Dickie Goodman

The ability to easily take a song, sample a bit of it, and then cut-and-paste it -- just as you do with words and sentences in a word processor -- has given birth to a fad called "mashups." More than 45 years ago, Dickie Goodman had a similar idea. He would take bits of songs -- often songs that were beginning to climb the charts -- and with a grease pencil and a razor blade, cut them up and give them new meaning. He would string together bits of music with a voice narration -- usually a reporter at a mock press conference -- and use these musical cues from popular songs to provide the sarcastic "answers" to his setup questions. His son Jon Goodman writes about his father's gift for mixing entertaining music in his new book, The King of Novelty. He has also compiled a CD of some of the more mixed-up hits of the era, 25 All-Time Novelty Hits -- dedicated to the memory of his father.