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:: Alfi & Harry – The Trouble With Harry ::

Lately, when I’m not spending my dough on music, beer and cigarettes, I’m buying up Alfred Hitchcock films on DVD. This is what led me to recently pick up this single when I found it in Amoeba’s dollar bin, because the label stated, "Inspired by the Paramount Picture: Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry." Turns out it’s the first novelty record put out by Ross Bagdasarian, who recorded three Liberty singles as Alfi & Harry in the mid-50’s, later assuming the pseudonym of David Seville with the 1958 hit single, “The Witch Doctor” (Ooo eee, ooo ah ah ting tang walla walla, bing bang). “The Witch Doctor” is where he first played with speeding up the vocals on the playback tape, which later snowballed into The Chipmunks (and all of our Christmases being forever changed). “The Trouble with Harry” has a bit of Chipmunk in it, too, with Alfi yelling at Harry as a precursor to Seville yelling at Alvin. While this single has nothing to do with the film, Bagdasarian does have a connection to Hitchcock. He played the frustrated composer in one of the many apartment windows that voyeur Jimmy Stewart peeps into in Rear Window.


Phil

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