Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

Following the slightly spooky Halloween mix posted on Monday, this one comprises songs mostly of less serious tone, setting what I hope is a bit of a party atmosphere, with a bit of rock, rock & roll and downright silly novelty numbers, including one by Soupy Sales, who died last week. The sense of levity this mix aims at is not of the literal variety.

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TRACKLISTING
1. Tim Curry – Anything Can Happen On Halloween (1986)
2. Golden Earring – The Devil Made Me Do It (1982)
3. Morgus & the Ghouls – Morgus The Magnificent (1958)
4. The Tarantulas – Black Widow (1961)
5. Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs – Haunted House (1964)
6. Big Bopper – Purple People Eater Meets The Witch Doctor (1958)
7. The Kingsmen – Haunted Castle (1963)
8. The Five Blobs – The Blob (1958)
9. The Fifth Estate – The Witch Is Dead (1967)
10. Bobby Bare – Vampira (1958)
11. Johnny Cash – Ghost Riders In The Sky (1978)
12. R Dean Taylor – There’s A Ghost In My House (1967)
13. Alice Cooper – Feed My Frankenstein (1992)
14. Rob Zombie feat. The Ghastly Ones – Halloween (1998)
15. Medeski, Martin & Wood – End Of The World Party (2004)
16. The Pogues – Turkish Song Of The Damned (1988)
17. The Specials – Ghost Town (1981)
18. Jimmy Buffett – Halloween In Tijuana (1985)
19. Soupy Sales – My Baby’s Got A Crush On Frankenstein (1962)
20. France Gall – Frankenstein (1972)
21. Danny Elfman – This Is Halloween (1993)
22. David Seville – Witch Doctor (1958)
23. Bobby Rydell – That Old Black Magic (1961)
24. The Moontrekkers – Night Of The Vampire (1961)
25. Allan Sherman – I See Bones (1963)
26. Lord Melody – The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1957)
27. Lambert, Hendricks & Ross – Halloween Spooks (1960)

DOWNLOAD

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And to bring the mood down a bit again, here is a track sent to me by a friend, whose knowledge in music in encyclopedic. He points out that the artist, folk singer Jackson C Frank, is “ the single unluckiest man in music history”. Read this to find that this is most probably so.

Jackson C. Frank – Halloween Is Black As Night.mp3 (reuploaded)

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More Mixes

To those who care about such things, collecting Halloween songs is a bit like collating music for Christmas: you can never have enough. In that spirit, here are some offerings that didn’t find their way on the Halloween Mix I posted a month ago.

Alan Price Set – I Put A Spell On You.mp3
An intense track from 1966 which might have been recorded by Procol Harum. The organ solo totally rocks, echoing the sound Price previously created for the Animals. Alan Price is totally underrated.

Donovan – Wild Witch Lady.mp3
By 1973, the mellow yellow fellow had turned psychedelic. “Wild Witch Lady” is heavy, man, with our boy going all Robert Plant on our sorry asses. Great witch’s cry in the beginning.

Box Tops – I Must Be The Devil.mp3
The Box Tops are most famous for their ’60s British Invasion hit “The Letter”. This is nothing like the big hit. This is a seriously stoned blues work-out.

The Moontrekkers – Night Of The Vampire.mp3
This instrumental is a Halloween must, not just for the song itself (a great Halloween instrumental), but also for the background story of its producer Joe Meek, whose sad life ended with him killing his landlady and then himself in 1967.

Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs – Haunted House.mp3
You’ll know Sam the Sham as the performer of “Wooly Bully”. This Rock ‘n Roll track was the b-side to the performer’s big hit. It has a great Halloween intro, and is great fun afterwards.

Golden Earring – The Devil Made Me Do It.mp3
Widely under-appreciated Dutch rockers Golden Earring were rather forgotten by 1982, a few years after their huge hit “Radar Love” (still one of the greatest rock songs of all time). On this fine track they sound like Adam Ant and Dexys Midnight Runners had joined them, with a bridge that might have been written by the Little River Band. You have to hear it, really.

Check out Touched Mix blog for a series of great Halloween mix-tapes, including one consisting of “AmbientDubHopStep”.