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Under the name Napoleon XIV, he recorded “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” and, to almost everyone’s surprise, it stormed the charts in 1966.

Jerry Samuels, who under the name Napoleon XIV recorded one of the 1960s’ strangest and most successful novelty songs, “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!,” died on March 10 in Phoenixville, Pa. He was 84.

His son Jason said the cause was complications of dementia and Parkinson’s disease.

Mr. Samuels had had modest success as a songwriter and was working as an engineer at Associated Recording Studios in New York when, in 1966, he and a fellow engineer, Nat Schnapf, set a bit of doggerel that Mr. Samuels had written to — well, “music” may not be quite the right word, since the song consists of Mr. Samuels rhythmically talking over a backing of tambourine, snare and bass drums, and clapping.

The narrator laments that he has been left by a loved one and has been driven insane as a result:

They’re coming to take me away, ha-haaa
They’re coming to take me away
Ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-ha, to the funny farm
Where life is beautiful all the time
And I’ll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats
And they’re coming to take me away, ha-ha.

Only in the last verse does the listener learn that it wasn’t a woman who left the now crazed gent, but a dog.

Through recording studio manipulation that was innovative for the time, Mr. Samuels’s voice morphed into high-pitched lunacy as the choruses went along.

In a memoir, Mr. Samuels wrote that he wanted to use a stage name for the record and a drummer friend suggested Napoleon. Someone else suggested adding some kind of appendage.

“I picked XIV strictly because I liked how it looked next to Napoleon,” Mr. Samuels wrote. “Rumors were rampant about hidden meanings, but there were none, at least not consciously.”

The record was released by Warner Bros. in July 1966 (the flip side was the song played backward), but no station would play it until WABC in New York, one of the nation’s leading Top 40 stations, broadcast an excerpt as a gag, Mr. Samuels wrote. Listeners began calling in wanting to hear the whole thing.

After that, stations everywhere picked up on it; news accounts of the day said it sold half a million copies in five days. Britain caught the fever, too.

“The Beatles don’t usually find it hard work hanging on to the top spot,” The Derby Evening Telegraph of England wrote in August 1966, when “Yellow Submarine” was No. 1 on the newspaper’s record chart, “but in Derby’s Top Twenty this week they face tough competition from the Beach Boys’ ‘God Only Knows’ and Napoleon XIV’s incredibly sick ‘They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!’”

The record was too sick for some: The influential Detroit-area station CKLW, among others, stopped playing it after receiving many complaints that it mocked mental illness.

“Those naysayers kept it up,” Mr. Samuels wrote, “and the record rapidly spiraled off the charts.”

But not before peaking at No. 3 on Billboard’s Hot 100. The song has been covered by various artists, and in the 1980s Mr. Samuels recorded a follow-up, “They’re Coming to Get Me Again, Ha-Haaa!” It drew little attention, but it did yield a funny story that Mr. Samuels recounted in the memoir.

When he recorded the original, he had asked friends to show up at the studio to do the clapping part, but only two did. Wanting a bigger clapping sound, he suggested that they drop their pants and slap their thighs, to double the noise. They declined, and he and Mr. Schnapf ended up using overdubbing to beef up the sound. But when he recorded the sequel, a dozen clappers turned out.

“Some were in shorts,” he wrote, “others lowered their trousers, but the whole group was slapping their tender thighs in that little studio.”

Jerrold Laurence Samuels was born on May 3, 1938, in Manhattan to Joseph and Lillian (Wandler) Samuels. He grew up in the Bronx.

TOPLINE

Taylor Swift is releasing four new songs—one previously unreleased and three re-recorded—at midnight Friday, the singer announced on her Instagram, hours before she’s set to retake the stage for the first time in nearly five years for her highly-anticipated Eras world tour.

Two of the songs Swift is re-recording—”Eyes Open” and “Safe & Sound”—were initially recorded for the 2012 movie, The Hunger Games.

Swift is also releasing a re-recording of the song “If This Was A Movie” from her 2010 album Speak Now, as well as a previously unreleased song from her 2019 album Lover.

Swift, who was the only woman among Forbes’ list of the top ten highest earning entertainers in 2022, kicks off her 52-stop Eras tour Friday.

KEY BACKGROUND

In 2019, Swift announced she was re-recording her first five albums in an effort to own her own work. The master recordings of Swift’s early work were sold to a media company owned by Scooter Braun, a man Swift has accused of “incessant, manipulative bullying,” leading Swift to release new versions of her albums and ask fans to listen and buy the “Taylor’s Version” of her songs. Lover was the first album Swift owned herself. So far she’s re-recorded two of her first five albums: Red and Fearless. In 2021, the re-recorded version of Red broke a Spotify record for the most-streamed album by a female artist in a single day, and she broke the single-day record for most-streamed female artist.

TANGENT

Swift made headlines in November after Ticketmaster’s website crashed during the pre-sale ticket drop for the Eras tour. Ticketmaster temporarily suspended sales after fans waited for hours and tickets were oversold. In a statement, Swift said Ticketmaster “assured” her the company could manage the high demand and manage the situation. The ticket fiasco led to a Senate judiciary subcommittee hearing in which Live Nation President Joe Berchtold blamed “industrial scalpers” and a “cyberattack” for the Swift meltdown.

BIG NUMBER

53%. That’s the percentage of U.S. adults who said they were fans of Swift in a Morning Consult survey published Tuesday.

FURTHER READING

More Than Half Of U.S. Adults Say They’re Taylor Swift Fans, Survey Finds (Forbes)

Ticketmaster Urges Congress To Crack Down On Ticket Scalping As Lawmakers Take Aim Over Taylor Swift Debacle (Forbes)

‘Anti-Hero’ Now Taylor Swift’s Best-Performing Single After Eight Weeks Atop Hot 100 Chart (Forbes)

So … Where Are We at With the Taylor Swift Rerecordings? (Vulture)

BOZEMAN — Montana State University music student Jacob Kittleson won the young artist brass category at the Music Teachers National Association Northwest Divisional Young Artist Performance Competition and will advance to the national competition March 25–29 in Reno, Nevada. 

Kittleson, who plays the Tuba, has won a spot to compete in the National MTNA Competition in Reno, Nevada. MSU photo by Colter Peterson.

“It’s very exciting to get the chance to perform,” said Kittleson, who is from Great Falls. “It’s just an incredible opportunity because they bring in these amazing judges, and the feedback we’re able to get from an educational standpoint is so helpful.”  

Kittleson, a tuba player, beat state winners from Washington, Wyoming and Idaho in the regional competition and will now play against students from across the U.S.  

“It’s incredible to see Jake perform at such a high level, competing against undergraduate and graduate students at a national level,” said Jason Bolte, director of the MSU School of Music in the College of Arts and Architecture. “Competing at the MTNA National Competition is a testament to his work ethic, musicianship and the high-quality instruction he has received from our music faculty.”  

Kittleson, a senior majoring in music, said he first got interested in playing tuba in elementary school. 

“It was the largest and shiniest object in the (band) room,” Kittleson said, explaining that he was too small to play the tuba at first, so he played the euphonium until sixth grade. “(The tuba) has such a dark, warm sound that just envelops the room. I’ve pretty much stuck with it ever since.” 

Kittleson is no stranger to this national competition. In 2021, he competed virtually in the young artist brass category, along with MSU student violinist Cade Fiddaman, who competed in the young artist strings division. 

“I’m excited to finally do (the competition) in person, especially now that I’ve had a couple more years to develop my skills,” Kittleson said. The competition is being held in conjunction with the MTNA conference, and he hopes to attend performances and seminars as well.  

“There are going to be some great players to listen to, so I’m looking forward to that too,” he said. 

MSU associate professor Jeannie Little said Kittleson’s passion for the tuba has deepened through the years and makes him a wonderful musician. 

“Jake is immensely gifted,” she said. “During this upcoming competition, he’s the only tuba in a field of trumpets, horns and euphoniums. The tuba is a big and sometimes very unwieldy instrument. Jake makes it sing.”  

She said Kittleson has been heavily involved with many musical groups on MSU’s campus, including the Spirit of the West marching band and the Montanans choir.  

“He will play in every and any ensemble if you let him,” Little said, noting that Kittleson not only persevered but excelled during remote and socially distanced lessons for his first two years at MSU. “He’s so excited and so curious about all things music, and that translates to learning new and difficult pieces.”  

At the competition, Kittleson will play a capriccio by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. The piece is designed for an unaccompanied tuba and is “very contemporary,” he said, adding that the piece’s tone is interesting because it has no time signature, a musical element that keeps a song on the proper beat.   

“It offers a lot of freedom to the performer,” he said. “One of the things I like most about it is how it hides in dance figures. There’s one part where it’s a waltz, but then it leaves off a beat and a dancer will be stumbling – it’s always very sneaky with it.” 

Kittleson will graduate this spring and pursue a master’s degree of musical arts in tuba performance from Arizona State University. He credits his success to his teachers and opportunities at MSU. 

“MSU has just provided me so many opportunities for places to perform, and the faculty has just been amazing and supportive,” he said. “They’ve taught me so much, especially Dr. Little.”  

The Cure’s Robert Smith has directly responded to fans’ complaints about the fees collected by Ticketmaster during the band’s “Verified Fan” sale for tickets to dates on its upcoming tour. “I am as sickened as you all are by today’s Ticketmaster ‘Fees’ debacle,”’ Smith wrote on Twitter. “To be very clear: The artist has no way to limit them. I have been asking how they are justified. If I get anything coherent by way of an answer I will let you all know.” Pitchfork has reached out to Ticketmaster for comment. Check out the original tweets below.

Earlier this week, Smith posted about the band’s decision to use Ticketmaster’s “Verified Fan” system in an effort to combat scalping and get more face-value tickets in fans’ hands. He says the band refused to participate in the company’s dynamic pricing and “Platinum” tickets, calling the program that led to tickets on Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s current tour to skyrocket to thousands of dollars “a greedy scam.” 

Ticketmaster has been under fire for their business practices of late, facing a Senate hearing, multiple lawsuits, and the “unprecedented” fraud it claims forced them to shut out legitimate ticket holders from a Bad Bunny concert in Mexico City. Last year the Justice Department opened an antitrust investigation into Live Nation Entertainment—the company formed after Live Nation and Ticketmaster merged in 2010—for potential abuse of power. An earlier investigation found in 2019 that the company had repeatedly violated a 10-year consent decree to refrain from monopolistic practices signed after the merger.

The Cure reissued their 1992 LP Wish last year. The band’s last studio album was 2008’s 4:13 Dream. Smith has since collaborated with Gorillaz and remixed Chvrches, Deftones, and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. 

News of blue-eyed soul singer Bobby Caldwell’s death this morning was met by an outpouring of loving — and befuddled — messages online. While the former stemmed from the love audiences have for the lauded singer’s long-lasting hits like “What You Won’t Do For Love,” the latter were echoes of a semi-annual occurrence in which longtime listeners learned his ethnic background — a phenomenon of which the man himself never seemed to tire.

Then, there were the more personal messages. Chance The Rapper offered one of those on Instagram, fondly recalling a time the singer reached out to thank him for sampling one of his songs. Caldwell, who was an active Twitter user and enjoyed responding to messages from fans astonished to discover that he wasn’t Black, graciously told Chance that he’d be “honored” if Chance sampled the song.

Chance himself commented on how rare of an occurrence this is in the caption, writing, “This never happens. I’ve never received a message from an artist thanking me for sampling their record. This is a record that hasn’t even come out, and the legend himself reached out. I was so excited to meet you, I have not felt broken like this at a strangers passing in so long. You are a true legend and incredible person who I know I will see one day.