Witchcraft

Album: Music To Scare Your Neighbors (1955)
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Songfacts®:

  • In "Witchcraft," The Spiders' frontman Chuck Carbo can't stop thinking about a woman that's left him. His obsessive dwelling on her memory is driving him nuts, so much so that it feels downright supernatural. It's not the same song as the standard popularized by Frank Sinatra.
  • Dave Bartholomew, a popular musician out of New Orleans, wrote the song with his wife, Pearl King. The pair wrote many songs together before King's death from cancer at 44 in 1967.

    Bartholomew wrote dozens of tunes for Fats Domino, including "Blueberry Hill" and "Ain't That A Shame." He's also the man behind Chuck Berry's "My Ding-a-Ling."
  • The Spiders, out of New Orleans, were the first to record this song. Operating from 1947 to 1957, the group didn't record a lot of material but had a high number of their limited releases do well on the charts. Their version of "Witchcraft" hit #5 on the Most Played by Jockeys chart, an early precursor to the Billboard Hot 100.
  • Elvis Presley covered the song as the B-side to his "Bossa Nova Baby" single in 1963. Despite being on the disadvantaged side of the record, "Witchcraft" hit #32 on the Hot 100. The song was included on Elvis' Gold Records Volume 4 in 1968.

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