Songfacts®:

• This song is based on the tales told in two #1 novelty hits of 1958: "The Purple People Eater" by Sheb Wooley and "Witch Doctor" by David Seville, the voice of The Chipmunks. It finds the Purple People Eater and the Witch Doctor joining forces to form a very unusual band, with the People Eater playing his horn (the one coming out of his head) and the Chipmunks adding their distinctive high-pitched vocals.
  
  Novelty songs were huge in 1958, so much so that mashups of them were also charting. "The Purple People Eater Meets The Witch Doctor" landed at #47.
• The song was first released by The Big Bopper, who used it as the B-side of his hit single "Chantilly Lace." He wrote the song with Gordon Ritter.
  
  Joe South, just 18 at the time, covered it a short time later and released it as his first single. His rollicking version was the hit.
  
  By this time, South had built his own pirate radio station and was learning how to write and produce songs. Instead of pursuing a solo career, he focused on writing songs for others and doing session work as a guitarist - played on the 1962 hit "Sheila" by Tommy Roe and on Bob Dylan's 1966 album Blonde On Blonde. He released his first album in 1968 (Introspect), which includes the hit "Games People Play," but he had much bigger hits as a writer, including "(I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden" by Lynn Anderson and "Down In The Boondocks" by Billy Joe Royal.