Professor of Rock

The 1950s gave us the birth of rock and roll — and with it a collection of song stories so bizarre and completely unhinged that they sound made up. Behind the poodle skirts and the sock hops was a decade of scandals, accidents, and twists that will shock you. Today we're counting down the Weirdest and Wickedest songs the 50s ever produced. First… the sweet, childlike duet Tonight You Belong to Me that was recorded as a family keepsake somehow became one of the most chilling songs on the internet thanks to a dark urban legend about girls forced to sing it by a lunatic. It racked up millions of views on social media… even though the real story behind the record is stranger than any ghost story. Then… a female rock pioneer Wanda Jackson recorded a sensually charged song laced with references to nuclear devastation that American radio banned outright and many felt it was truly offensive to one particular country… only to watch it become one of the biggest hits ever in that exact country! And finally… the song Purple People Eater that its writer dismissed as the worst thing ever written was rescued from obscurity by a group of record label employees who couldn’t stop playing it in the lunchroom. Plus the story of Rock Around the Clock by BIll Haley and his Comets....Let’s go. To Support 80s Movie click here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hrpao/the-80s-a-motion-picture-special-the-distribution-campaign ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Executive Producer Brandon Fugal Honorary Producers Jaimee Hammack, Dan Tierney, Sarge, Byrdman, Duff Gordon ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe to the Professor of Rock Podcast Apple: https://apple.co/445fVov Spotify: https://spoti.fi/42JpfvU Amazon: https://amzn.to/44b5D6m iHeartRadio: https://bit.ly/444h8MO ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Patreon: http://bit.ly/ProfessorofRockVIPFan Merch Store: https://professor-of-rock-lsn-shop.fourthwall.com/ Instagram: https://bit.ly/Instagram_Professor_of_Rock #classicrock #50smusic #vinylstory #onehitwonder Hey Music Junkies, Let’s Get the Strangest Songs and their unbelievable stories on our 50s lovefest. Kicking off the countdown at #7, I’ve got the story of an outer space obsession that got its start as a kid’s riddle and in a record label lunchroom. The song is Sheb Wooley’s Purple People Eater. Shelby Fredrick "Sheb" Wooley got his entertainment career going in the late 40s and early 50s as both a Hollywood actor and a country-western singer. Appearing in landmark Westerns like High Noon and TV roles in series like Rawhide, Wooley maintained a parallel career writing comic novelty songs and performing under a number of comedic aliases. Prior to 1958, his musical releases only achieved moderate regional success, specifically within the country market. But he was on the hunt for a national pop crossover hit. Enter the Purple People Eater. The backstory of the song starts with America’s mid-century obsession with everything outer space, UFOs, and growing Cold War anxiety. Looking for inspiration for a lighthearted record, you know, something to cut the tension… Wooley wrote a song about a bizarre alien creature coming to Earth, hoping to play in a rock 'n' roll band. To capture the alien's distinctive voice, Wooley manipulated the tape speed, playing back recorded vocal tracks at double time. The initial concept for the song started with a joke told to Wooley by the son of another songwriter, Don Robertson. Don’s son posed a riddle about a one-eyed, one-horned flying creature that ate people. Inspired by the joke's absurd imagery, Wooley dashed off the entire song in just minutes… but then dismissed it as a throwaway track. However, he did send a demo disc to MGM's New York offices. Although the record executives there thought it was Crap, the demo started attracting the attention of some of the younger staff members. And during lunch breaks, something like 50 label employees began gathering around the record player to listen to the eccentric track. After seeing all of this spontaneous enthusiasm, execs realized they had discovered the next big thing and rushed the single to radio stations. Said Wooley about what happened, "I wrote [Purple People Eater] in about fifteen minutes and didn't think much of it. In fact, I thought it was undoubtedly the worst song I had ever written, maybe the worst ever period. But when the kids at the studio started playing it over and over, the executives realized they had something on their hands.” Upon its release in May 1958, "The Purple People Eater" became an enormous commercial phenomenon, reaching #1 on the Billboard pop charts for 6 consecutive weeks and selling over three million copies.