I came out to Hollywood to become a singing cowboy but when I got here
in 1950 they didn't want any singing cowboys, even if you had your own
guitar. So I got into the other end of the cowboy business and played
mostly heavies in my film career.
[on how he got the idea for his "Purple People Eater" hit song] The Space Age
was upon us. Everyone was thinking about rockets and wondering if maybe
we would find people up there. A songwriter friend of mine told me his
son had come home from school with a joke about a people eater from
space. I wrote the song in a matter of minutes--just dashed it off as a
sort of afterthought.