The Chipmunks: From Rags to Riches

...bought a tape recorder capable of speeding up voices with his last $200. He quickly knocked out a Christmas demo titled "The Chipmunk Song"...

Somewhere in between those two sentences there should probably have been a mention of Bagdasarian's number one hit single "Witch Doctor."

There is such mention at the link. What's missing from the post is an elipsis...

The original TV cartoon was good. Then they stunk up the 'munks with the cutesy 80s version. And made them even worse with the recent CGI movies.

That's a pretty big missing ellipsis considering that this edited summary makes it sound like the Chipmunks are what first made Bagdasarian into a top-selling superstar. Even the titleof this post is misleading considering that he was presumably out of the "rags" stage by the time he topped the Billboard Pop Singles Chart.

Bloggers don't have to get it right - that's what commenters are for!

What's missing from the summarized quote, for people who won't go to the link:

He bought a tape recorder with his last $200 and played around with shifting the speeds, coming up with a novelty song titled "Witch Doctor". He got the single released and two weeks later, he found himself appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show performing the song.

The success of "Witch Doctor" gave him the idea of creating characters with sped up voices, so he quickly knocked out a Christmas demo titled "The Chipmunk Song" ...

AAAAALLLLLLLLVVVVYYYYYYNNNNN!!!!!!!!

Thanks Anon, that actually got me to go an read the source article. And is a much more dramatic (and accurate) pullquote from the source.

(I know the web isn't journalism, but would an ellipsis kill you?)

I'm kinda waiting for the VH1 "Behind the Music - Alvin & the Chipmunks". Imagine, chipmunks with issues...

Huh, I had no idea the names Alvin, Simon and Theodore were from real people. Fun story!

Also, I grew up with the "cutesy 80s version" and liked them pretty well thankyouverymuch. :P The CGI horrors are an abomination, though.

Although I confess I love the title "the squeakwel." heheheheh.

Also, quitcherbiatchin about the ellipsis, folks! its still a neat story. :)

When I was a kid my dad scored a bunch of crappy record players from the local library. They were designed for the blind, and had braille around the controls, and incredibly low speeds (not only 16rpm, but 8rpm!), and me and my brother used to get a kick out of listening to the Chipmunks (and knock-off "Crickets") records at 16 rpm-- imagine 3 regular sounding guys singing really lugubriously. Probably the best ones were the ones of pop songs like "Chipmunk Punk", where they did Billy Joel and Queen songs (wait. . . that's "punk"?) The other great thing about speeding up voices is that if you are a little off beat or flat or sharp it becomes LESS flat or sharp and tighter when sped up (so listen to those Grateful Dead and Sonic Youth LPs at 45rpm to correct for sloppy beats and flat singing).

I actually started to make a mix-cd recently of "Chipmunks chopped and screwed where I slow all of the songs down to regular speed, unfortunately it means a 3 minute song is now 6 minutes long, so I may to do some editing.

(Also, at 8rpm pretty much any old 78rpm acetate becomes ambient music).

That's a great and inspiring story. Somehow, I always thought of Alvin and his gang as something cooked up while I was a kid; now I discover that they are three years older than I am! That's a relief, somehow.

I had a copy of the Chipmunks LP when I was a kid. It was red vinyl.

My father-in-law was named Alvin. He hated the Chipmunks. By an odd coincidence, my father's name was also Alvin, but I never asked him what he thought of them.