Elvis Presley Reportedly Didn't Love the 'Monster Mash,' But the Song Never Stopped: 13 Facts About the Halloween Hit

Mar. 15, 2025

Monster Mash.Photo:Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Every October, a hopelessly kitschy classic rises from the dead to the delight (and occasional dread) of millions. Since its release in 1962, “Monster Mash” has become a beloved slice of mid-century novelty-music cheese.

But the song is just the start of the saga for Pickett, whose unique life saw him survive gangsters and warfare, date Hollywood stars and score a Top 10 smash, only to go back to driving New York City cabs — before rising to the top again and reuniting with the daughter he never knew he had.

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Pickett was born in Somerville, Mass. in 1938. As he explainedin one interview, “You had two choices as a young man, you could either be a gangster when you grew up or an athlete … Somerville was a tough, tough place to live, but it was a place where you could leave your door open and no one would rob you. Everyone knew everyone, even though it was a city three miles long.”

Stock images of monsters.Getty

Getty

But Pickett grew up in a more idyllic time in Somerville. His father managed a movie theater, and he spent a lot of time taking in the horror hits of Universal Studios, watching Karloff, Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr. stalk the screen in iconic films likeDracula,Frankenstein,The MummyandThe Wolf Man. This, plus an early interest in comedy, sewed the seeds of “Monster Mash.”

Pickett didn’t grow up singing. He served for a year-and-a-half in the Korean War as part of the Army Signal Corps, and it was on his return that he got his first experience with a group. “On the ship we came back on, they wereputting together a show,” he said. “There were these three or four guys who were singing Doo-wop and a cappella stuff, and they needed a bass/baritone, so I became a member of that group.”

Not long after being discharged, Pickett moved to Hollywood to try and make it as an actor, during which time he dated Oscar-winner and comedienneCloris Leachmanand triple Academy Award nominee Dyan Cannon.

2. The producer of “Monster Mash” was a true eccentric.

Not long after arriving in Los Angeles, Pickett ran into a group of wannabe singers from his hometown of Sommerville. They welcomed him into their fold and sang doo-wop in any club that would have them. Ever the comic, Pickett would frequently pepper their set with impressions — including a version of Karloff from his beloved monster movies.

Gary S. Paxton in 1975.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Once, after a radio station turned down one of his songs, Paxton assembled a protest parade down Hollywood Boulevard with 15 cheerleaders and a live elephant pulling a Volkswagen convertible. (The stunt got Paxton arrested when the animal relieved itself in the street.)

In 1999, he moved to Branson, Mo., and began performing in a mask and cape as Grandpa Rock. He died in 2016. He once estimated he’d written 2,000 songs; a sampling of titles include “Jesus Is My Lawyer In Heaven,” “If You’re Happy, Notify Your Face,” and “When I Die, Just Bury Me at Wal-Mart (So My Wife Will Come Visit Me)."

3. “Monster Mash” has musical ties to James Brown.

James Brown in 1962.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

In the late spring of 1962, Pickett went over to his bandmate Lenny Capizzi’s house for a songwriting session. “Lenny sat down at the piano and began futzing with various four-chord progressions and I stood next to the piano,” he relates in his 2005 memoir. “Like me, Lenny was a major horror movie fan from childhood. He loved Bela Lugosi as Dracula. He knew I had the Boris Karloff voice pretty nailed, although in retrospect, I feel that what I actually had was a very cartoonish rendition of that wonderful actor’s voice.”

As Capizzi played the classic doo-wop chord progression under his Dracula impression, Pickett had the idea to fuse them both into a song that would capitalize on both the monster craze and the novelty dance craze currently in vogue. “At that time. I thought the Twist was the latest dance, but Lenny said, ‘No, it’s the Mashed Potato.’ So I said, ‘That’s even better – we can call it the Monster Mashed Potato. We shortened it to ‘Monster Mash.’ " In about three hours, they cut a piano-and-voice demo on a mono Wollensak tape recorder and brought it to Paxton, who proclaimed it a hit.

4. Rock legend (and pop Christmas song queen) Darlene Love sings backup.

Darlene Love.John Paul Filo/CBS via Getty

John Paul Filo/CBS via Getty

5. The recording of “Monster Mash” was comically low-budget.

Pickett’s own account of the session — which cost a whopping $300 — is that it took between two and three hours to complete, with his vocals wrapped in a scant 30 minutes.

“Gary Paxton did all the audio effects,” he explained, perThe American Songwriter,“like the straw in a glass of water to get that bubbling lab sound. Gary pulled the rusty nail out of a board to get the coffin creaking sound; he dragged chains across the linoleum floor to get the chain effects.”

6. Every label rejected “Monster Mash” at first, so the producer got creative.

Paxton took the finished recording to four major labels, and they all turned it down. Undeterred, Paxton pressed between 500 and 1,000 records on his own label GARPAX, and drove north from L.A., stopping in Ventura, Bakersfield and Fresno to hand-distribute copies of “Monster Mash” to DJs.

“By the time Gary got back to Southern California, his phone had beenlighting up like a Christmas tree,” Pickett said. “London Records, which was one of the outfits that had turned him down, called and said they had changed their mind, of course,” he added. “The records were being ordered on a massive level.”

7. “Monster Mash” was banned in the U.K.

“Monster Mash” debuted on theBillboardHot 100 the week of Sept. 8, 1962. Six weeks later, the single knocked the Four Seasons’ “Sherry” from the top spot to begin a two-week reign that ended four days before Halloween. It returned to the charts multiple times, including in 1970 and 1973. The BBC famously banned it upon initial release for being too morbid, only lifting the ban in 1973 when it hit No. 3 in the U.K.

Stock photo of a monster.Getty

8. Boris Karloff himself was a fan.

Sadly, Pickett never met Karloff. But according to Pickett, the inspiration for the song actually got a kick out of it.

“One of the London Records promotion men, a guy named George Sherlock, ran into Boris Karloff at Wallach’s Music City as he was buying a copy of theMonster Mashalbum,” Pickett laterclaimed.

9. Elvis Presley (reportedly) was not a fan.

Pickett would often retell this story when performing live, ending it with, “If you’re still out there listening, Elvis, I’m still here.”

10. Pickett followed up “Monster Mash” with a string of even more bizarre novelty songs about smoking,Star Trekand wildlife protection.

Pickett did, however, pop back into the mainstream in 1975 with the parody skit “Star Drek,” which became the most requested number for iconic alternative-comedy radio host, Dr. Demento. In 1985, he released “Monster Rap,” which is exactly what you’d expect: Frankenstein’s monster is having trouble learning to speak, so the scientist (who of course speaks in Pickett’s Karloff impression) teaches him how to rap.

GAB Archive/Redferns

11. Pickett was a New York City cabbie in the ‘70s.

From the late ’60s to the early ’70s, Pickett pivoted to performing in a folk duo with his then-wife, Joan Payne, working what he called “the ski-resort areas singing soft folk harmonies,” per his 2005 memoir,Half Dead in Hollywood. They toured internationally moving to New York in 1972, where Pickett drove a cab and Payne worked as a waitress right before “Monster Mash” re-charted for the second time.

“It was on the charts for six months before anyone told me that it had been re-released, let alone charted,“Pickett said in 1995.“I called the head of London Records, Walt McGuire, and said, ‘Walt, I hear the record’s doing well.’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m driving a cab here in New York City. I was wondering if I could turn my cab in and come and get a check.’ "

12. Pickett was reunited with his long-lost daughter shortly before his death.

But there was an even bigger twist waiting in the wings for Pickett. His manager Stuart Hersh toldVicein 2014 that at one point Pickett made an offhand comment to him that he might have a daughter. The pair undertook a search and found a likely candidate in 1997, but a DNA test proved negative.

Soon after, a completely different woman contacted them claiming to be Pickett’s daughter – incredibly, a week before Halloween that year. Pickett’s sister Lynda S. Proctor said she remembered the day of the call; telling theHolland Sentinelthat, when Pickett hung up that day his voice confirmed he’d found someone special.

“They met up at the airport, and they looked so similar that they didn’t even have to do a DNA test,” Hersh added. Pickett, he said, “went from this loner to a family guy, and he loved it,” spending the holidays with his newfound daughter and grandkids.

13. Pickett’s cremated remains were crushed into a diamond, which his daughter wears as a ring.

Pickett died in April 2007 of leukemia. He performed until the November before his death. Hersh recalled that Pickett kept a morbid sense of wit about his situation, tellingVicethat he’d call Pickett at the hospital to check up on him after his regular blood transfusions and Pickett would inevitably reply in the Dracula voice, ‘Stu, there’s nothing like fresh blood!’”

His daughter Nancy was at Pickett’s side when he died, and, true to form, Pickett managed to secure one last piece of press after his death. “I saw a show about turning cremated remains into diamonds,” Huus said in 2007, per theNorthwest Indiana Times.  “I immediately called my father and told him that I wanted to make a diamond from his cremated remains; he loved the idea.”

But Pickett’s greatest legacy will always be “Monster Mash,” of course. “I’m glad I did the song,” he toldPEOPLEin 1996, “because some people never get to do anything.”

source: people.com