Exactly 66 years ago, a new colored people were discovered...
Who are the Purple People and what do they eat?
Let’s rewind our clock to May 21, 1958. An odd novelty song was on its way to change the life of one artist, Sheb Wooley—who composed the song within an hour, based on a joke from a kid!
It starts like this-
Well, I saw the thing comin' out of the sky
It had a-one long horn and one big eye. (Ooh!)
I commenced to shakin' and I said, "Ooh-eee!
It looks like a purple people eater to me!"
It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater
(One-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater)
A one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater
Sure looks strange to me (One eye?)
Well, he came down to earth and he lit in a tree
I said, "Mr. Purple People Eater, don't eat me!"
I heard him say in a voice so gruff:
"I wouldn't eat you 'cause you're so tough."
Seems like an elementary-grade poem, right?
Back then, the not-so-secret formulae for a novelty song to go viral were witty lyrics, an upbeat jazzy chord progression, and rhyme. (Mind you, the emergence of rap was still a decade away.)
The track quickly rose to prominence in major English-speaking regions and even imported to countries like Japan and China. Through the power of radio, It reached across the globe to every English listener. Even MGM (the record label) was shocked to see the chart-topping trend of this peculiar song. But even they had no idea about the cultural mark it would impress. The highlight was not the hillbilly beats or vocal heights, but the intuitive ambiguities.
As the name suggests, a novelty song is based on new and unusual concepts. Sarcastic undertones, dark/light humor, gimmicky parodical intonations, etc. are abundant in a novelty playlist.
Now, you are probably wondering what is so special about this song. Go ahead, give it a try…
For starters, it may sound like the usual Old-American-TV-Song. Notice the high-pitched, squeaky voice of the alien. Also called the Chipmunk’s voice, you get this sound when speeding up the tape of a normal voice. It was invented around the same year, and Wooley was the third person to incorporate this technique—a masterstroke to create a voice from the other world. It was amusingly creepy and unexpected at the same time.
While the eerie sound certainly turned some heads, what it said left them guessing.
The conversations started with the name—The Purple People Eater. An average listener would naturally assume from the chorus (one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater), that the creature was purple. However, the same couldn’t be confirmed after the next verse. It may be interpreted as Purple-people Eater—someone who consumes purple folks. Are they like red, yellow, black, or brown folks?
It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater
One-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater
One-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater
Sure looks strange to me (One horn?)
I said, "Mr. Purple People Eater, what's your line?"
He said, "Eatin' purple people and it sure is fine
But that's not the reason that I came to land
I wanna get a job in a rock and roll band."
It should be noted that, on release, people had no idea about the aesthetics of the alien. Radio DJs even asked their listeners to submit their drawings on how they perceived the otherworldly being. Hundreds of imaginative interpretations were born. The song hailed the charts for six weeks straight, and on July 27, 1958, Wooley performed it on The Ed Sullivan Show. And sure enough, he was accompanied by the other half of the duet. Not in color though, (‘cuz 1950s).
Even now, the lyrics may seem dicey to someone unfamiliar with its past.
The narrator breaks no sweat in expressing the strange appearance of the creature, throughout the song. The alien initially doesn't want to eat the narrator as it deems him so tough. The next part clears his doubts about eating purple people. Now this begs the question—is the narrator too tough to fight, eat, chew, or digest? Is it because the narrator is white, or not purple?
And that’s just scratching the surface. Interestingly, the narrator proclaims the alien is a people-eater on his first sighting. His opening sentence is a plain request to spare his life. The explanation we have for such a reaction is that the creature is someone unidentified. An “it”. Consequently, it reveals his purpose of coming to the land to become a part of a rock ‘n roll band.
Well bless my soul, rock and roll, flyin' purple people eater
Pigeon-toed, undergrowed, flyin' purple people eater
(We wear short shorts)
Friendly little people eater
What a sight to see! (Oooh!)
And then he swung from the tree and he lit on the ground
He started to rock, really rockin' around
It was a crazy ditty with a swingin' tune
Sing a bop bap aboopa lappa loom bam boom
Well bless my soul, rock and roll, flyin' purple people eater
Pigeon-toed, undergrowed, flyin' purple people eater
"I like short shorts"
Flyin' little people eater
What a sight to see! (Purple People?)
And then he went on his way, and then what do ya know
I saw him last night on a TV show
He was blowing it out, a'really knockin' em dead
Playin' rock and roll music through the horn in his head
Okay, Rock ‘n Roll. That makes things clear. After all, everybody wanted rock ‘n roll in the 50s. That’s a sigh of relief for the narrator, too. But it doesn’t change the narrator’s preconceived notions as he marvels at more aesthetic details. Right to the end, the alien plays its horn like an instrument. It truly is a sight in the video version.
The love for rock ‘n roll (or music) is probably the only common thing between the narrator, the alien, and the listeners. It even references a couple of songs from the 50s—the start of the Golden Age of Rock ‘n Roll.
The wide acclaim and reception of the song was unprecedented at the time. Although, the theme may have deep roots in tangential factors that may have proven to be the tipping point of its success. After WWII, the US began to invest heavily in aeronautics to stay at the top of the arms race. The space race and the growing curiosity about life beyond Earth largely influenced the late 50s and 60s. With the launch of USSR Sputnik-1 in 1957, the boundaries of the earth shrank. Multiple unexplained phenomena and unidentified flying objects rumors/reports began sprouting on American soil.
Meanwhile, the literature was having its creative peak. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, the Foundation series by Issac Asimov, The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein, More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon, etc. were the talk of the town that ruled the 50s. This wave of newfound curiosity even breathed life into a perished author, whose work would directly inspire the creation of the Purple People Eater—H.P Lovecraft. Stories with aliens, high-science/fantasy, and mythological inspirations surrounded the American comic space. The golden-age stories like Superman had already set interplanetary foundations in popular media. More stories set in space, with intergalactic species covering the entire arcs, were inevitable. The Aliens were already in the hearts and minds.
Nowadays, the Purple People song, in many ways, is considered aggressive towards non-human species. It reflects the human tendency to put fear and prejudices toward the concepts we do not understand. The underlying racial bias in the lyrics is even more prominent today. People with disabilities and specific birth defects like dwarfism and port wine stain are often subjected to toxicity due to the collective psychosis left behind by the pop icons of the old.
The song became the staple for 20th-century kids with various covers and renditions by artists. A movie by the same name was released by Disney in 1988 and instantly became a cult classic. Since then, versions of the song have been featured in TV and films, (at least once a decade) under the umbrella of the unknown, unexpected, alien, fear, race, prejudice, etc.
1989’s Parents,
1997’s Contact,
2009’s Monsters vs. Aliens,
2015’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,
2022’s Nope,
2024’s X-Men ‘97.
Very, very interesting.
Very interesting!