PLEDGE WEEK: “The Flying Saucer” by Buchanan and Goodman

This is not a proper episode of the podcast.

Rather, this is something else.

I've decided to hold a pledge week to try to get a few more subscribers to my Patreon.

So, every day this week, I'll be putting one of the backer-only episodes I've done over the past year up on the main podcast feed, so people can hear what it is you get if you sign up for the Patreon with this little introductory piece before them.

If you're already a backer, you will already have this episode, so you can skip this and everything else labelled Pledge Week.

I do one of these every week for my backers, and backers even at the lowest levels get them.

If you sign up for a dollar a month, you get each new one as it comes out, and access to all the old ones.

There are fifty nine of them up so far, as well as a few other things like the monthly Q and A's I've been doing for backers.

I'm only making seven of these available on the public feed, so there's a lot still there for you to listen to.

If this works well, I might do another one next year, where there'll be another 50-odd episodes to choose from.

None of this is meant to put any pressure on anyone who can't afford it to back the podcast.

The podcast will always remain free to listen to, and I hope it will remain ad-free as well.

I know times are especially tough right now, and many of you literally can't afford the money you're already spending, let alone paying any more out.

I only want backers who can spare the money.

But if you can afford it, and if you like like these bonus episodes enough, then go to patreon.com/slash Andrew Hickey, that's spelled H-I-C-K-E-Y, or follow the link in the show notes and sign up, and you'll get one of these the same day as every new episode.

If you can't, well, enjoy this extra free bonus, and don't worry about it.

Today we're going to talk about a record that wasn't a rock and roll record at all.

In fact, it was a novelty record and regarded as such.

But it was a record that would have a huge impact on the whole history of the record industry in ways you really wouldn't expect from a silly little track.

Today, we're going to talk about the Flying Saucer.

The Flying Saucer is an extremely early example of what would come to be called sampling.

It's a novelty record that, in most ways, is no different from the kind of things Stan Freeberg was doing at the time with records like St.

George and the Dragonet.

The legend you are about to hear is true.

Only the needle should be changed to protect the record.

This is the countryside.

My name is St.

George.

I'm a knight.

Saturday, July 10th, 805pm.

I was working out of the castle on the night watch when a call came in from the chief.

A dragon had been devouring maidens.

Before video, and before even widespread adoption of TV, there was a large market for audio comedy.

And we'll see, as the series goes on, how audio engineering techniques developed for comedy would be repurposed for use in rock and roll music.

For comedy records, you needed to be able to make strange and unusual sounds.

And that kind of thing would come in useful when trying to develop a sound that would catch the ear of young people.

The track we're talking about today, The Flying Saucer, was put together by the songwriting and production team Bill Buchanan and Dickie Goodman.

Buchanan was a songwriter who specialised in comedy songs.

For example, he wrote several albums worth of material for the Three Stooges.

Hey, fellas, let's sing a song.

Okay, okay, Molten.

Ready?

One, two, three.

We're coming to your house.

We're coming to your house.

To have a good time.

To have a good time.

Woo!

You some laughter.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

And I use two.

Three, four, five, six, seven.

We know you can count.

No, mommy won't like us.

No, mommy won't like us.

And neither will Dan either.

Goodman, meanwhile, was a producer, and it seems like he only had one idea.

That idea was something that he called break-ins, but would later be better known as sampling or mash-ups.

In a break-in recording, there would be a spoken word narrative, but bits of other people's records would interrupt the narrative, usually acting as punchlines to a set-up.

The Flying Saucer was the first and most successful of these.

Flying saucers were very much in the Zeitgeist in the early 50s.

The term had come to prominence in 1947 as a result of the famous Roswell incident, and for the next few years, a time of increasing paranoia in the US, as the USSR had developed their own nuclear bombs, and there was a real possibility that the world might be rendered unfit for human habitation at any moment.

A lot of the paranoia was filtered into belief that the world was being watched over by malevolent aliens.

The flying saucer tapped into that, and into the other new craze that was sweeping the nation, rock and roll, and merged the two.

It took the format of Orson Welles' famous radio version of War of the Worlds, and parodied it, first having a DJ interrupt the record he was playing, open up that door by Nappy Brown, to announce that a flying saucer had landed, and then having an on-the-spot reporter interview witnesses and the aliens themselves, and having all the dialogue from those witnesses be excerpts of current hits, including songs by Chuck Berry, Elvis, Little Richard, Frankie Lyman, Carl Perkins, and Nappy Brown's Don't Be Angry.

And now, would you repeat that in English?

Don't want the world to have

a home.

I want you to

came from.

Don't they be angry

Nothing like this had ever been done before.

There had apparently been a single other record decades earlier that had included samples of other records, but that had been as part of a comedy sketch with people turning the dial of the radio and hearing different songs.

It had been diegetic music that they were listening to.

This was something else, and something for which the music industry wasn't prepared.

Buchanan and Goodman tried to get several record labels to put it out, but had no success, and eventually took the tape directly to WINS Radio, where several DJs, including Alan Freed, played it, and it got an immediate response from the audience.

The next day, they took the recording to George Goldner, who you may remember from the episode on Why Do Fools Fall in Love, as having a near-infallible ear for a hit record.

He agreed to put it out, and set up a new label, Universe, for Buchanan and Goodman's record.

But after they pressed up a few thousand records, he discovered there already was a universe records.

Rather than waste the money, Goldner, Buchanan, Goodman, and a few of Goldner's employees spent all night drawing the letter L at the beginning of Universe, changing it to Luniverse.

The track became a massive hit, but also a massive legal headache.

The record company cut deals with the licensing agencies responsible for the song sampled, which meant that they ended up paying a massive 17 cents in songwriting royalties per eighty nine cent record sold.

By comparison, it was not unknown for songwriting royalties to be as low as a cent a record.

And that should have been enough to cover them, at a time when there were no federal copyrights on sound recordings, but they were sued nonetheless by Imperial Records, Chess Records, and artists Fats Domino and Smiley Lewis.

The lawsuit was ruled in Buchanan and Goodman's favour, as the record was clearly parody by the standards of 1950s copyright law, and they celebrated with a follow-up single, Buchanan and Goodman on Trial, which followed the same formula as The Flying Saucer and was a minor hit.

Be on the lookout for Buchanan and Goodman, last seen wearing black damn trousers and motorcycle boots.

Let's get out of here.

Are you Buchanan and Goodman?

Yes, we are.

Hello, hello, Markin!

Well, this is a summons.

You're under arrest.

This is Dom Cameron Cameron in court.

Brother, the trial of Buchanan and Goodman is now in session.

Is the district attorney ready?

I'm ready.

The two men made one further record before Buchanan went on his way.

But Goodman kept making records under the Buchanan and Goodman name, with records like Flying Saucer Goes West, Flying Saucer III, and Frankenstein of 59.

Goodman kept doing this for decades, churning out supposed novelty records long after the novelty had well and truly worn off, and usually trying to cash in on some hit film, with records like Superfly Meets Shaft or Kong, a parody of the King Kong remake.

One time, amazingly enough, he did manage to get to number four with one of these, Mr.

Jaws.

Just arriving is oceanographer Matt Hooper.

Sir, if someone is attacked by a shark, what should they do?

We are going aboard the fishing boat of Captain Quint.

Captain, will you be able to catch this giant shark?

I will,

I will.

Thank you, Captain.

Captain, Captain, Captain, when you catch one of these sharks, what do you feel like?

Black Rhinestone Cowboy.

We've just sighted the shark again.

The follow-up, Mrs.

Jaws, based on Jaws 2, didn't do so well, and Mr.

Jaws would be Goodman's last big hit.

He died in 1989.

Next week, we'll look at the only group other than Buchanan and Goodman ever to release a record on Luniverse.