Elvira Sings
Long ago, my pal Kitten Herder made me a lovely mixtape of Halloween-related music. One track was “Full Moon,” a song I didn’t recognize, and the first time I played it I thought, “Wow, that really sounds like Elvira.” And lo, it was.
Back in the 80s when Cassandra Peterson was expanding her media empire beyond television, she released several Halloween-themed albums. Most of the songs were about what you’d expect (“Monster Mash,” “Dead Man’s Party”), but she also recorded several tracks herself. They’re…fun. Peterson is an adequate singer, and she does all of the songs in-character as Elvira. Here’s a list, if you want to explore her oeuvre.
Elvira and the Vitones 3-D TV (Rhino Records, 1982) – A single. The title track is here. The flip side was “Elvira’s Theme,” which may have been the same version as this one.
Vinyl Macabre (Rhino Records, 1983) – As nearly as I can tell from various online sources, Elvira did spoken intro/outro and “end of side one”/”beginning of side two” (remember those?) pieces, but the only singing was her theme, above.
Elvira Presents Haunted Hits (Rhino Records, 1987) – Full Moon.
Elvira Presents Monster Hits (Rhino Records, 1994) – She did two songs for this one, Monsta’ Rap and Here Comes the Bride (The Bride Of Frankenstein).
Elvira Presents Revenge of the Monster Hits (Rhino Records, 1995) – There were two for this as well, Haunted House and Zombie Stomp.
After this there was a hiatus of several years, then in 2008 she performed on a track called “Zombie Killer” for the band Leslie and the Ly’s. It was released as a single, but here’s the music video:
In 2010 she released Elvira’s Gravest Hits (Shout! Factory), which collected all of the songs listed above plus two new ones, Here I Am and “Le Music Hall,” which seems to be the song that she sings in Elvira’s Haunted Hills.
And she’s still chugging along. In 2014 she released another single (as a purple vinyl 7″), 2 Big Pumpkins. Both the title track and the B side “13 Nights of Halloween” were written by the B-52s’ Fred Schneider. The latter doesn’t seem to be available on YouTube, but if you can’t live without hearing it, it’s available on iTunes.
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