We always try to pick a fun theme for our Halloween Special and this year we thought we would feature Halloween Music. Not just the music one might hear in a horror movie - and we will definitely talk about some of that - but music made specifically for Halloween. There is a whole history to what some may call "Monster Music" that goes from fun novelty songs to Goth Punk and even the disturbing. Join us for this candy corn filled, costume wearing romp through one-eyed purple people eaters, monsters mashing, ghostbusters busting and nightmares before Christmas.
Let's set the mood with a little true ghost story from our listener John. He wrote us, "Hi, I wanted to share a true story from my family. My parents divorced when I was 3 and never spoke to each other again, best I can tell. They have both told me this story at different times. When they first got married, they were renting a house close to where my dad milked cows. Every night, they would hear heavy steps upstairs that came down the steps and through the kitchen and every morning, the kitchen door would be open. They changed the locks and this still happened. One night, my dad dragged a heavy China hutch in front of door. The next morning, the china hutch was against the wall and the door was open. One morning after dad had gone to work, mom heard the footsteps, but they came in their bedroom this time. Her little dog started whining and hiding under the blankets. Mom heard someone say her name right in her ear. She jumped up, grabbed her shoes and walked to my dad's job. They moved out days later and the landlord told them a man was killed in the attic of the house and that he was having a hard time renting it out. The house burned to the ground a few years after that even though there was no power to the house."
So we've done an episode on Haunted Music, Ep. 344, and we wanted to share a little bit from that about the Devil's Chord. Music was very connected to the church up until the Middle Ages or Medieval times. The Devil's Interval or Devil's Chord was introduced at this time and it was considered so diabolical, that it was banned by the Church. The Devil's Chord was not harmonious like the other music of the time. Harmony has notes that flow together and share pitches and frequencies. There is a set timing to the harmony, like a waltz is 3:4 time and a march is 2:4 time and etc.
The Devil's Interval is formally called the Tritone. This is the augmented fourth and the diminished fifth. According to Carl E. Gardner’s 1912 text "Essentials of Music Theory" a “triad” in music is composed of three tones. These tones are a starting note plus the third and fifth tones found along its scale like C and then E and G. Most chords are independent, but a tritone is dependent and has “dissonant” or tense intervals. There is something about a dissonant chord that is disturbing to our spirits. If a composition ends with a tritone, it is uncomfortable. And in a singing composition, it is nearly impossible for any singer, regardless of talent, to sing. Thus, any piece of music with the Devil's Interval is thought to be creepy and chilling. Because of all of this, the church banned it and called it Diabolus in Musica. John Sloboda, a professor of music psychology at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama, was interviewed on NPR in 2012 and he explained how it is that the Devil's Interval is disturbing saying, "Our brains are wired to pick up the music that we expect, [and] generally music is consonant rather than dissonant, so we expect a nice chord. So when that chord is not quite what we expect, it gives you a little bit of an emotional frisson, because it's strange and unexpected." Many composers have used the Devil's Chord throughout history. Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde has the Tritone in its prelude. For this reason, it is sometimes called the Tristan chord. This incorporates the notes F, B, D sharp and G sharp. Wagner's "Gotterdammerung" also has the chord and some terrifying imagery which will also become a part of performances of the Devil's Interval. In this opera, there is a scene that has drums and timpani and feels evil with a scene playing out what seems to be a Black Mass. Beethoven has it in his Piano Sonata No.18 and "Fidelio." Michael Tippett's Second Symphony features the Tritone prominently. Camille Saint-Saens' "Danse Macabre" was a salute to the dead coming alive at Halloween and first performed in 1875. Hungarian composer Franz Liszt used the tritone scale and images of devils playing violins and dancing in his Mephisto Waltzes.
Jazzmen used the Devil's chord throughout the '40s and '50s and even had a hand signal to pay homage to what they called 'the flattened fifth'. This was a high five but with the thumb folded in to the palm and the musician would call out "Oolya Koo, man!" When singing the tritone jazz performers would sing with a false chord technique that came off as just a sound like a scream or growl. Metal singers do the same today. In our modern era, one can hear it in Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze," Black Sabbath songs, Rush's "YYZ," the song "Maria" in West Side Story, Busta Rhymes’s “Woo Hah!! Got You All In Check,” The Simpsons theme song and death metal music.
And since we were talking about screaming there, we should probably talk about Screamin' Jay Hawkings and his song, "I Put a Spell on You." We heard this information from the Professor of Rock on YouTube. Screamin' Jay Hawkins didn't start out as this shock rock ghoul who would come out on stage like a Voodoo priest that looked half crazed. He actually wanted to be an opera singer. But instead, he learned how to play the piano and started fronting blues bands. The guys in the band would be drinking while they performed and this got Jay into howling and the audiences loved it. In the mid-1950s, Jay wrote a love song called "I Put a Spell on You." It was this lovesick ballad. Hawkings band entered the recording studio and did a little rehearsal and the producer was dissatisfied with the sound. He knew that Jay and the band were good at cutting loose on stage and so he told Jay that the song sounded stiff and he wanted them to play it like they would on stage. Well Jay didn't know what to do because the band was drunk when they did that kind of thing on stage. When he told the producer, Arnold Maxon, that and Maxon got a bright idea to create the right conditions. He went out and got some ribs and fried chicken and a ton of booze. He told the band to eat and drink up and they all got hammered. Then they recorded the song and Jay grunted and howled and hollered through the whole thing like a mad man and it was a gold recording that today is a Halloween staple.
Spooky Little Halloween is a great account to follow on Instagram and she has a great website. She joined us on one of the Halloween Specials in the past. One of our favorite things that she does is putting together these playlists on Spotify. A staple of those lists are novelty songs. Several novelty songs have Halloween theming or topics that fit perfectly with Halloween.
There's "Purple People Eater." Sheb Wooley created "The Purple People Eater" song in 1958. He was more of a honky tonk kind of guy who wrote cowboy songs and appeared in Western films. He sure changed that with this song. Part of the song features the people eater's voice and a saxophone solo through a horn in his head and this was created by recording a normal voice and sax solo and later speeding up the tape. The same technique brought us Alvin and the Chipmunks. There's "Little Red Riding Hood" by Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs. This song came out in 1966 and features the perspective of the Big Bad Wolf and thankfully, he seems more interested in a date than making her a meal. In more recent years there was the Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff's "Nightmare on my Street" and the more obscure "Then She Bit Me." But clearly, the best Halloween novelty song is the "Monster Mash." Monster Mash was the first track on Bobby "Boris" Pickett and The Crypt-Kickers 1962 album "The Original Monster Mash. So Kelly, what is the Mash? I mean these monsters are doing a mash. Well, in the 1960s, one of the really popular dances was called the Mashed Potato based on Dee Dee Sharp's 1962 hit "Mashed Potato Time." This entailed stepping backward, tilting the heel inward and then swiveling it outward while on your toes and then repeating that with the other foot. It's very similar to the Charleston. So the monsters are doing the mashed potato. Pickett changes up his voice to imitate Universal monsters, which makes this all the more fun.
One of our favorite groups for novelty songs is The Goldstars. This is a garage rock/punk group that hails from Chicago. In 2021, they produced "Stroll in Hell," which is a tune beloved by horror host Dr. Demento. There was 2023's "Leave Me Alone (A Halloween Song)". And this year they dropped one for my favorite guy, "I Frankensteined U." Follow at: https://www.instagram.com/thegoldstarsofficial/ Here is a medley of those songs. (Goldstars Medley)
Punk Rock just screams disturbing and Halloween. The Misfits produced their own song about Halloween (Misfits Halloween) There are a handful of songs that are just staples on any Halloween playlist. First up has to be Ghostbusters! Ghostbusters is a song written and performed by Ray Parker Jr. It was released in 1984 and hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Parker was inspired by a late night commercial he watched for a service business that included the line "Who ya gonna call." The other shoe-in has to be Michael Jackson's Thriller. I remember when the video dropped on MTV. It was so amazing! Thriller is a disco-funk song that was produced by Quincy Jones and was written by Rod Temperton. The song was meant to be reminiscent of film music. The addition of Vincent Price for the spoken-word sequence was a brilliant move. The song was released in 1983 and eventually reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song is one of the bestselling singles of all time. The music video was made when Thriller began to slump on the charts. John Landis, who directed An American Werewolf in London, helmed the video and he wrote it with Jackson. The music video doubled sales of Thriller and the zombie dance is popular in movies and on dance floors around Halloween.
The Nightmare Before Christmas gave us This is Halloween, and again, a perfect song for the holiday. Danny Elfman wrote and performed the song and the Citizens of Halloween Town sing it. It's been covered by various bands. Warren Zevon wrote Werewolves of London with LeRoy Marinell and Waddy Wachtel and Zevon sang it with Mick Fleetwood playing drums and John McVie on bass. The song was released in 1978. The first line sets the tone, "I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand." Time Warp is a song from the 1973 rock musical The Rocky Horror Show that also was used in the 1975 film The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The song is techn ically described as a glam rock song that is supposed to parody dance songs with instructions for performing the dance. Time Warp was written by Richard O'Brien and Richard Hartley.
Those are well known songs, but there are hundreds of Halloween/spooky themed songs. You can listen to them 365 days a year on DeadAir.co. One that I was reminded of the other day on there is Hell by Squirrel Nut Zippers. And I love The Crewnecks with their "Rockin' Zombie" and Lee "The Big Masher" Lilly with Spooky Movies. There's just something about these old spooky theme songs that take you back to an earlier time, back when we were trick or treating.
Nothing sets a mood better than music. We're sure the listeners have all seen video clips from movies where the original music has been stripped and replaced with horror music, turning a rom/com or family friendly movie into a terrifying film. Some of the best Halloween music comes from horror movies with the supreme example being (Halloween Carpenter). Everybody knows that music and it immediately gets the heart pumping. You want to look around because surely something is after you and the cadence lends itself to running down the street in terror while being pursued by a knife wielding madman. Let's talk about some of our favorite horror composers. Obviously, the Halloween music was created by John Carpenter for his movie.
Danny Elfman! He is THE favorite for both of us. The entire soundtrack to "Nightmare Before Christmas" could enhance any Halloween party. But he also wrote the theme for "Tales From the Crypt" and the music for "Sleepy Hollow" starring Johnny Depp. There's also "Beetlejuice" of course and "Corpse Bride." Elfman's initial fame came as frontman to the New Wave band Oingo Boingo. Elfman moved into film scoring in 1985 when Tim Burton asked him to do the music for Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Elfman was hesitant because he honestly had no idea how to do that. He had no formal training, but he threw together a demo and Burton loved it. Elfman said that he got inspiration from Bernard Herrmann.
Bernard Herrmann was born in 1911 and music critic Alex Ross wrote of Herrmann, "Over four decades, he revolutionized movie scoring by abandoning the illustrative musical techniques that dominated Hollywood in the 1930s and imposing his own peculiar harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary." He was definitely innovative. The best example of this is his score for Psycho. (Psycho Music) Like Halloween, this music sets the tone for a tense, driving piece. The shower scene has music that is a masterpiece that matches well with the stabbing movements of the killer. Herrmann achieved this with violins that were played with a screeching, stabbing effect. Hitchcock himself said of the score that "33% of the effect of Psycho was due to the music" and that "Psycho depended heavily on Herrmann's music for its tension and sense of pervading doom." Herrmann also wrote the music for many other Hitchcock movies like "The Birds," "Vertigo," "North by Northwest" and he scored "Cape Fear" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still."
The Shining has one of the creepier opening themes and this was composed by Walter Carlos - who is now Wendy Carlos - and Rachel Elkind. They took inspiration from a traditional melody known as "Dies irae," which is Latin for "day of wrath." This was a somber chant and used mainly in funeral services. That piece of music has been used often by composers to symbolize death. Carlos and Elkind put the melody in a lower register with brass tone color. They highly processed vocals and used exotic percussion. And then there is this synthesized low drone, which is really unnerving.
Graeme Revell of New Zealand lead the industrial rock group SPK in the 1980s and started film composing in the 1990s. He has scored "Dead Calm," "The Crow," "From Dusk to Dawn," and "Bride of Chucky." Marco Beltrami is an American composer who has written a number of scores for some of our more recent horror flicks like "Scream," "The Faculty," "Resident Evil," "Carrie," and "A Quiet Place." Just like Tim Burton works often with Danny Elfman, Beltrami worked often with Wes Craven. His score for A Quiet Place was nominated for a Golden Globe. And then there was Jerry Goldsmith. His list of horror compositions is massive: Coma, Poltergeist, Alien, The Omen, The Swarm, Gremlins, The Haunting and many of their sequels. And then, I have to mention Bear McCreary because I love the theme from The Walking Dead, which he created. He's also done the music for Happy Death Day, 10 Cloverfield Lane and the remake of Child's Play. Honorable mention for John Williams, who is one of my favorite film composers, for the theme for Jaws. How memorable is that?
And finally, let's end this with probably the most disturbing song ever recorded, "Frankie Teardrop." People have been warned not to listen to this song alone and at night. Some people have claimed to become ill when listening to the song. The group who performed it was named Suicide and they dropped the song in 1977. The Professor of Rock said of this song, "The stark, bizarre arrangement and the brutal lyrics are still rattling listeners decades later, including me. I heard it the other day and I couldn't finish it." Suicide was a musical duo formed by vocalist Alan Vega and instrumentalist Martin Rev. They used a lot of synthesizers and primitive drum machines in their music. What really makes the song unsettling is Alan Vega's blood curdling screams. They disturb the soul. The song is the story of Frankie who is a poor factory worker who descends into madness. He takes the lives of his family and then himself. I've listened to just a brief portion of it and that was enough. This kind of song reminds us of one we talked about on the Haunted Music episode "Gloomy Sunday."
Gloomy Sunday was a Hungarian piece of music with a notorious reputation. The song was said to cause people to unalive themselves. Gloomy Sunday was written by Hungarian pianist and composer Rezső Seress and is nicknamed the "Hungarian Suicide Song." It was written in 1933. The original lyrics were written as if the world was ending and reflected the despair about war and people's sins. Poet László Jávor wrote his own lyrics to the song, titled le Szomorú vasárnap (Sad Sunday). The protagonist wants to commit suicide because his lover has died. More people remember those lyrics. "Gloomy Sunday" was first recorded in English by Hal Kemp in 1936, with lyrics by Sam M. Lewis. Billie Holiday performed it in 1941 making it incredibly popular. Urban legends began claiming that people were killing themselves after hearing the song and radio networks began banning the song, just like Frankie Teardrop.
Music is incredibly powerful. It can take people to the depths of despair, curdle their blood with fear and bring them joy. And all of that is demonstrated through the music of Halloween. Whether it's a horror score or a fun novelty song, music sets the tone for Halloween. Try using music to get you in the mood for Halloween this year. Pick some classics and find some new pieces as well. And let the magic of Halloween music take hold!
For all your Halloween tunes: https://deadair.co/
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