From The San Francisco Chronicle

Bobby “Boris” Pickett, whose Boris Karloff impersonation was immortalized on the novelty hit song “Monster Mash,” which has become a Halloween perennial, has died. He was 69.

Mr. Pickett, a longtime resident of Santa Monica, died Wednesday of leukemia at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center, said his manager, Stuart Hersh.

” ‘Monster Mash’ is the biggest Halloween song of all time. The song was spooky but nonthreatening, just a natural — it had a good beat and was a great, fun idea,” said Barret Hansen, better known as syndicated radio host Dr. Demento.

The catchy tune, about a mad professor who joins his latest creation to dance the “Monster Mash,” was the No. 1 song in the country on Halloween in 1962. Re-released twice more, it cracked Billboard’s top 100 in 1970 and the top 10 in 1973.

Inspired by a dance craze called the mashed potato, the song was written in a few hours by Mr. Pickett and a musical colleague, Leonard Capizzi.

Not only did “Monster Mash” catch on in a flash, its refrain — accompanied by Mr. Pickett’s spirited Karloff impression — was destined to get stuck in the minds of generations to come:

He did the mash

He did the monster mash

The monster mash

It was a graveyard smash. …

The tune turned him into “the Guy Lombardo of Halloween,” Mr. Pickett told the Boston Globe in 1989, but he didn’t seem to mind.

Outfitted in a lab coat stained with fake blood, Mr. Pickett often introduced “Monster Mash” at oldies concerts by saying, “I’d like to perform a medley of my hit,” Hansen told the Los Angeles Times.

While Mr. Pickett never again achieved the success of “Monster Mash,” the Christmas sequel “Monster’s Holiday” reached No. 30 in December 1962.

Robert George Pickett was born Feb. 11, 1938, in Somerville, Mass. Since his father managed a movie theater, Mr. Pickett grew up watching Dracula and Frankenstein movies, and developed the Karloff impression.

In the 1950s, he came to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career, did TV commercials, got bit parts and joined the Cordials, a doo-wop group led by Capizzi.