The story of the songwriter who, with a little audio experimentation, made an entertainment franchise.
by Rich Watson
Cartoon musical groups were once very popular on Saturday morning TV: the Archies, Josie and the Pussycats, Jem and the Holograms, not to mention dozens of shows about teens who also happen to play in bands. Occasionally the songs you heard on their shows became hit singles, blurring the line between fiction and reality.
Alvin and the Chipmunks were unique in that they began as a novelty singing group that went on to animated success on TV and the movies.
Cartoon bands
The seventies were the peak time for turning on your TV on Saturday mornings and encountering some show in which the teenage heroes played in a band. Sometimes they’d play their theme song, other times they’d play songs from a given episode. The songs were rarely anything special.
One cartoon that followed this example is Groovie Goolies, featuring Universal Studios monsters rebranded as hipster musicians. Did you know RCA put out a Goolies record?
On a related note, in 1995, MCA Records released Saturday Morning: Cartoons’ Greatest Hits, a collection of alternative bands reinterpreting cartoon theme songs: Scooby-Doo, Speed Racer, Spider-Man, Fat Albert, Popeye, and more.
I worked in a Tower Records when it came out, so I played it a lot in the store. Eventually I bought it.
I don’t recall being a big fan of Alvin and the Chipmunks on TV. For this post, I looked at clips of the show. The novelty of sped-up voices “singing” 80s pop songs wears thin in a hurry if you’re over the age of eight. The show is basically The Monkees for the grade-school set, but grade-schoolers need something to watch, too.
The Chipmunks began with their “manager,” a man known to the public as David Seville.
About “David Seville”
Outside of the recording studio, he was Ross Bagdasarian, an Armenian-American who forsook his family’s grape farming business at a young age to pursue songwriting. In 1951 he co-wrote “Come On-A My House” for Rosemary Clooney. He moved to LA and went into acting, scoring minor roles in Rear Window, Stalag 17 and Viva Zapata!, but typecasting limited his roles, so he returned to music.
With his last $200, he bought a specialized tape recorder that let him change speeds. By singing slowly but recording at half speed, and then playing back at normal speed, he created a high-pitched voice.
Using this technique, Bagdasarian, on the Liberty label, wrote a song in 1958 called “Witch Doctor” under his new stage name, David Seville (in World War Two he was stationed in Seville, Spain). His normal singing voice alternated with this newer, artificial one on the song. Liberty rushed it onto the market.
It spent three weeks at number one and rescued Liberty from bankruptcy.
(Fun fact: The Big Bopper, later that year, recorded “The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor,” combining Seville’s musical character with that of another popular novelty song. The flip side to this single: “Chantilly Lace,” the Bopper’s biggest hit. You could look it up.)
Also in 1958, Seville recorded the first Chipmunk song.
The Chipmunks are born
Liberty wanted a follow-up to “Witch Doctor” ASAP. Seville thought about creating animal characters of some sort, but it wasn’t until a casual drive through Yosemite National Park that inspiration struck.
He saw a chipmunk. It jumped in front of his car.
Amused by the animal, as well as impressed by its brashness, Seville decided his next song would feature chipmunks—three of them, named for the Liberty bosses,
- Alvin Bennett, president,
- Simon Waronker, VP and producer, and
- Theodore Keep, engineer,
as an in-joke.
As early as July, Seville’s son Adam kept asking when Christmas was coming. Were other kids as impatient for the event? Seville wrote a holiday tune commonly called “Christmas Don’t Be Late” but is actually titled “The Chipmunk Song.”
He did the voices of the Chipmunks as well as a version of himself in the song. Over time, “David Seville” has morphed into a separate, individual character within the Chipmunk canon, while Bagdasarian remained behind the scenes. Remember what I said about blurring the lines between fiction and reality?
The song establishes the relationship between Seville the character and the Chipmunks: the former as the mentor, almost a father figure, and the latter as eager-to-please prodigies with a rambunctious streak, especially Alvin. As a Christmas song, it works: the Chipmunks act and sound like kids, pumped up for their gifts, especially the hot toy that season, a hula hoop. To hear it is to become a kid yourself.
And audiences agreed. It spent four weeks at number one and won three Grammys.
The Chipmunk legacy
Chipmunk fever took off from there: more records, an animated TV show in 1961, a Beatles cover record in 1964, the eighties cartoon series, three live-action movies, a new series, and assorted merchandise. They even have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Bagdasarian died of a heart attack in 1972 at the age of 52. His son Ross Jr. has moved into the role of caretaker for the franchise. In 2022 he made this tribute to his dad.
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News: I got another published story at Spillwords. “Protection” is set in my fictitious town of Thurber. It’s a lighthearted story. I’m hoping the more Thurber stories get published, the more I can flesh out this place, maybe to the point where it’ll become my version of Stephen King’s Derry. Without the killer clowns.
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Do you remember when Alvin and the Chipmunks first came out? Leave a comment and let me know!
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