fan of Elfman’s work,most of the time he sounds like he’s quoting himself, but when he is good he is very good and the score for Nightmare is one of those times.
The movie as a whole is one of the reasons I became a fan of Henry Selick‘s work. It’s wonderfully innovative.
I was very tempted to use Marilyn Manson’s version for this but it’s best to stick with the original don’t you think?
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