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Burl Ives, who recorded
numerous chart hits dating back
to 1949 ("Riders in the Sky"), and
who scored his biggest hit with
the 1961 Top Ten Ten smash, "A
Little Bitty Tear." He is perhaps
best known, however, for the
narration he did on the perennial
favorite TV special,
Rudolph
the Red-Nosed Raindeer
and for
the classic that he first sang on
the special, "A Holly Jolly
Christmas." What you may not
know of this Renaissance man
(Academy Award-winning actor and acclaimed folk music
singer and best selling author) is that in 1929, while in an
English class and listening to a lecture on
Beowulf, when he
suddenly decided to quit school. The professor made a
snide remark, so Ives slammed the door behind him. Sixty
years later, the school (now called Eastern Illinois
University) named a building in honor of its most famous
dropout student.

    Gary S. Paxton, one half of the
    Skip and Flip duo that had
    giant chart hits with "It Was I"
    and "Cherry Pie," went on to
    greater fame as the Hollywood
    Argyles ("Alley Oop") and as a
    producer for the Association,
    Paul Revere and the Raiders
    and Tommy Roe, then later to a
    legendary country and
    Christian songwriting career.

In 1962, he produced and
recorded the # 1 hit
"Monster Mash" with
Bobby "Boris" Pickett.
It is one of the few
recordings that came
back to be million-selling
chart hits (in 1970 and
1973) as new generations
of fans "discovered" the
song. "Monster Mash"
continues to a Halloween-ish
favorite around the world.

"Monster Mash" started out as a joke. Bobby Pickett began
doing the recitation to the Diamonds' smash hit, "Little
Darlin'", with an impersonation of Boris Karloff. The teens
asked for the band to do the song over and over. Paxton
heard Bobby's wacky act and saw the response, and
"Monster Mash" was hastily created in his Hollywood
studio. The rest, as they say, is rock `n roll history.


    Although many fans
    assumed that the
    Shirelles were
    named for their
    lead singer Shirley
    Owens, the
    members of the
    group say that this
    is not true.
The girls came up with the name while they were still in
high school and Doris Kenner was singing most of the lead
vocals.


James Brown placed a whopping
99 songs on the Billboard Hot 100
Pop chart. A monstrous 44 of them
made the Top 40, but not a single
hit by "The Hardest Working Man
in Show Business" ever reached
number one, not even "I Got You
(I Feel Good" or "Papa's Got a
Brand New Bag.)"