How The Chipmunks were born and subsequently went punk

Ross Bagdasarian refined the recording technique he later used to produce The Chipmunks albums (for which he won two engineering Grammy Awards) after having used it on his 1958 novelty song ‘The Witch Doctor.’ Many years and many albums later, The Chipmunks made the logical transition to punk/prog-rock for the 1980 album ‘Chipmunk Punk,’ produced by Ross Bagdasarian, Jr., in response to enormous demand after a radio DJ jokingly sped up a Blondie track and announced it as the next Chipmunks album. A TV commerical for the album ‘Chipmunk Punk’ can be seen here.

So successful was the squeaky animated pop trio that it spawned a less successful knock-off, The Nutty Squirrels, a scat-singing variation on the same gag.

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