#SONG PURPLE PEOPLE EATER TV#
#SONG PURPLE PEOPLE EATER FREE#

Sheb went into the studio and decided to record the saxophone and vocals at reduced speed and then played them back speeded up. “One person said to me, ‘We don’t want to be identified with this, we’re Metro Goldwyn Mayer’ however someone persuaded them and they finally went ahead and released it. They recorded it, but then the company didn’t want to release it. The President insisted, so I played it and he and the top A&R man liked it, but no one else did.” I opened my guitar case and saw the music to The Purple People Eater but I said to them it wasn’t anything they would be interest in. “There was no great excitement in the room,” Sheb recalled, “and they asked me if I had anything else. Although he didn’t find it funny, he said to Don, “Why don’t we write a song about it?” and Don said, ‘well you go ahead as it’s more in your field’, so I did.”Ī couple of weeks later he had a meeting with the management of his record label, MGM and was presenting them with some songs he’d written, mostly ballads. One of them was “What has one eye, one horn, is purple, flies and eats people?” the answer was A purple people eater. Sheb explained how it came about, “I was having dinner with a songwriter friend of mine, Don Roberton, who told me that his son had come home from school with all these weird jokes.

#SONG PURPLE PEOPLE EATER TV#

He recorded one or two himself including the bizarrely titled Peepin’ through the Keyhole Watchin’ Jole Blon which became a local hit in Texas.īut it wasn’t until 1958, and after he’d landed himself a part in the TV western Rawhide with Clint Eastwood, that he had his first hit with the song The Purple People Eater. Before long, the actor Jimmy Dean and the country singer Hank Snow began recording some of his songs. He formed his first band at school, but it was after World War II that he began writing songs and headed for Nashville. Sheb, as he was known, was born in 1921 in Erick, Oklahoma. Wooley who would eventually make his name as an actor and singer. The reason it didn’t get recorded was nobody, not even the writer and performer liked it. This week’s subject was an American number one in 1958 and a number 12 on this side of the pond that nearly didn’t get recorded. Very often they are one hit wonders, unless, like Weird Al Yankovic and Judge Dread, you wanted to make a living out of it. In the 1950s, however, novelty records were littered across the chart, especially in America. I mentioned that it had to be one of the last novelty songs to make the chart.

#SONG PURPLE PEOPLE EATER FREE#

Please feel free to share your variation, request some sheet music or inform me of any funny songs that should be added to the list.A few weeks ago at one of my pop quizzes I played Goldie Lookin’ Chain’s 2004 hit Your Mother’s Got A Penis and judging by some of the strange looks, some people had obviously forgotten it despite it making number 14 in the UK chart. You will also find that there are multiple versions for each song or rhyme. Most of these songs should be in the public domain. I find them a great means of stress relief both in and out of the classroom. I still sing many of these songs to this day, whether it is with my own children or the children that I teach at school. Many of them I remember from my childhood and many of them I have discovered since then.

This is a collection of my favourite songs, rhymes, riddles and poems. Treading in Dog Poo is a Rainbow of Regret What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor FS4K Songs Nobody Likes Me (I think I'll go eat worms)

Song purple people eater