Happy Thanksgiving and Start of Christmas

Bobby " Boris " Pickett Monster's Holiday - Info from Wikipedia

Pickett co-wrote "Monster Mash" with Leonard Capizzi in May 1962. The song was a spoof on the dance crazes popular at the time, including the Twist and the Mashed Potato, which inspired the title. The song featured Pickett's impersonations of veteran horror stars Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi (the latter with the line "Whatever happened to my Transylvania Twist?"). It was passed on by every major record label, but after hearing the song, Gary S. Paxton agreed to produce and engineer it; among the musicians who played on it was pianist Leon Russell. Issued on Paxton's Garpax Records, the single became a million seller, reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for two weeks before Halloween in 1962.^[3] It was styled as being by "Bobby 'Boris' Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers". The track re-entered the U.S. charts twice, in August 1970, and again in May 1973, when it reached the #10 spot. In Britain it took until October 1973 for the tune to become popular, peaking at #3 in the UK Singles Chart.^[4] For the second time, the record sold over one million copies.^[5] The tune remains a Halloween perennial on radio and on iTunes.

A Christmas-themed follow-up, "Monster's Holiday," was also released in 1962 and reached #30 in December that year and is presented here for your listening pleasure.

and here is part of the version by Lon Chaney Jr .The Lonster warbles this  Christmas  ditty with colorized clips by Rockpainterx and Count Gamula at the Classic Horror Film Board 

From Here in Atlanta - Midnight Train to Georgia Two Versions

The Pips doing what they do and Gladys Knight at the Regal Theater in Chicago .Taking us to the 70's
 From Wikipedia ( just to save you all having to look it up - your blogger cares ) It was called  Midnight Plane to Houston

The theme of the song is how romantic love can conquer differences in background. The boyfriend of the song's narrator is a failed musician who left his native Georgia to move to Los Angeles to become a "superstar, but he didn't get far". He decides to give up, and "go back to the life he once knew." Despite the fact that she's settled and secure in herself, the narrator decides to move to Georgia with him:

"And I'll be with him

On that midnight train to Georgia

I'd rather live in his world

Than live without him in mine."

The song was originally recorded by singer Cissy Houston, and released as a single a year earlier. Jim Weatherly had recorded one of his own songs, "Midnight Plane to Houston," on Jimmy Bowen's Amos Records. "It was based on a conversation I had with somebody... about taking a midnight plane to Houston," Weatherly recalls. "I wrote it as a kind of a country song. Then we sent the song to a guy named Sonny Limbo in Atlanta and he wanted to cut it on Cissy Houston... he asked if I minded if he changed the title to 'Midnight Train to Georgia.' And I said, I don't mind. Just don't change the rest of the song.'" Weatherly told Songfacts that the phone coversation was with Farrah Fawcett and he used Fawcett and his friend Lee Majors, who she'd just started dating, "as kind of like characters."^[1][2] Cissy Houston took Weatherly's song into the R&B chart. Her version can be found on the CD Midnight Train to Georgia: The Janus Years. Also, Weatherly's version began with "Nashville (not L.A.) proved too much for the man."

Weatherly's publisher forwarded the song to Gladys Knight and the Pips, who followed Houston's lead and kept the title "Midnight Train to Georgia." Their second single for Buddah, it debuted on the Hot 100 at number seventy-one and became the group's first number-one hit eight weeks later, as well as reaching number one on the soul singles chart, their fifth on that chart.^[3] On the UK Singles Chart, it peaked at number ten.

Daryl and the Oxfords - Picture In My Wallet"

Who Remembers the Tokens playing in Louisville ? Email me or send comments please ?

The Tokens and the relationship to Daryl and The Oxfords
From Wikipedia
The group was formed in 1955 at Brooklyn's Abraham Lincoln High School, and was known as the Linc-Tones. Originally featuring members Neil Sedaka, Hank Medress, Eddie Rabkin, and Cynthia Zolotin, Rabkin was replaced by Jay Siegel in 1956, and the band recorded its first single, "While I Dream" that same year. In 1957 Sedaka and Zolotin left the band, leaving only Siegel and Medress, who would recruit two additional band members and record the single "Picture in my Wallet" as Darrell and  the Oxfords. Finally establishing its most famous name and lineup, the band become known as The Tokens in 1960 after they recruited the 13-year-old multi-instrumentalist and first tenor Mitch Margo and his baritone brother Phil Margo, plus guitarist Joe Venneri.
In early 1961, the Tokens released a single for Warwick Records entitled "Tonight I Fell In Love," which went to #15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and earned them an opportunity to appear on American Bandstand. The popularity that the band garnered as a result of this performance brought them new recording opportunities, culminating in their cover of Solomon Linda's "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" for the RCA Victor. It rose to #1 on the Billboard chart, where it remained for three weeks. Both "Tonight I Fell in Love" and "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" sold over one million copies, and were awarded gold discs.^[1]