The Chipmunks

The Chipmunks rank among the most enduring animated musical and television properties ever created, with bursts of popularity that tracked successive generations from the 1960s onward. Their initial appeal took hold during the adolescent years of the Baby Boom cohort, expanded sharply in the 1980s as the children of those Boomers reached viewing age, and extended without interruption into the new millennium.

Ross Bagdasarian, the creator who gave the Chipmunks their voices, entered the world on January 27, 1919, in Fresno, California. He relocated to Los Angeles in 1950 and appeared in the films Viva Zapata, Stalag 17, and Rear Window. Songwriting also occupied him, and he first reached the charts in 1956 when his production of Alfi & Harry's "The Trouble with Harry" climbed to number 44. Recording later as David Seville, he placed two additional singles on the charts with "Armen's Theme" and "Gotta Get to Your House."

Bagdasarian began testing a fresh method in 1958 that involved taping ordinary vocals and then accelerating the playback speed. The technique delivered the number-one single "Witch Doctor" early that year, and the sensation grew dramatically when his seasonal novelty "The Chipmunk Song" remained at the top for four weeks. "Alvin's Harmonica" advanced to number three two months afterward, while seasonal reissues of "The Chipmunk Song" continued to land in the Top 40 for the next four years. Prime-time television introduced The Alvin Show in 1961, with Bagdasarian supplying every voice; although the series lasted only one season in that slot, it fared well once moved to Saturday mornings. Five further Chipmunks singles charted in the early 1960s, and five albums sold steadily, among them a 1964 collection of Beatles covers.

Bagdasarian died in 1972, but his son Ross Jr. brought Alvin, Simon, and Theodore back in 1979 through Saturday-morning programming and the album Chipmunk Punk. The new series proved more popular than its 1960s predecessor, and subsequent albums featuring country, Christmas, rock, and Hollywood material moved in large numbers even without charting. Although the cartoon itself had ended production by the 1990s, additional Chipmunks releases continued to appear, including the 1998 album A-Files: Alien Files.

A live-action film series opened in 2007 with Alvin and the Chipmunks, whose box-office strength produced three sequels: Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel in 2009, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked in 2011, and Alvin and the Chipmunks 4 in 2015. A fresh television version was also slated to premiere on Nickelodeon in early 2015.