Jack Ely, who sang the 1963 version of the song, died the other day at age 71. His illness was not disclosed but, if you have what appears to be the same disease depicted in photos from a couple years back, you know what it is.
The lyrics were always hard to fathom...here are the original ones written by Richard Berry in 1955...
In an era when you can't go the restroom without the government knowing about it, I thought this was an interesting blurb:
In addition to the song’s fame, Ely’s incoherent singing also made it one of the most misunderstood. The FBI was so mystified by the hard-to-understand lyrics that it conducted an investigation into whether the song was obscene.
They found it to be “unintelligible at any speed.”