A Happy Halloween to all WoM readers! I have to make my own fun because we haven't had any trick or treaters for a couple of years now, and before that it was only what I could count on one hand. Living in the Pacific Northwest, the holiday already has a strike against it with the weather and it's usually cold and rainy on the 31st. That and the various "safe" venues that have popped up has killed the door-to-door ritual.
If you listen to the radio at all, I'm sure you've heard the tradition of hearing "Monster Mash" at least once. We have the late Bobby "Boris Pickett to thank along with his co-writer, Leonard Capizzi, to thank for penning this great song. Released in August 1962, I maintain it will stand against any Christmas carol if you ask me. So far, we've enjoyed 64 years of this classic monster song. I still have the original vinyl LP from way back when. I call it a "Rice Krispies" copy because its full of snaps, crackles and pops after being played on a cheap record player a countless number of times.
But did you know, soon after its released it was banned! Yep, that's right. When it began to be played in October 1962, censors in the UK thought the lyrics were "too morbid". The article below covers the story.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
TRACK LISTING
"Monster Mash" (Leonard Capizzi, Bobby "Boris" Pickett) – 3:14
"Rabian - The Fiendage Idol" (Johnny MacRae, Pickett) – 2:54
"Blood Bank Blues" (Capizzi, Pickett) – 2:47
"Graveyard Shift" (MacRae, Gary S. "Flip" Paxton, Pickett, Charles Underwood) – 2:09
"Skully Gully" (Capizzi, Pickett) – 2:01
"Wolfbane" (MacRae, Pickett) – 3:24
"Monster Minuet" (MacRae, Paxton, Pickett, Gary Owens) – 1:52
"Transylvania Twist" (MacRae, Paxton, Pickett) – 1:36
"Sinister Stomp" (Capizzi, Pickett) – 2:19
"Me & My Mummy" (MacRae, Pickett) – 2:42
"Monster Motion" (MacRae) – 2:34
"Monster Mash Party" (Paxton) – 2:53
"Irresistible Igor" (Capizzi, Pickett) – 2:29
"Bella's Bash" (MacRae, Pickett) – 2:49
"Let's Fly Away" (Paxton, Pickett) – 0:50
THE CRYPT KICKERS
Bobby "Boris" Pickett – Lead vocals
Gary S. Paxton – Producer, piano, Hammond organ, and backing vocals
Leon Russell – Piano (played on the B-side "Monster Mash Party")
Fred "Johnny" MacRae – Backing vocals
Rickie Page – Backing vocals
Chuck Hamilton – Bass
Jesse Sailes – Drums
Billy Lee Riley – Guitar
This Classic Halloween Song Was Once Banned for Being Too ‘Morbid’
By Jason Brow | September 15, 2025 | parade.com
It was a graveyard smash. It caught on in a flash. And Elvis Presley reportedly thought it was trash. It’s perhaps the quintessential Halloween song, Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers’ “Monster Mash.” But would you believe that it was once considered “too morbid” for radio play?
Released in 1962, the “Monster Mash” caught lightning in a bottle. With one song, Pickett and his band capitalized on the teenage dance craze of the day, as well as the public’s revitalized love of classic monster movies.
Every Halloween since then, we hear Pickett deliver his now-iconic lines in the song while doing a spot-on Boris Karloff imitation. However, when “Monster Mash” first came out, the BBC wasn’t amused.
Shortly after the song was released, the British broadcaster banned the song. Why? “Too morbid,” according to the BBC. Apparently, hearing about zombies, vampires and how “the ghouls all came from their humble abodes / to get a jolt on my electrodes” was a bit too much for the Brits.
The BBC has a history of banning songs for unusual reasons. Pickett posed his own theory about the “Monster Mash” embargo in his autobiography, Monster Mash—Half Dead In Hollywood:
“On October 12, 1962, the record was banned by the BBC for being ‘offensive,’ though I didn’t hear about this until 1989, twenty-seven years later. I remember wondering at the time why we weren’t doing well in England, but I never got a straight answer from London Records, since in its second release, it had risen to Number 2 in the UK.
“What was so ‘offensive’ about it? Evidently…someone felt that it was undignified for Boris Karloff to be making fun of monsters or dead folks. [William Henry] Pratt had been educated in England and lived in Canada, where he changed his real name to the more exotic Karloff, and I guess my crude satire was beneath the dignity of any self-respecting Englishman. Go figure.”
How The ‘Monster Mash’ Was Made
In his memoir, Pickett details how he and his friend and bandmate, Lenny Capizzi, whipped up this “monster” of a hit.
“I was twenty-three, and Chubby Checker was singing ‘The Twist’ on the radio,” wrote Pickett. “The record was number one, for the first time. Within two years, it would reach the top spot for a second time.”
Pickett—a struggling actor when he wasn’t performing with his nightclub band, The Cordials—said he felt anxious about his career when he remembered Capizzi’s idea of doing a novelty record.
So, one night, he met his friend and they began working. “Lenny sat down at the piano and began futzing with various four-chord progressions, and I stood next to the piano. 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,” wrote Pickett.
Both he and Capizzi were horror fans, and recollected how audiences would react when Pickett recited the monologue in the middle of The Diamonds‘ “Little Darlin” in the Karloff voice. “We agreed that the Karloff voice was the most obvious one to tell the story. And what was the story?” wrote Pickett. “‘Well, Lenny suggested, ‘maybe the Frankenstein monster should start a dance craze.’ ‘That’s it!’ I said.”
Like the bolt of lightning that brought Frankenstein’s creation to life, inspiration struck Pickett and Capizzi. “The sucker wrote itself, in about half an hour at most,” wrote Pickett. They took the song to producer Gary S. Paxton, who knew it was a “number one record.”
It was Paxton who came up with Pickett’s moniker (“We’ll call you Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers!”). Pickett would regret getting stuck labeled as “Boris” when trying to get his acting career off the ground. But he’d embrace the moniker later in life.
Elvis Didn’t Like the ‘Monster Mash’
Apparently, the “King of Rock” preferred the Transylvania Twist.
Pickett wrote that when he went to visit his bank one day, he spoke with a teller who was a nightclub dancer. “She said, ‘Hey, Bobby, I was up at Elvis’s mansion last night, and he asked about ‘Monster Mash’ Then he sent one of his lackeys to Music City to pick up the copy of the record!”
This news made Pickett bubble with pride. “‘ No Kidding?’ I said. ‘Wow. The king! Did he hear the record? What did he say about it?'”
“He said that it was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard!” said Pickett’s friend. Whether or not this was true is up for debate, but Pickett would incorporate a shoutout whenever he performed it. “In my act at Halloween time, whenever I’m hired to sing ‘a medley of my hit,’ I tell the story of Elvis’s critique and end it up with, “So, if you’re out there listening tonight, Elvis… I’m still here!’ Always brings a chuckle.”
The ‘Monster Mash’s Legacy
The song was released on August 25, 1962. And in eight short weeks, it was No. 1 on the Billboard chart. In 2021, nearly sixty years after its release, it re-entered the Hot 100 at No. 37. And it always rises from the record store’s grave come Halloween season.
“Every single year my entire life, I get to hear my grandfather’s voice for a month,” Jordan Huus, Pickett’s grandson, told Billboard in 2023. “And he’s not crooning or loudly singing. I get to hear his speaking voice.”
As for ownership, Paxton released the song on his independent label, Garpax; London Records agreed to distribute it. Pickett’s longtime manager, Stuart Hersh, told Billboard that the company retained ownership of the master, now controlled through major label Universal Music Group’s Decca UK subsidiary.
In the 1990s, Hersh encouraged Pickett to pull a Taylor Swift by re-recording his song so he would own a master copy that could be licensed out. “I said to Bobby, ‘We’ve got to make this thing sound perfect and give it to independent films, and give people a chance, and it’ll be your master,'” said Hersh, who still manages Pickett’s career.
Pickett died of leukemia in 2007 at age 69. But every Halloween, the world joins him in doing the “Monster Mash.”
Bobby "Boris" Pickett sings "Monster Mash" on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, October 13, 1962:
