Witch Doctor (song)

In the song, the narrator asks a witch doctor for romantic advice because he has fallen in love with a girl; the witch doctor responds in a high-pitched, squeaky voice with a nonsense incantation which creates an earworm: "Oo-ee-oo-ah-ah, ting-tang, walla-walla-bing-bang."

History

Ross Bagdasarian, a Broadway actor who had been a pianist in Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 film Rear Window, wrote the song, inspired by a book titled Duel with a Witch Doctor on his bookshelf. Bagdasarian had spent $200, a significant sum at that time, on a specialized tape recorder; while experimenting with the device, he had an idea of recording his voice at a different speed to create a dialogue between himself and the witch doctor. He sang in his own voice as normal, and then overdubbed the song with the voice of the "witch doctor", which is in fact his own voice sung slowly but recorded at half speed on the tape recorder, then played back at normal speed (the voice was therefore sped up to become a high-pitched, squeaky one). Bagdasarian recorded the music first, and then experimented with the process for creating the singing voice for two months before recording it in the studio. It was said that when Si Waronker from the financially-troubled Liberty Records label heard the resulting song, they released it to reach the shops within 24 hours.

History

The same technique used to create the voice of the witch doctor was used in Bagdasarian's next song "The Bird on My Head", and then more significantly the highly successful Alvin and the Chipmunks, beginning with "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late))" released for Christmas 1958. Initially released under David Seville alone, "Witch Doctor" was also released under the name of David Seville and the Chipmunks and re-recorded under the name Alvin and the Chipmunks. The technique was also imitated by other recording artists, such as Sheb Wooley in "The Purple People Eater". The Big Bopper parodied both songs on "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor"; this song was originally released as a single, but it was its flip-side "Chantilly Lace)" that became the hit.

Witch Doctor (song)