Jerry Samuels, perhaps the weirdest one-hit wonder performer, died today. His song “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha Ha!” was a big hit in 1966 (credited to Napoleon XIV), It was one of the few singles I’ve ever bought.
RIP
That takes me back. Thanks for posting this. I wonder how Josephine XV is doing?
I will observe a respectful moment of deranged silence. Thank you for the welcome peculiarity you brought to us all, Jerry.
My copy is long gone, but I still wonder what Satanic messages were embedded in the B side.
Do you mean Rosemary? I think she’s fine with it.
According to the linked article, it didn’t bother Josephine at all when they first took him away. One cut from the album (yes, there was an album) is “I’m Happy They Took You Away, Ha-Haaa!” by Josephine XV.
mmm
See above
That song was 1966?? I thought it got big in the late 70s or early 80s. Maybe it made a comeback from the Dr. Demento show?
I heard it in the early 70s - but in later years I would run into younger folks who heard it later and thought it was newer due to revivals by Demento or other DJs
I would have put money on that being a 70s song. Thanks to the SDMB, I was saved from a losing bet! Is there anything this place can’t do?
Anyway, I loved that song as a kid. Loved it!
Loved that song also. Is it really that long ago?
I saved up my babysitting $$ & bought that for my Granny, who was certifiable
FWIW, Howard Stern used it for his theme music when he had the afternoon drive slot on WNBC in the early Eighties.
I first heard it on Dr. Demento, but it also appeared on some K-Tel compilation of novelty songs. “Loony Tunes,” maybe, or “Goofy Greats,” which (IIRC) both came out in the 1970s.
My dad had that and the backwards version on a cassette tape he’d always play in the car in the 1980s-1990s. I loved that song!
So I guess they came to take him away. 
Ahhh, that takes me back to a Waffle House sometime in my childhood. We were on the way to a wedding, and while we were standing in the parking lot while my dad smoked a cigarette, there was a Fiat Spyder with the lyrics to it scratched into the hood’s paint.
ETA: When I saw the title, I wondered if this was a riff on the SNL Franco joke. I thought the guy who wrote that song had died years ago. Don’t know how that idea got into my head.
I was at a hospital recently. When a guy, who was in his seventies, started to be wheeled toward an operating room, he proclaimed “They’re coming to take me away!” I only regret that I didn’t respond with “ha, ha”. I also suspect I was the only one within earshot who recognized what he was referring to.
Did they determine whether the song was about a dog?