"Pepino the Italian Mouse" | ||||
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Single by Lou Monte | ||||
B-side | "What Did Washington Say (When He Crossed The Delaware)" | |||
Released | 1962 | |||
Genre | novelty song | |||
Length | 2:42 | |||
Label | Reprise Records | |||
Songwriter(s) | Ray Allen and Wandra Merrell | |||
Producer(s) | Don Costa | |||
Lou Monte singles chronology | ||||
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"Pepino the Italian Mouse" is a novelty song co-written by Ray Allen and Wandra Merrell and published in 1962. [1] [2] Italian American singer Lou Monte recorded and released the song on Reprise Records in 1962. [3] Lou Monte's recording contains a high-pitched "mouse" voice in the style of Alvin and the Chipmunks. The song helped make Lou Monte famous and set the tone for the remainder of his career. [4] [5] The song contains both English and Italian verses. [6] The song is controversial for its depiction of Italian culture. [7] Monte's family collects royalty checks for the song. [8] Songwriters Wandra Merrell and Ray Allen filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Trenton against the Woody Allen movie Broadway Danny Rose claiming the melody of the film's theme song, "Agita" borrowed 49 of the 52 notes in the verse of "Pepino, the Italian Mouse". [9]
The song tells the story of a man and a mouse named Pepino who lives in the man's house. The man laments that the mouse scares his girl, eats his cheese, and drinks his wine. The man attempts to catch the mouse but gets tricked all the time. At the end of the song, Pepino tells the man to close his eyes and put his hand in a box, at which point a mousetrap snaps on the man's hand.
Lou Monte's recording of "Pepino the Italian Mouse" reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 list for the week of January 12, 1963. [10] In Canada the song reached No. 8 on the December 31, 1962, chart. [11]
Lou Monte released the song alongside "What Did Washington Say (When He Crossed The Delaware)," written by Ray Allen, Sam Saltzberg, and Wandra Merrell.
Christmas music comprises a variety of genres of music regularly performed or heard around the Christmas season. Music associated with Christmas may be purely instrumental, or, in the case of carols, may employ lyrics about the nativity of Jesus Christ, traditions such as gift-giving and merrymaking, cultural figures such as Santa Claus, or other topics. Many songs simply have a winter or seasonal theme, or have been adopted into the canon for other reasons.
A novelty song is a type of song built upon some form of novel concept, such as a gimmick, a piece of humor, or a sample of popular culture. Novelty songs partially overlap with comedy songs, which are more explicitly based on humor, and with musical parody, especially when the novel gimmick is another popular song. Novelty songs achieved great popularity during the 1920s and 1930s. They had a resurgence of interest in the 1950s and 1960s. The term arose in Tin Pan Alley to describe one of the major divisions of popular music; the other two divisions were ballads and dance music. Humorous songs, or those containing humorous elements, are not necessarily novelty songs.
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Lou Monte was an Italian American singer best known for a number of best-selling, Italian-themed novelty records which he recorded for both RCA Victor and Reprise Records in the late 1950s and early 1960s, most famously "Lazy Mary" (1958) and the 1962/63 million-selling US single "Pepino the Italian Mouse", plus the seasonal track "Dominick the Donkey". He also recorded on Roulette Records, Jubilee Records, Regalia Records, Musicor Records, Laurie Records, and AFE Records.
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"Dominick the Donkey" is a Christmas song written by Ray Allen, Sam Saltzberg and Wandra Merrell, and was recorded by Lou Monte in 1960, on Roulette Records. The song describes Dominick, a donkey who helps Santa Claus bring presents to children in Italy due to the reindeer being unable to climb the mountainous terrain. The song was re-released onto Amazon on September 26, 2011, on Dexterity Records. The spelling of "Dominick" was modified to "Dominic" for the re-release. It was included in Volume 2 of the Ultimate Christmas Album series produced by Collectables Records and on the Christmas compilation album Merry Xmas 2011 by Cinquenta Musica.
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Peppino may refer to:
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