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Bobby Pickett

Singer and songwriter, he did the mash, the monster mash

In the United States, Halloween is one of the most intensively celebrated annual events. And one of the season's most hallowed components is the 1962 novelty hit record Monster Mash, co-written and performed in the style of horror film star Boris Karloff by Bobby "Boris" Pickett, who has died of leukaemia aged 69.

Pickett was born in Somerville, Massachusetts. His father was the manager of a cinema, where Bobby began his love affair with the horror genre. After high school, he spent three years in Korea in the US army signal corps. Upon demobilisation, Pickett headed for Hollywood, where he wanted to break into movies and stand-up comedy - his first nightclub act included a horror film routine.

His initial success was modest, and in 1961 he joined a vocal group called the Cordials. It specialised in the doo-wop close-harmony style and occasionally Pickett would enliven shows by intoning the spoken section of Little Darlin', a hit by the Diamonds, in his Karloff voice. The Cordials soon came to the attention of the record producer and songwriter Gary Paxton. Under his guidance, the Cordials, an all-white quartet in a mainly black genre, recorded several undistinguished singles including Dawn Is Almost There and The International Twist.

In 1962, Pickett and the group's leader, Leonard Capizzi, decided to compose a novelty number for release at Halloween. The song took its inspiration from the Mashed Potato, at that time a dance craze, and the Frankenstein motif of a scientist creating human life. Pickett's half-spoken, half-sung narration includes a brief snatch of a heavily accented Bela Lugosi impersonation as well as the Karloff voice. The refrain ran, "He did the mash/ He did the monster mash/ The monster mash/ It was a graveyard smash". The pianist at the recording session was future star Leon Russell.

Gary Paxton had already made Alley-Oop, a number one hit record with a scratch group called the Hollywood Argyles that had "some claim to being the ultimate reduction of rock'n'roll to a dumb, absurd, bad joke," according to DJ and author Charlie Gillett. Paxton was therefore receptive to the absurdity of Monster Mash, adding atmospheric sound effects to accompany Pickett's lugubrious delivery. Among these were a creaking door created by pulling a nail from a piece of wood, bubbling beaker noises derived from blowing through a straw in a glass of water and heavy chairs dropped on plywood to suggest the sound of shackles.

Within two months Monster Mash had sold a million and was the number one record in the US. It was reissued on several occasions and in 1973 it reached number three in Britain. As a Halloween anthem, Monster Mash has been regularly dusted off in October by DJs across the country, including Bob Dylan, who played it on his XM Satellite radio show last October. The song has also been included in film soundtracks, including that of Halloween III (1982), and in the television series the Simpsons, Cheers and Roseanne. Pickett occasionally appeared at "oldies" concert shows where he appeared in a lab coat stained with fake blood to introduce his performance by saying, "I will now sing a medley of my hit."

The song attracted cover versions by the Beach Boys and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band among others, while Bobby Brown and boxer Mike Tyson performed it as a duet on television.

There were follow-up records from Pickett and the Crypt Kickers. But Monsters' Holiday, Graduation Day, The Werewolf Watusi and Stardrek were all equally unsuccessful. These failures did not adversely affect Pickett's bank balance, however. He told a 1998 interviewer, "I haven't made millions, but I have been paying the rent for 36 years with just one song."

He had a moderately successful acting career, appearing in episodes of various television series and as Dr Frankenstein in the film Monster Mash: The Movie (1995), based on a 1966 play Pickett had written with Sheldon Allman.

In later years, Pickett became involved with environmental causes, in support of which he wrote and recorded two new versions of his song: Monster Slash was a protest against government plans to approve commercial exploitation of federal forests, and the Climate Mash was a contribution to the fight against global warming. That song was downloaded almost 500,000 times during Halloween 2005. An autobiography, Monster Mash, Half-Dead in Hollywood, was published two years ago.

His final public appearance took place in November last year. He is survived by his daughter Nancy, his sister Lynda and two grandchildren.

· Robert George Pickett, singer and songwriter, born February 11 1938; died April 25 2007

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