60s Joke Songs That Became Global Hits

What Made These 60s Joke Songs So Popular?

The 60s joke songs on this list prove that a good laugh could sell just as well as a love ballad. Between the rock and roll and the protest songs, the charts made room for cavemen, cartoon dogs, a lovesick summer camper and a singing monster.

This countdown follows our episode from #10 to #1. Chart positions, awards and stories were checked against Billboard chart records, Grammy records and other reliable sources. A few colorful details from the episode did not hold up, so they have been corrected or left out. One entry is also a little older than the decade, and we say so below.

The Countdown: 10 Joke Songs That Became Hits

#10: Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini — Brian Hyland (1960)

Paul Vance wrote this song with Lee Pockriss. According to Vance's obituary, the idea came after a 1960 trip to a Long Island beach, where his two-year-old daughter, Paula, felt shy in her two-piece swimsuit.

The singer was 16-year-old Brian Hyland, and Trudy Packer spoke the short lines between the verses. The record reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in August 1960 and sold over a million copies in the United States. At a time when bikinis were still considered daring, it is credited with helping boost their sales.

In 2006, Vance was startled to see his own obituary on TV. A man named Paul Van Valkenburgh had died after claiming for years that he wrote the song. The real Paul Vance lived until 2022, when he died at 92.

#9: Alley Oop — The Hollywood Argyles (1960)

Dallas Frazier wrote this song about the caveman from V. T. Hamlin's comic strip. The Hollywood Argyles were not a real band at first. Producer and singer Gary Paxton was still under contract under another name, so the group was named after Argyle Street, beside the studio.

By the musicians' own accounts, the session was a loose, rowdy party, and percussionist Sandy Nelson recalled that everyone was drunk on cider. The happy chaos worked. "Alley Oop" reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 in July 1960.

Paxton went on to produce more hits, including "Monster Mash." In 1980 he survived being shot three times by hired gunmen. He died in 2016 at age 77.

#8: Snoopy vs. the Red Baron — The Royal Guardsmen (1966)

A pop band from Florida turned the Peanuts beagle's daydreams of fighting the World War I flying ace into a novelty record. It reached No. 2 on the Hot 100 at the end of 1966, held back only by the Monkees' "I'm a Believer," and sold close to three million copies.

The band had not asked permission to use Snoopy. Charles Schulz and United Features Syndicate challenged them, and the syndicate won all the publishing income from the song. Even so, Schulz let the group keep writing about Snoopy, leading to "The Return of the Red Baron" and "Snoopy's Christmas."

#7: Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh — Allan Sherman (1963)

Allan Sherman wrote this after his son Robert sent home letters of complaint from Camp Champlain in upstate New York. Sherman and Lou Busch set the lyrics to the "Dance of the Hours" from Ponchielli's opera La Gioconda.

The record spent three weeks at No. 2 on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1963. It also won the Grammy for Best Comedy Performance, and summer campers and their parents have been quoting it ever since.

#6: Ahab the Arab — Ray Stevens (1962)

Ray Stevens wrote and recorded this song himself, performing every voice, from Ahab's chants to Fatima's falsetto and the braying of Clyde the camel. It reached No. 5 on the Hot 100 and became one of his best-selling records.

Its humor leans on ethnic stereotypes that many listeners now find dated. Stevens went on to a long career in comedy and serious music alike, winning Grammys for "Everything Is Beautiful" and his arrangement of "Misty."

#5: Winchester Cathedral — The New Vaudeville Band (1966)

Songwriter Geoff Stephens created this deliberately old-fashioned tune, recorded entirely by session musicians. Singer John Carter sang through his cupped hands to sound like a crooner with a megaphone, in the style of Rudy Vallée.

When the record became an international hit, a real band had to be put together to tour. It reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 in December 1966, earned an RIAA gold record and sold more than three million copies worldwide.

At the 1967 Grammys it won Best Contemporary (R&R) Recording, in a field that included the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby" and the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations." "Eleanor Rigby" still won two other Grammys that night.

#4: The Purple People Eater — Sheb Wooley (1958)

Strictly speaking, this one belongs to the late 1950s, not the '60s. It grew from a riddle told by the child of Wooley's friend, songwriter Don Robertson, and Wooley reportedly finished the song within an hour.

MGM Records first turned it down. Then staff in the New York office passed the demo around at lunchtime, and the front office changed its mind. The creature's voice is a sped-up recording. The single topped the Billboard pop charts from early June to mid-July 1958, just before the Hot 100 began.

Listeners still debate the lyric: the creature eats purple people, so it may not be purple itself. Wooley, who played outlaw Ben Miller in High Noon, later played Pete Nolan on TV's Rawhide. He died in 2003.

#3: Monster Mash — Bobby "Boris" Pickett (1962)

Bobby Pickett was an aspiring actor with a fine Boris Karloff impression. Every major label passed on the song he wrote with Lenny Capizzi, so Gary Paxton produced it and released it on his small Garpax label.

The spooky effects were homemade. A rusty nail pulled from a board became a creaking coffin, and water bubbled through a straw became a boiling cauldron. The single hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 just before Halloween 1962.

It came back in 1970 and again in 1973, when it reached No. 10, and it returned to the Hot 100 in 2021, nearly 60 years after its release. Pickett died in 2007.

#2: Dominique — The Singing Nun (1963)

Jeanine Deckers was a Belgian Dominican sister known as Sœur Sourire, or Sister Smile. Her cheerful French song about Saint Dominic spent four weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100 in December 1963, replacing Dale and Grace's "I'm Leaving It Up to You." The episode says she knocked Elvis Presley from the top, but Elvis had no No. 1 single that year.

"Dominique" won a Grammy, but the money told a harder story. Philips and her producer took most of the earnings, and the rest went to her religious order. In 1967, Belgian tax officials said she owed back taxes on income she argued she had never kept. She died in 1985 at age 51.

#1: They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa! — Napoleon XIV (1966)

Jerry Samuels was a recording engineer in New York when he made this record under the name Napoleon XIV. He recorded the rhythm track first, then sped up his vocal by changing the tape speed, so his voice rose higher and higher while the beat stayed steady.

The narrator sounds like a man coming apart after being left, and only in the final verse do listeners realize he is talking about a runaway dog. The record reached No. 3 on the Hot 100 in August 1966.

Not everyone was laughing. Mental health advocates complained that it mocked mental illness, and New York's big Top 40 stations, WABC and WMCA, stopped playing it. Samuels died in March 2023 at 84.

Why 60s Joke Songs Still Make Us Smile

Many of these records were made fast and cheap. A nail and a board stood in for sound effects. Cupped hands stood in for a megaphone. A father's mail from summer camp became a Grammy winner.

They also remind us that the decade was not only about big causes and big guitars. Radio had room for silliness, and families sang along together in the car.

Which of these 60s joke songs did your family know by heart, and who in your house could never stop singing it?

Sources and Further Reading

• "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" — Wikipedia
• "Monster Mash" — Wikipedia
• "Winchester Cathedral" (song) — Wikipedia
• List of Billboard Hot 100 number ones of 1963 — Wikipedia
• Jerry Samuels obituary — The Philadelphia Inquirer