Sing Along With Drac

Chronique

Sheldon Allman borrowed John Zacherley's Dracula shtick for Sing Along with Drac, a Halloween novelty platter that preceded Bobby "Boris" Pickett's "Monster Mash" by a year. Allman's original concept was to spoof Mitch Miller's Sing Along albums, but instead of delivering that, almost everything on Sing Along with Drac is a spooky recitation just like Zacherley's "Dinner with Drac." Dracula isn't the only character heard on the album, though; "Don't Maim Me" sounds like Allman sang it with marbles in his mouth, and "They Can't Take That Away from Me" is performed in a Peter Lorre voice. (That, too, was not a new idea -- Spike Jones did the same thing with "My Old Flame" in 1947). Allman's ghoulish rewrites of pop standards are mostly spoken rather than sung, and the album as a whole is fairly tedious despite a few clever bits. That's partly because, unlike Zacherley and Pickett, Allman used a funereal organ for accompaniment instead of a rock & roll combo, which drags things down considerably. The one gem on the album is "Children's Day at the Morgue," which Allman sings in a voice that sounds like an undead Thurl Ravenscroft. Sing Along with Drac isn't a great success, but Allman had a legitimate gift for penning novelty material since he went on to write the television theme songs for Super Chicken and George of the Jungle.

© Greg Adams /TiVo