Dinner With Drac

Album: Halloween Tales (1958)
Charted: 6
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Songfacts®:

  • In the '50s and '60s, John Zacherle served as the host on TV stations in Philadelphia and New York City when they would run horror movies - his program was called Shock Theater. He developed a spooky persona, and delivered this song in the spoken word style he used on television. The song finds Zacherle having dinner with the famous vampire Count Dracula, where he finds out that Dracula plans to eat him. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Bertrand - Paris, France
  • Zacherle had a recording deal with the Philadelphia record label Cameo. On this track, he was backed by Cameo's house band, Dave Appell And The Applejacks.
  • Dick Clark played this on his American Bandstand TV show, but made Zacherle record a less violent version. When audiences demanded the Bandstand version, Cameo released the single with the original listed as "Dinner With Drac, Part 1" and the toned-down alternate version as "Part 2."
  • Zacherle never had another hit. His follow-up song was "Lunch with Mother Goose," and it laid an egg.

Comments: 3

  • Barry from Sauquoit, NyOn March 4th 1958, John 'The Cool Ghoul' Zacherle entered Billboard's Top 100 chart; eventually it peaked at #6 and spent 13 weeks on the Top 100...
    Mr. Zacherle will celebrate his 96th birthday this coming September 26th (2014).
  • Richard Benjamin from Dania Beach, FlThe Children or The Night from Long island, NY recorded this song in two versions: One on the LP "Dinner With Drac" on Pip records, and a different version as Monsters on H&L Records.
  • Lester from New York City, NySaw a Halloween Night Mott the Hoople concert at Radio City Music Hall in the mid-'70s (the Ariel Bender version of Mott), and Zacherle was on stage, rising from his coffin, to introduce the group.
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