"Dinner With Drac": Philly, Famous Phantoms and Freak Flags

“Dinner With Drac, Parts 1 & 2,” John Zacherle (“The Cool Ghoul”), Cameo 7”, 1958
(Written by Harry Land & Jon Sheldon; produced by Bernie Lowe; published by Mayland Music)

(Dave Appell - guitar; Joe “Macho” Mack - bass; Joe Sher - drums; Dan Dailey - saxophone)

The March 17, 1958, issue of Billboard reported Territorial Best Sellers for Survey Week Ending March 8, hopscotching from Boston to Los Angeles, “East Texas” to “Northern New York State,” tracking music sales across the country. Atop the Philadelphia list, besting such soon-to-be classics as the Silhouettes’ “Get a Job,” Danny and the Juniors’ “Rock and Roll Is Here To Stay,” and Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen,” sat an unlikely, but worthy, champ: “Dinner With Drac,” performed by the 39-year-old host of the Philadelphia’s WCAU-TV horror movie program The Million Dollar Movie Presents Shock Theater John Zacherle. By month’s end, the song was in the upper echelon of the Billboard music charts. How has an unhinged, gruesome novelty rocker maintained its beloved cult status over the last sixty years?

Zacherle (1918-2016) was a native-born Philadelphian who got involved in television after his service in WWII, eventually playing an undertaker on WCAU’s live local Western program, Action in the Afternoon. The show rode off into the sunset in 1954, a year after its debut, but station leadership remembered Zacherle’s role on the show, and after acquiring broadcast rights to Universal’s vast library of horror films, invited him to host Shock Theater; fortunately, he had kept the undertaker’s coat. Shock Theater debuted at 11:25 p.m. on Monday, October 7, 1957, with a screening of the 1931 classic Frankenstein. Zacherle’s character -- a ghoul named Roland who lived in a crypt with his unseen, coffin-bound wife (“My Dear”), also-unseen son (“Gasport”, who was kept in a wall-mounted burlap sack) and assistant, Igor -- performed “experiments” and commented on the film’s action before and after commercial breaks and was a big hit with teens and college students in the Philadelphia area.

The seeds of the song -- Zacherle theatrically reciting four comic-spooky limericks and some asides over a frenzied surf guitar and saxophone attack, a deathless delight -- were planted when Cameo-Parkway Records senior partner/co-founder Bernie Lowe, watching TV with his daughter, caught Zacherle on his show reciting a ghoulish limerick while holding a basket filled with a prop severed head covered in chocolate syrup (hey, early TV stations had to fill the broadcast time somehow). Lowe called Zacherle, suggesting he record several new poems, penned by Harry Land and Jon Sheldon (the nom de plume of Cameo-Parkway’s other co-founder Kal Mann), while backed by the Cameo-Parkway house band, Dave Appell and the Applejacks. Zacherle, who had never been in a recording studio, agreed and cut “Igor” and “Dinner With Drac” (Cameo C130A & C130B, respectively), each basically the same tune, albeit with different sets of limericks. Cameo released it as a single in January 1958, with the four-piece Applejacks -- guitarist Appell; bassist Joe “Macho” Mack; drummer Joe Sher; and saxophonist Dan Dailey (nee Frederick Nuzzolillo) -- providing the musical thrills.

Lowe, 45 in hand, was eager to cash in on the host’s popularity, fully aware that getting Zacherle on American Bandstand was a mainline to the region’s teenage record-buyers. The show, which had originated on Philadelphia’s WFIL-TV in 1952, made the national jump to ABC in August 1957, and Cameo benefitted enormously from its geographic proximity to the tastemaking program. (Host Dick Clark was rumored to be a silent partner in Cameo-Parkway.) Clark started his radio career in Philadelphia around the same time Zacherle joined WCAU-TV, so the two knew each other professionally: Clark reportedly gave Zacherle the nickname “The Cool Ghoul,” which would appear on “Dinner With Drac”’s orange 45 label, and Zacherle would later occasionally fill in for Clark on American Bandstand’s touring “Caravan of Stars” shows in the 1960s. Still, the clean-cut host, fearful of advertiser backlash, blanched at the macabre lyrical content of both songs, vetoing “Igor” outright, but leaving the door open for a bowdlerized version of “Dinner” to make it to broadcast.

Lowe, knowing the song would stall without a boost from Bandstand, hustled Zacherle back into the studio for a “clean” version, which passed muster with Clark. This version would ultimately become “Dinner With Drac, Pt. 2” (Cameo C130C) on new pressings of the single, beginning in February 1958, with the original “Dinner With Drac” (now appended with “Pt. 1”, and still Cameo C130B) on the a-side. (The cast-aside “Igor” would later resurface as a bonus track on the 2010 reissue of Zacherle’s Monster Mash/Scary Tales albums.)  Thus blessed, Zacherle appeared on the show in early March 1958 -- his surreal performance consisted of him sitting at a table reciting the song surrounded by monster-outfit-clad dancers who acted out the lyrics -- and “Dinner With Drac” entered the Billboard Hot 100 on March 10, 1958, at #80, a mere 235 days before Halloween of that year. By the end of March, the song -- already a regional hit as attested by the Territorial Best Sellers chart -- was firmly nestled in the national top ten, peaking at #6; it would finally drop off the chart in early June, completing a remarkable 13-week run.

While palm-greasing between Cameo-Parkway and American Bandstand no doubt played a role in “Dinner With Drac”’s chart success, there’s no denying the song’s thrilling mix of horror, comedy, and rock ‘n’ roll abandon still brings joy to listeners nearly six decades later. It’s only real competitor is, of course, Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s 1962 evergreen “Monster Mash,” and that song lacks the frisson of both Dave Appell’s switchblade guitar and (especially) Dan Dailey’s raucous, primal, absolutely wailing sax work. As great as the band is -- and they are cooking -- it’s Land and Mann’s verses and Zacherle’s scary/funny/campy performance that truly makes “Dinner With Drac” an all-timer. 

To read either version of “Dinner With Drac” now is to immediately realize that Land and Mann wisely eschewed narrative coherence in favor of relying on Zacherle’s theatricality to maximize macabre kicks. In “Part 1,” the unnamed narrator’s initial perturbation upon learning that he is “the main course” at the dinner is never directly again addressed (though see below); Perkins the vampiric waitress and Igor are mentioned as being present at the dinner in a service capacity (as waitress and table-setter, respectively, though Perkins avails herself of more than her share of pickles), but the meal’s third guest is never identified (the listener?); the third limerick abandons the dining table altogether to comment on Dracula’s daughter’s blood-filled swimming pool; the fourth limerick finds our narrator enjoying a dessert of ketchup-covered batwing confetti with mummy veins -- perhaps Drac bit the narrator’s neck during a saxophone freakout, indeed making him the main course, and he joined the ranks of the undead? Or maybe he’s just an open-minded foodie.

Original version: “Dinner With Drac, Part 1” (Cameo, C130B)

American Bandstand version: “Dinner With Drac, Part 2” (Cameo, C130C)

A dinner was served for three At Dracula's house by the sea The hors d'oeurves were fine But I choked on my wine When I learned that the main course was me!

A dinner was served for three At Dracula's house by the sea The wolfman was there The monster was there And the only normal person - hahahahaha! - was me!

The waitress, a vampire named Perkins Was so very fond of small gherkins While she served the tea, she ate 43 Which pickled her internal workins!

The waitress, a vampire named Perkins Was so very fond of small gherkins While she served the tea, she ate 43 Which pickled her internal workins!

What a swimmer is Dracula's daughter! But her pool looks more red than it oughter The blood stains the boat But it's easy to float 'Cause blood is much thicker than water!

What a swimmer is Dracula's daughter! But they use her pool less than they oughter When her guests dive in there They just disappear ‘Cause she uses acid, not water!

For dessert, there was batwing confetti And the veins of a mummy named Betty I first frowned upon it But with ketchup on it It tasted very much like spaghetti!

For dessert, there was cardboard confetti And broomstraws from a witch named Betty I first frowned upon it But with ketchup on it It tasted very much like spaghetti!

“Part 2” is tamer, and it suffers for the scrubbing. The song’s title notwithstanding, in the first verse, Dracula no longer seems to be in attendance at the dinner party being held at his house, with the Wolfman, the “Monster” and the narrator totaling three. Meanwhile, the conceptual engine that drove “Part 1” (even if it was quickly abandoned) -- the narrator’s dismay upon learning “that the main course was me!” -- has been excised, though the maniacal laugh after “normal person” is a nice, subtle touch. Perkins’ harmless, bloodless, briny story remains intact in the second verse, while the third limerick swaps out the blood for acid, as though dissolved bodies were somehow less ghastly than a pool full of blood (it also suggests that Dracula’s daughter can safely swim in acid). That blood-for-acid swap is a push, but it truly is a shame to lose the “blood is much thicker than water” joke. As for the closing verse, questions of edibility aside, Betty the Witch’s broomstraws may actually be a lyrical upgrade over Betty the Mummy’s veins, but “cardboard confetti” is horrific for all the wrong reasons. Zacherle’s performance in “Part 1” is freer, more confident, and funnier, to boot; it’s a superior performance in every way. But Bandstand viewers outside of Philadelphia whose exposure to the song was “Part 2” clamored to hear that version again; hence its inclusion on the second pressing of the single.

As mentioned earlier, this re-pressing relegated “Igor” to the dustbin of history, at least until its inclusion on the Monster Mash/Scary Tales reissue. One quick read of its lyrics -- bile-soaked hair! self-mutilating werewolves! suicide! and with only a fraction of the wit that animates “Dinner With Drac”-- and it is easy to understand why Dick Clark had no intention of letting the song on his airwaves:

There once was a girl named Irene
Whose hair was a bright shade of green
When asked how she dyed it
She simply confided,
"I just use the juice from my spleen!"

A werewolf once tore his own hide
To find out just what was inside
He ripped and he tore
Till his hands ran with gore
But before he found out... he died

Igor, Igor! 
!
There was an old monster from Clure
Whose wife was as thin as a skewer
Last night, sad to say
She at last passed away
Through the bars of a drain down the sewer

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Igor, did you water the brains today, Igor? Mwhahahaha!

A cat, in despondency, sighed
And resolved to commit suicide
He passed under the wheels
Of eight automobiles
And after the ninth one, he died!

A spooky dinner party at Dracula’s house sounds downright quaint by comparison, no?

While Zacherle never replicated his Billboard chart success, he remained active in the music world, releasing a handful of singles and three albums in the early 1960s -- Spook Along With Zacherley (Elektra, 1960) (he picked up the surname-ending “y” to quell pronunciation questions), Monster Mash and Scary Tales (Cameo, 1962 and 1963, respectively) -- before taking some radio disc jockey gigs in the New York City area (WNEW and WPLJ) in the late ‘60s that carried him through the next decade. True Zacherle-on-record completists will also need to seek out the Grateful Dead’s Dick’s Picks, Volume 4 release, which features Zacherle introducing the band before their February 14, 1970 performance at Fillmore East, and the 1981 curio The First Family Rides Again, a comedy album providing a Reagan-era update to the 1962 Kennedy satire The First Family, and starring (among others) Rich Little, Michael Richards, Herve Villechaize, Vaughn Meader and Larry Miller -- though Zacherle himself appears on only one track (the 90-second long “Integration"). Late in life, he released two final albums, 1995's Dead Man's Ball and (at the age of 87!) 2005’s Interment for Two, both of which contain lots of vintage Zacherle audio clips.

Providing through lines between two thoroughly disparate times as 1958 and 2017 America is a heavy lift for a 3-minute vampire-themed novelty single, but “Dinner With Drac” is up to the task. In 1954, EC Comics publisher William Gaines was unsuccessfully defending horror comics in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. A mere four years later, the song’s ascension to #6 on the Billboard charts was an early victory in the culture wars for teens, geeks and freak-flag flyers, all of whom saw a kindred spirit in Zacherle. This group codified the horror aesthetic through the 1960s -- think The Munsters, Ed Roth’s Rat Fink and “monster hot rod” art, Pickett’s “Monster Mash.” Sci-fi/fantasy/horror tales still drive pop culture here in the 21st century: Marvel movies, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter. John Zacherle was on the front lines of this revolution.

This would be explored to greater effect in Zacherle’s TV hosting duties (which often found the man spliced into the movie he was hosting, a move that everyone from MST3K to Bad Lip Reading is indebted to), but “Dinner With Drac” is also a progenitor of remix culture. After all, what else would you call a ‘50s surf/R&B song about a character popularized in an 1897 book, using a lyrical form that dates back to 18th century England, but a remix - performed by a man whose job it was to repackage horror movies in a funny way for an increasingly hip television audience on the precipice of cultural irony, no less?

This examination of “Dinner With Drac” and Zacherle’s musical recordings is but a fraction of his cultural output -- establishing the template for horror movie hosts, chiefly, but also his radio career, movie and radio appearances, two literary horror anthologies he edited, countless horror/sci-fi convention meet-and-greets, a tongue-in-cheek 1960 presidential campaign -- over his incredible 98-year life.  Not only did John Zacherle do what he loved, and had fun doing it, he brought joy to countless people and played a secret role in shaping the second half of the twentieth century.