Posted on 10/31/2015 11:16:47 PM PDT by WhiskeyX
Songwriter Dallas Frazier penned "Elvira" in 1966 and included it as the title track of an album he released that year. A number of recording artists, most notably Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, recorded the song through the years, to varying degrees of success.[1] Frazier's own version peaked at #72 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966.[2] The title of the song was inspired not by the name of a woman, but by the name of a street in East Nashville, Tennessee.[3] Elvira (song) Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvira_(song)
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Hearing that the song dates to 1966 makes the pappa oom mow mow reference a bit more understandable
RIVINGTONS perform PAPA OOM MOW MOW on the Steve Allen Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LoITXmN88Y
DALLAS FRAZIER - ELVIRA (ORIGINAL)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wjevGsrCEc&list=PL53159BC00D42AF62&index=5
Happy Halloween!
We’ve been trying to figure out which came first, the Oak Ridge Boys singing Elvira or Cassandra Peterson performing the character, Elvira - Mistress of the Dark. Dallas Frazier and others were performing the song, Elvira, all the way from 1966 to 1979. The Oak Ridge Boys recorded their Elvira song in early 1981, which is also about the same time when Cassandra Peterson selected Elvira as the name for her character.
MAMA OOM POW POW
Little did Elvira (Peterson) know when she began her campy dress that, 20 years later, grown women would dress up like her, not as a Halloween stunt but every friggin day as a fashion statement.
Back around the same time Dallas Frazier was crooning Elvira, The Munsters sitcom was on tv with the running joke about the pretty blonde being treated like the ugly stepchild. Today, between Goth and feminism, the pretty blonde is becoming more like the ugly stepchild. We truly are living in a bizarro world.
“Today, between Goth and feminism, the pretty blonde is becoming more like the ugly stepchild. We truly are living in a bizarro world.”
Do not underestimate the capacity for the bizarre in the earlier decades. Take the story of the origin of the title, Elvira, when Dallas Frazier authored the song in 1966. The Wikipedia article cites the origin of the title as being the name of a street in eastern Nashville, Tennessee. However true that origin may or may not be, it may be covering for an altogether different origin with a less prosaic nature. The purported first Elvis Presley impersonator was a woman, instead of a man, who used Elvira Presley as a stage name. See:
The FIRST ELVIS IMPERSONATOR was a WOMAN (With Guitar Shaped Pasties) Elvira Presley Shakes her Hips Vintage Sleaze
The First Elvis Impersonator Elvira Presley!
Complete with guitar-shaped pasties, Elvira Presley hits the stage in 1957 in the not-so legendary stripdump “The Near and Far Club” operated by Al and Mal Warner in Los Angeles. They were looking for a sensational act to celebrate a club makeover, and When they heard of a model who looked like the “Mississippi Peckerwood” Elvis, they convinced her to put on levi jeans and then immediately take them off on stage! Complete with Elvis gyrations which even Elvis Sullivan would have enjoyed!
Elvira was thus not only the first Elvis Impersonator, she was the first with 38-28-37 measurements! Like the (then prince, future king, now sadly dead) real Elvis, she came from Mississippi.
The act began with the house orchestra playing “Don’t Be Cruel” while Elvira made her entrance with a guitar. As the band continued performing without paying royalties to the illegal immigrant Colonel Tom Parker, Elvira pops out of her Levis to “Blue Suede Shoes” and then out-hip-shakes the hip shaker with “Hound Dog” while tearing off her bra revealing sequins shaped like a Nashville guitar-shaped Swimming Pool!
Elvira was became the first to set the standard Elvis Impersonator patter. When interviewed by the press, her answers are filled with “I hope he would be flattered” responses, but she avoids the “it’s not an imitation, it’s a tribute” banal platitude adopted by every single imitator since. It was an imitation for sure.
Uncredited Photographs appeared in Modern Man Magazine 1957
I broke the internet looking for a late 50s or 60s rockabilly song about Vampira (a 50s LA movie hostess). I’d misremembered it as Elvira so I searched for Elvira and wound up locating this Chinese sung vocal version of the theme to A Fistful of Dollars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQvxFb5btXw
Here’s the Bobby Bare song about Vampira:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMQmTSPuFbw
In the 70's, Tom Waits was easily the best songwriter whose voice was an acquired taste. The songwriting was spectacular and his masterpiece "Small Change" is arguably the best album of the 70's.
That said...
"Small Change" album cover featured a young "pre-Elvira" Cassandra Peterson. In typical Tom Waits banter, she has never confirmed or denied but says
"I don't know if that's me! I don't know. People say it is, it looks like me, but I don't have any recollection of ever doing that. But it was the '70s, so I don't have a recollection of a whole lot that I did then.
heh heh heh...
When I was at Vanderbilt in 84-86, they handed out Kazoos to everyone at the foot ball game and the Oak Ridge boys came out and led us in Elvira to break the world record on the largest kazoo band.
It was great!
I wonder if that record still holds.
damn dint know her hair was that light, never saw her without the wig...
here’s one of the alternate covers that didn’t make it
http://rockcellarmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/TomWaits2.jpg
“I wonder if that record still holds.”
Largest kazoo ensemble
Who: Big Red Nose Show
What: 5190 participants
Where: United Kingdom, London
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/largest-kazoo-ensemble
That can’t be right. We had like 30 to 50 thousand. That has to be old information.
A search of the website for current records produced only that record. Maybe Guinness is excluding your group’s record for some reason?
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Thenkyavurrymuch.
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