Bobby 'Boris' Pickett

Robert George Pickett, singer and actor: born Somerville, Massachusetts 11 February 1938; (one daughter, and one son deceased); died Los Angeles 25 April 2007.

As novelty records go, "Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers is hard to top. It starts with the sound of a crypt door creaking open and then, over a driving beat, Pickett, a Boris Karloff sound-alike, begins to sing:

I was working in the lab late one night,
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight,
For my monster from his slab began to rise,
And suddenly to my surprise . . .
He did the mash,
He did the monster mash,
The monster mash,
It was a graveyard smash.

Originally released in the autumn of 1962, "Monster Mash" sold a million copies and topped the US charts at Halloween that year. In the UK, it was banned by the BBC because of its supposedly offensive nature. The single made the US charts again in 1970 and 1973, the year it finally became a hit in Britain after the BBC relented. Pickett took great delight in wearing a lab coat stained with fake blood and performing "a medley of his hit" at Halloween functions every year. However, he wasn't quite the one-hit wonder he claimed to be, since he also charted with " Monsters' Holiday" in 1962 and "Graduation Day" in 1963.

Born in Somerville, Massachusetts in 1938, Pickett was the son of a cinema manager and grew up obsessed with the movies. Horror films were particular favourites and he became very adept at impersonating Boris Karloff throughout his schooldays and the three years he spent in Korea as part of the Signal Corps. After being discharged in 1959, he moved to California, ostensibly to become an actor. Instead, he drove cabs, auditioned for commercials and joined a doo-wop group called the Cordials. Leonard Capizzi, the Cordials' leader, was also a horror film buff and egged Pickett on to incorporate some of his impersonations into their act.

"Whenever we did a tune called 'Little Darlin' by the Diamonds, I would do a Boris Karloff impression, a monologue, in the middle of the song," said Pickett.

We'd both seen how the audiences loved it. And one night Lenny said: " You know, we ought to do a novelty record with that voice."

Capizzi and Pickett wrote the song in an hour and a half. "We agreed that the Karloff voice was the most obvious one to tell the story," Pickett said. "And what was the story? 'Well,' Lenny suggested, 'maybe the Frankenstein monster should start a dance craze.' 'That's it!' I said."

The recording session was supervised by the producer Gary Paxton, who also came up with the idea of calling Pickett "Boris" and the backing band the Crypt-Kickers. Pickett added the sound effects, blowing bubbles into a cup of water with a straw for the boiling cauldron and pulling chains up and down. Four major labels rejected the single, but Paxton was undeterred and decided to press a thousand copies on his own Garpax Records. California radio stations began to play "Monster Mash" and it rose to the top in only eight weeks.

Pickett also issued a Monster Mash album full of titles like " Transylvania Twist" and "Me & My Mummy", but other ghoulish follow-ups such as "The Werewolf Watusi" failed to hit the mark. His Star Trek spoof, "Stardrek", caused quite a stir in 1976.

Despite appearances in films like the beach comedy It's A Bikini World (1967) and on television in episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies, Bonanza and Dr Kildare, Pickett's acting career never took off and he became associated with dire horror and sci-fi pastiches like Frankenstein General Hospital (1988) and Lobster Man From Mars (1989), as well as, inevitably, Monster Mash: the movie (1995), based on a play he'd written with Sheldon Allman. "That was way before Young Frankenstein, way before The Rocky Horror Picture Show," Pickett claimed. "It's A Chorus Line for monsters!"

"Monster Mash" has sold over four million copies and has been included on countless compilations, soundtracks and television shows. It's been covered by the Beach Boys, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Sha Na Na, Bad Manners and the Misfits, but Pickett's proudest moment was when Boris Karloff himself performed the song on the TV show Shindig! in 1965. In 2004 Picket recorded an updated version of his hit entitled "Climate Mash" intended to shame George W. Bush's administration into tackling climate change.

"I haven't made millions but I have been paying the rent for years with this one song," Pickett said. "When I hear it, I hear a cash register ringing."

Pierre Perrone