Straight Outta Somerville: Famous Faces from Your Hometown

Editor's Note: This story was originally published in February, but in honor of Halloween, we decided to share it with you once more.

SOMERVILLE, MA – The singer of that one unavoidable Halloween song (at least until ‘Thriller’ came along) was born in Somerville in 1938. Along with Leonard Capizzi, he co-wrote the ‘monster’ hit in 1962.

Incorporating his impressions of horror icons Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff into the infectious tune, the song was originally supposed to be a parody of the era’s dance crazes. Pickett followed up ‘Monster Mash’ with two decades of monster-themed spoofs, none of which achieved the same level of success as the original.

A fixture in the Hollywood nightclub circuit, Pickett branched out to theater and film, where he wrote about - you guessed it - monsters.

He died in 2007 at age 67.

Did you know? Pickett’s first live backup band was a then-unknown group called The Beach Boys.

Image via Leslie Gottlieb from Little Ferry, NJ, USA (PA300011) [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons