ANOTHER TAKE — on the UFOs of the time...
I just got finished downloading a bunch of Billboard Top 100 songs (or Top 30, depending on the year), for the 50s...
I just listened to this one (and I remember it from back then...)...
—
The Purple People Eater
By Sheb Wooley
Released 6/2/1958
Well I saw the thing comin’ out of the sky
It had the one long horn, one big eye
I commenced to shakin’ and I said ooh-eee
It looks like a purple eater to me
It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin’ purple people eater
A one-eyed, one-horned, flyin purple people eater
Sure looks strange to me
Well he came down to earth and he lit in a tree
I said Mr. Purple People Eater, dont eat me
I heard him say in a voice so gruff
It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin purple people eater
One-eyed, one-horned flyin purple people eater
One-eyed, one-horned, flyin purple people eater
Sure looks strange to me
I said Mr. Purple People Eater, what’s your line
He said it’s eatin’ purple people and it sure is fine
But that’s not the reason that I came to land
Well bless my soul, rock and roll, flyin’ purple people eater
Pigeon-toed, undergrowed, flyin’ purple people eater
Flyin purple people eater
Sure looks strange to me
And then he swung from the tree and he lit on the ground
He started to rock, really rockin around
It was a crazy ditty with a swingin tune
Well bless my soul, rock and roll, flyin purple people eater
Pigeon-toed, undergrowed, flyin purple people eater
Flyin little people eater
Sure looks strange to me
And then he went on his way, and then what do ya know
I saw him last night on a TV show
He was blowing it out, areally knockin em dead
Playin rock and roll music through the horn in his head
Tequila
Listening to it again, now...
“Purple People Eater” inspired a number of follow-ups, including “Cuban Purple People Eater” by Rene Touzet, which is essentially the same song, although the Cuban critter wears pantalones instead of short shorts and eats picadillo. He ends the song by shouting “Bacardi!”—still being made in pre-castro Cuba—instead of “Tequila!”
In “Bo Meets the Monster,” Bo Diddley recounts how a hideous Purple People Eater swept his girlfriend off into outer space—but the critter also saved Santa Claus from a Soviet Sputnik satellite in Sheb Woolley’s “Santa Meets the Purple People Eater.”