- UFO Tunes Trivia: During the last days of WWII the U.S. Army captured a lot of Nazi V2 rockes & televised launching them beginning in 1947. Soon after, Kenneth Arnold saw a group of nine high-speed objects near ...
- ... Mount Rainier in Washington state that he fancied to be "flying saucers" because of their shape and flight characteristics.
- UFO Tunes Trivia: Then on July 8, 1947, Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) public information officer Walter Haut issued a press release stating that personnel from the field's 509th Operations Group had recovered a "flying disc", which had crashed on a ranch near Roswell. (Roswell Daily Record, Roswell, New Mexico)
- UFO Tunes Trivia: Soon after, rumors circulated that army personell had also retrieved 4 small "humnaoids" from the site. "Little Green Men"?
- UFO Tunes Trivia: That did it! America went space-age crazy! Automobiles had to have tale-fins like the V2s. Your favorite coffee shop or restaurand mimicked the shape of an other-world craft ready for take off, ...
- ... and appliances of all types were designed to look like devices ripped from the control panel of a flying disc. Even a whole style of architecture (think Googie, or the Jetsons) developed to pay homage to the new Spage Age.
- UFO Tunes Trivia: The term "Googie" comes from a now-defunct cafe in West Hollywood, California designed by John Lautner, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, opened in 1949. Googie architecture featured upswept roofs, curvaceous, geometric shapes, and bold use of glass, steel and neon. ...
- Googie was also characterized by Space Age designs symbolic of motion, such as boomerangs, flying saucers, diagrammatic atoms and parabolas.These stylistic conventions represented American society`s fascination with Space Age themes and marketing emphasis on futuristic designs.
- UFO Tunes Trivia: Soon Googie swept the nation, informing the design of restaurants, gasoline filling stations, motels, laundromats, movie theaters, and even one of the first McDonalds drive-in restaurants.
- UFO Tunes Trivia: Music was not immune from the influence of the Space-Age. The earliest example of a space-age inspired novelty song was The MelloTones` "Flying Saucers (1950)".
- UFO Tunes Trivia: Another example of an early space-age novelty song was Buchanan & Goodman`s 'The Flying Saucer' (1955). Reminiscent of Orsen Wells`s 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast, it tells the story of a flying saucer that lands in an unnamed city. ... "
- ... Reporter John Cameron-Cameron (Goodman spoofing real-life broadcaster John Cameron Swayze) is on the scene, ... sharing news commentary throughout while Buchanan spins tunes. It was the first example of a popular "mashup", where snippits of earlier hit songs were spliced in including,..., ...
- ... The Great Pretender (The Platters), Long Tall Sally (Little Richard), Heartbreak Hotel (Elvis)I Hear You Knocking (Smiley Lewis) and Earth Angel (The Penguins).Other novelty hits featuring space/alien themes followed:...
- Little Blue Man (Betty Johnson 1958), Little Space Girl (Jesse Lee Turner 1959), Little Space Girl (Jesse Lee Turner (1959). The ultimate space-alien song came out of Rock-A-Billy. Billie Lee Riley`s Flyin' Saucers Rock and Roll (1957), Backed by Jerry Lee Lewis on piano (and later Rockin On A UFO.
- UFO Tunes Trivia: One of the last signature space-related novelty songs of the 1950s was released in 1958. Sheb Wooley`s "The Purple People Eater" tells how a strange creature (described as a "one-eyed, one-horned, flying, purple people eater") descends to Earth because it wants to be in a rock `n` roll band...
- ... The creature is not necessarily purple, but rather it eats purple people: "I said Mr Purple People Eater, what`s your line? He said eating purple people, and it sure is fine..". The song invokes phrases from several other hit songs from that era: "Short Shorts", by The Royal Teens, and "Tequila", by The Champs, both from earlier in 1958; and "Tutti Frutti" from 1955.
- UFO Tunes Trivia: Wooley, better known to some people as Pete Nolan, a character he played on the long-running TV series, Rawhide, listened one day as a friend told a joke his son had heard at school: "What has one eye, one horn, flies and eats people? A flying Purple People Eater!" It only took Wooley less than an hour to write the whole song!
- UFO Tunes Trivia: PPE, a big hit for Wooely, reached no. 1 in the Billboard pop charts in 1958 from June 9 to July 14, reached no. 12 overall in the UK singles chart and topped the Australian charts. In addition to Wooley`s rendition, Judy Garland recorded the song in 1958 and Jimmy Buffett recorded a version of the song for the 1997 film Contact
- UFO Tunes Trivia: The character was used as the basis for the film Purple People Eater (1988), with a cast including Neil Patrick Harris, Ned Beatty, Shelley Winters, Thora Birch, Little Richard, Chubby Checker and Wooley himself.
- UFO Tunes Trivia: The enduring popularity of the song led to the nicknaming of the highly effective "Purple People Eaters", the Minnesota Vikings defensive line of the 1970s, whose team colors include purple.
