"I came out to Hollywood to become a singing cowboy but when I got here in 1950 they didn't want any singing cowboys, even if you had your own guitar. So I got into the other end of the cowboy business and played mostly heavies in my film career." "The Space Age was upon us. Everyone was thinking about rockets and wondering if maybe we would find people up there. A songwriter friend of mine told me his son had come home from school with a joke about a people eater from space. I wrote the song in a matter of minutes -- just dashed it off as a sort of afterthought." - on how he got the idea for his "Purple People Eater" hit.