The Nutty Squirrels: Salt Peanuts

Here is a funny song by the extravagant jazz band The Nutty Squirrels.
The story of the Nutty Squirrels began when jazzman Don Elliott and TV composer Alexander "Sascha" Burland (who wrote the original theme for TV's "What's My Line?"), amused by the Chipmunks concept (the success of the musical "Alvin and the Chipmunks" in the late 1950's spawned numerous imitation recording groups, including the Grasshoppers and the Nutty Squirrels), joined together to record an album in the guise of a hip group of Chipmunk sound-alike rodents. Like Ross Bagdasarian (aka David Seville), they recorded their normal singing voices at 16 RPM, then played them back at 33-1/3 RPM -- giving that unique Chipmunk-sound to the hip scat-singing style that Elliott had perfected during his solo work in the early 1950's. Backing Elliott and Burland's altered vocals were some of the best New York session men of the late 1950s, including Cannonball Adderley on sax, Bobby Jaspar on flute, and Sam Most on clarinet. The Nutty Squirrels were quickly signed by the new Hanover-Signature label, owned in part by comedian Steve Allen and producer Bob Thiele. Unfortunately the masters to the album were lost in transit when Allen moved to Los Angeles in the 1960's. A cut from that first album, "Uh-Oh Part 2", made it to number 14 in the Hit Parade for the week of December 28, 1959, almost exactly one year after "The Chipmunk Song" made the same list.
The Nutty Squirrels are enjoying a renewed interest of late, thanks to the inclusion of their "Salt Peanuts" song in the soundtrack of the animated feature, "The Iron Giant", and of another song in the soundtrack of a 1998 John Waters movie.
Enjoy the frenesy of those Chip'n Dale!

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Nutty
• Squirrels

[MrOctalkradio]

love to hear more! How many kids had the Nutty Squirrel himself in their house jammin'? Any chance you'd ever want to part with that autographed record?

[MrOctalkradio]

love to hear more! How many kids had the Nutty Squirrel himself in their house jammin'? Any chance you'd ever want to part with that autographed record?

[mtnthai]

my dad was a jazz musician back then and don would come to our house to jam with him some times. i was about 5 or 6 and i would stuff my head under a pillow because i just wasn't into it. in retrospect i can see how foolish that was.

we still have an autographed copy of the nutty squirrels "bird watching" album.

[GassyMaskz]

@woodrailking sopranissimo.....

[woodrailking]

Is that alto or soprano?

[mcgrawtim123]

Made my day! Thank you.

[Crazybutnice91]

LMAO ...5* !!!

[FlamingRuby]

Well, thanks! (I think)

I love Chip n' Dale too

[RoboScreech]

ha ha!

flaming ruby!

the character!

what a character!

you are my favorite character!

[FlamingRuby]

It looks like Chip n' Dale are singing at one point!