“Why, it’s Little Red Riding Hood!”

Since we’re on the subject: I’ll forever associate the 1966 Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs classic “Little Red Riding Hood” with Halloween. I was riding with my mom to Walgreens in the Palm Beach Mall to pick up something she needed to finish some Halloween costume of mine. She left me in the car while she ran into the store, and I was sitting there alone with the radio on, on Halloween night, and this song came on. Spooked me something good—I don’t remember what my costume was, but I never forgot the song.

Twenty-five years later, I learned that the song is indeed one of the coolest of all time. It’s so loose and garaged out, Sam’s vocals hardly synching up with the backing crew, that guitar wiry and sinister, those keys lo-fi and dirty. And that howl, and the way he delivers the opening lines… Sam the Sham was a badass. Of course he was better known for “Wooly Bully,” another proto-garage classic (see Lester Bangs on that one), but “Little Red Riding Hood” is waaaaay too cool to overlook.

Of course the Big Bad Wolf was hot for Little Red Riding Hood—it makes perfect sense in a gruesome, psycho-sexual Brothers Grimm way.