In addition to being a MonsterKid, I also enjoy Big Band music and early jazz.  These two seemingly disparate worlds actually share common ground in a clutch of songs recorded (mostly) between the First and Second World Wars that reflected funereal and spooky themes with lurid and sometimes abjectly horrific flourishes.  Songs like Johnny Mercer and Bernie Hanighen’s ”Me and the Ghost Upstairs,” Henry Hall’s ”Here Comes the Boogeyman” (or if you really want a bad night, bend an ear to his version of “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic“), Cab Calloway’s “The Ghost of Smokey Joe” (a sequel to his more popular “Minnie the Moocher”) and Ray Noble’s “The Haunted House” were by turns charming and chilling, giving listeners the vicarious thrill of a fun house ride or a sleepless night in a wretched garret.  Walter Doyle’s eerie “Mysterious Mose” introduced music lovers to a shadowy haint who was very likely to whistle at you as you walked past a graveyard and might in fact be waiting for you beneath the stairs.  Mose turned up in the third Fleischer Brothers Betty Boop Talkartoon…

… and I suppose you could say a star was born. Mose became something of a recurring character during this time and another song soon proclaimed “Old Man Mose Is Dead.”  The author (with Zilner Randolph) of this particular ditty was none other than Louis Armstrong, who would perform this novelty number as part of his act for the next thirty years.  (You can hear a couple different versions of Armstrong’s arrangement and enjoy some excellent music scholarship here.)  Whether this was a sequel or a prequel to “Mysterious Mose” remains unclear.  This tune was widely covered by such acts as Nat Gonella and His Georgians, Wingy Manone, Bunny Berigan, Bob Crosby and His Orchestra, Eddy Duchin, Ella Fitzgerald, Teresa Brewer, Connie Francis, Georgia Gibbs, The Ink Spots, The Les Humphries Trio, Louis Prima, Peggy Lee and Betty Hutton (“America’s No. 1 Jitterbug”): 

This song was so popular that Mose popped up again in an answer song that maintained “Old Man Mose Ain’t Dead” (emphasis mine).  The Nat King Cole Trio recorded this tune but here’s Betty Hutton again, contradicting herself:

Old Man Mose may not have the legs of Stagger Lee but I love the little place he holds in music and horror history.  I also love the fact that nobody seems to know whether he is or isn’t dead, which gives him a kind of pre-Freddy, pre-Jason, pre-Michael credence.  Oh boy oh boy I love this stuff.  With the Halloween season nearly upon us, I urge you to seek out some of this excellent music and give yourself a jazzy little fright!  Do track down Ray Noble and His Orchestra’s “Gonna Haunt You,” or Bing Crosby’s “I’m Gonna Get You” or any version of “St. James’ Infirmary” (about a pimp who comes to visit his favorite fancy lady in the morgue) and you’ll know what I’m screaming about.  I also wholeheartedly, tell-taledly recommend this excellent CD compilation which came out on the independent Jass Records label in 1990 and is, I think, sadly out-of-print… 

Copies are selling online for $60-$80 and I know that’s steep… but I’ve been spinning this disc annually for almost 20 years, which works out to $3 or $4 a year and that ain’t bad.

And just for the Hell of it…