Dickie Goodman is the King of Novelty – he holds the record for most novelty singles to hit the Billboard charts  – at 17.  Things began In 1956 when Goodman, along with his partner Bill Buchanan produced an odd record called “The Flying Saucer” – which took snippets of popular songs and spliced them into a fictitious news report about aliens landing on Earth.

The comedy record was a surprise smash hit, jumping to #3 on the charts and spawning a series of followups.  Goodman called them “break in records,” and they were full of controversy.  Because he was using pieces of other peoples’ music, was he stealing, or was it a new kind of art?  In a sense, Goodman was the first artist to use sampling as a way of creating new music – way before those rap guys.

From the late Fifties to the mid Eighties, Goodman’s records were a mainstay on the charts – poking fun at the news of the day – be it political blunders or flavor of the month fads, and each one using the popular music of the time to tell the story.  In this sense, Goodman’s records help paint a true picture of the public consciousness at the time – making great time capsules.  Now, his son, Jon Goodman has compiled Long Live the King, a collection of 26 of his dad’s greatest hits, plus a newly assembled “Election 2012” which Jon created himself.