The Purple People Eater

One of the most loved songs of all time, "The Purple People Eater" remains a cult phenomonon today.

"The Purple People Eater" is a novelty song, written and performed by Sheb Wooley, that reached #1 in the Billboard pop charts in 1958.

"The Purple People Eater" tells how a strange monster (described as a "one-eyed, one-horned flying purple people eater") descends to earth because it wants to be in a rock 'n' roll band. The premise of the song came from a joke told by the child of a friend of Wooley's; Wooley finished composing it within an hour.[1]

In 1958, at the height of PPE mania, LIFE magazine featured this article on the subject:

A dial turner in search of music these days is likely to encounter a shrill, nasal voice spewing at triphammer speed sentiments something like these:

Oooh-eee-oooh-aah-aah Ting-tang Walla-walla bing-bang.

The lyrics are from a jukebox hit called Witch Doctor, by Ross (Come on-a My House) Bagdasarian, and in the pop industry, which apes itself with witless intensity, they have contributed to a recent style in novelty numbers: the use of speeded-up or doctored tape to achieve nonsensical vocal effects. The Little Blue Man climbed the charts briefly because it had a whiningly metallic voice whispering "I wuv you" at periodic intervals; a new record called What'd He Say? consists of a series of bewildered questioners trying to ungarble answers that invariably degenerate into taped gobbledygook just when it looks as if they were going somewhere. The most successful of the species, and the one that everybody wants to imitate, is Singer Sheb Wooley's Purple People Eater, which is not only the fastest-selling novelty in five years but something of a national crisis.

In nine weeks Purple People Eater has sold 1,500,000 copies. As everybody within range of a radio knows, it is about a "one-eyed, one-horned" creature "acomin' out of the sky" to "get a job in a rock-'n'-roll band." Oklahoma-born Singer Wooley, 37, who has written hits such as Too Young to Tango and appeared in westerns (High Noon) as a badman, got his inspiration from a gag riddle posed by the child of a friend: "What has one eye, one horn, flies and eats people?" (Answer: a one-eyed, one-horned, flying people eater.) Wooley composed the song in an hour, hyped the People Eater's voice in currently approved fashion; he achieved the toy saxophone sound of the People Eater's horn by recording a regular saxophone at reduced speed and playing it back at high speed. The record took off immediately.

Manufacturers are already on the market with such items as Purple People Eater hats (with built-in horn), T shirts, buttons, dolls and ice cream. In Orlando, Fla. a campaign is directed at changing the name of a purple-and-silver train that comes through the town from West Coast Champion to The Purple People Eater. Record manufacturers are cranking out imitative disks as fast as they can make them, including Wooley's own sequel, Purple People Eater Plays Earth Music, Cuban Purple People Eater (in cha cha cha rhythm), The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor, Polka-Dotted Poliwampus (about a creature that eats Purple People Eaters) and Purple Herring Fresser (a Yiddish version). Disk jockeys all over the country have invited their listeners to draw the Purple People Eater (both the jockeys and listeners seemed to miss the fine point that the People Eater is not really purple but merely an eater of purple people). Composer Wooley seemed a little dazed by it all. "The Purple People Eater lives at my house," he told an interviewer last week. "Hell, he bought the house for me."