The 1970s were a decade filled with novelty hits. From “Mr. Jaws” to “Disco Duck” to “Convoy,” the decade featured a long streak of comedic classics—including one titled “The Streak.”
In 1974, Jim Stafford hit it big in the novelty song genre. His country-pop song “Spiders & Snakes” appeared on his self-titled album and peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in March of that year.
Written by Stafford and David Bellamy, “Spiders & Snakes” featured a spoken narrative and a catchy country-pop chorus as it told the ill-fated romance between the narrator and his crush, Mary Lou. The song sold reached gold disc status by the Recording Industry Association of America, and Stafford became a frequent guest on daytime talk shows and awards shows. By 1975, he was popular enough to score his own summertime variety show on ABC.
Stafford’s sense of humor was apparent during his many talk show guest spots. During an appearance on American Bandstand, he told host Dick Clark the cheeky inspiration for the song. “’Spiders & Snakes’ is a true story that I made up, and based on an incident that never occurred,” he cracked.
Stafford gave a more serious answer in an interview with Gary James’ Classic Bands.
“I'm not really sure where that deep little hole is, and I don't know why I write songs like that. I just do," he shared. "I'm kind of a fan of my own stuff. I like ‘Spiders & Snakes’ and I like ‘Swamp Witch.’ Those songs are kind of different. They were certainly challenging to write. So, I'm glad that they kind of caught on and did okay. I have a grateful heart about that.”
"To me, the hard part of that stuff is it's not too hard to figure something like that out, but the tricky part is how many times can they listen to it before they get tired of it," he added. “I gotta tell you, I felt very fortunate about those songs because they were a specific kind of song, you might say comedy.”
RELATED: The Wild Backstory Behind the Novelty Hit ‘Convoy’
The ‘Spiders & Snakes’ idea was almost rejected
The original idea for “Spiders & Snakes” came after Bellamy and his brother got drunk and camped out in a bunkhouse on their family’s Florida ranch.
Howard Bellamy recalled to Classic Bands, “About three or four in the morning, what we call a rat snake or chicken snake got in the bed with me, and of course I ran out the door pretty fast and made quite a bit of noise, woke David up. …I think we really owe the credit and inspiration to the chicken snake. The next morning, he wrote that song, and it probably took a little over an hour.”
Bellamy noted that it was a “fluke” that the early version of the song ended up with Stafford.
"We had shopped it around,” he recalled. “We got word that this producer who produced all of Stafford's stuff was from that area, and he also produced ‘Let Your Love Flow.’ We sent a demo to Stafford, and it was kind of thrown in the reject pile. The producer actually didn't care for it. Stafford saw the title on the cassette box there and just picked it out of the reject pile and listened to it. And he loved it immediately and went on to record it.”
Bellamy noted that Stafford was both a talented musician and a comedian.
“He was very successful with ‘Spiders & Snakes’ and bought a house in Hollywood,” Bellamy shared. “He was a comedian. That's what he was. He was one of the best guitar players ever. He was just incredible. Classical, any kind of guitar. He was just amazing. Did stand-up and sang. Did guitar solos. Just a one-man show. That's the way he was.”
Stafford performed "Spiders & Snakes" and his other hits for decades at the Jim Stafford Theatre in Branson, Missouri.
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