![]() ![]() took on the mantle of Dave Seville in 1977 and revived the franchise. The Alvin Show did get replayed on NBC at mid-season of the 1978-79 season (where TV listings billed it as Alvin and the Chipmunks) followed by a syndication run and another on Nickelodeon in the early 1990s.Īfter Bagdasarian suddenly passed away from a heart attack in 1972, his son, Ross Bagdasarian Jr. In addition, Bagdasarian insisted that The Alvin Show skip the addition of a laugh track, against the wishes of CBS.) A number of further Chipmunk albums were released, but interest eventually died down and Bagdasarian retired in the late '60s. (Competition from NBC juggernaut Wagon Train was a factor, but the main reason for the low ratings was production delays which were largely caused by disagreements between Bagdasarian and Format Films over acceptable character designs for The Chipmunks, which allowed enough time for an imitator, The Nutty Squirrels, to beat the Chipmunks to television by a full year. In 1961, after releasing several albums as "Dave Seville and the Chipmunks", Bagdasarian was able to persuade Format Films and CBS to launch a prime-time cartoon, The Alvin Show, based on the exploits of the Chipmunks in addition to the misadventures of inventor Clyde Crashcup (who invents pretty much everything that already exists), which ran for only one season on CBS due to low ratings. This oft-used process was not entirely new to Bagdasarian, who had also used it for two previous novelty songs, including a catchy little tune titled "Witch Doctor", but it was so unusual and well-executed it earned the record two Grammy Awards for engineering, mostly due to the simple but cute sound technique he used to render the voice of the Witch Doctor for the song's nonsensical refrain, "Ooh-eee-ooh-ah-ah ting-tang walla-walla bing-bang".īagdasarian decided to capitalize on this success by assigning the voice technique to a trio of singing chipmunks - brainy Simon, gluttonous Theodore and High-School Hustler Alvin - for the best-selling Christmas tune "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)", in which an increasingly annoyed David Seville's attempts to keep his chipmunk singers on-message served as a Framing Device, and led to Dave Seville's trademark Catchphrase, "Alvin? Alvin? ALLLLLLLVIN!" The voices of the Chipmunks were sped up in the playback to create high-pitched voices. The characters became a success, and the singing Chipmunks and their manager were given life in several animated cartoon productions, using redrawn, anthropomorphic chipmunks, and eventually films.
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