Dickie Goodman

Although Weird Al Yankovic gets most of the credit for popularizing novelty songs and parodies, the godfather of the genre is unquestionably Dickie Goodman. Born on April 19, 1934, in Hewlett, NY, Goodman first came to the attention of the record-buying public in the '50s, when he scored a major hit with "The Flying Saucer," a song that nearly topped the U.S. pop charts (peaking at number three in 1956). As with all of Goodman's ensuing parodies, he used a then-unique method of sampling: he would act as a "reporter," while the responses from the "people" he was interviewing wo...