"Santa and the Satellite," Buchanan and Goodman (Luniverse)

Not a song at all per se, it's a novelty record in which Santa meets up with a UFO, and the whole thing is reported on the news by "John Cameron Cameron," parodying longtime broadcast announcer John Cameron Swayze. And if that's not enough, when the record goes into question-and-answer format, JCC's questions are answered with actual snippets from rock songs, something we now call sampling. The "satellite" was a play on the duo's earlier hit, "The Flying Saucer." The artists, Bill Buchanan and Dickie Goodman, released several of these novelty records, and Goodman did several more as late as the mid-80s, including "Santa and the Touchables," which matched the jolly elf against organized crime and acted as a sequel to his own "The Touchables" and "The Touchables in Brooklyn." It's surprising that someone hasn't picked up the gauntlet and brought back this form of novelty recording. My guess is that copyright clearances are too expensive, especially now that artists get royalties for being sampled. Buchanan and Goodman were themselves sued at the time and settled out of court, according to Norm N. Nite's Rock On. The liner notes of Dickie Goodman and Friends' Greatest Fables, however, claim the courts eventually ruled in their favor. Naturally, they parodied the experience in "Buchanan and Goodman On Trial." By the way, Chuck Miller, a writer and columnist at Goldmine, informs us that although the record is credited to "Buchanan and Goodman," Buchanan does not appear on the record as he and Goodman split up earlier in the year; his voice is replaced by Paul Sherman.