Quite a few of you have written to tell me of silly recordings that made it onto the charts. Dave Kovarik and Dave Rutman both wrote that Steve Martin's "King Tut" made it to #17 in 1978. Chuck Berry's "My Ding-A-Ling" reached #1 — his only record to do so, says Jon B. Knutson and Jon also mentions Ray Stevens's "The Streak" from 1974 and Rick Dees's 1976 "Disco Duck." John Moore reports that Weird Al Yankovic's "Eat It" reached #12 on the Billboard charts in 1984.
Pat Kelly says that Allan Sherman's "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" did not reach #1 and also writes…
The last straightforward "comedy performance" record to make the top ten that I can think of is "Sister Mary Elephant" by Cheech & Chong, a top ten single in 1974. The indisputably #1 comedy single would be "The Streak" by Ray Stevens also in 1974, and probably the unarguably comic novelty track to make the top ten was Dickie Goodman's "break-in" track, "Mr. Jaws." There are certainly top ten hits with aspects of comedy in them since, I'd include "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-A-Lot and the recent "My Band" by Emimem's side project D12, but I don't think either would qualify for Dr. Demento play status.
Yeah, I'm not sure I'd call some of the above "comedy records." Maybe "novelty records" would be a better term. All of them — except maybe the Cheech & Chong one, with which I'm not familiar — are all or almost all music, whereas "St. George and the Dragonet" was basically a spoken word recording. (By the way, is anyone on this planet familiar with the content of any Cheech & Chong records? The folks who never heard them obviously aren't, and the people who listened repeatedly to them probably don't remember that portion of their lives, let alone the comedy albums they heard.)
I doubt we'll ever again see a best-selling comedy single, at least all audio. If it happens again, it'll be an online video like the new one from the JibJab boys.