Portrait of Dickie Goodman

Birthday profile

Dickie Goodman

Dickie Goodman, American singer-songwriter and producer (died 1989)

Born
April 19, 1934
Died
November 6, 1989
Zodiac sign
Aries
Birth year
1934

About Dickie Goodman

Richard Dorian “Dickie” Goodman (April 19, 1934 – November 6, 1989) was an American musician and record producer. He is best known for inventing and using the technique of the "break-in", an early precursor to sampling, that used brief clips of popular records and songs to "answer" comedic questions posed by voice actors on his novelty records. He also wrote and produced some original material, most often heard on the B-sides of his break-in records. == Career == In June 1956, in partnership with Bill Buchanan, Dickie Goodman made his first hit record, "The Flying Saucer Parts 1 & 2", a take-off of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds. This recording was the subject of a copyright infringement case against Goodman. The court ruled that his sampled mix was a parody and thus an entirely new work. The single peaked at No. 3 on Billboard and was Goodman's highest-charting single. Since Part 2 was on the B side of the vinyl record, Disc Jockeys had to flip the record over to complete the broadcast of the two tracks. Hence the recording(s) best known as simply, "The Flying Saucer." While other famous music artists have charted flip sides of records containing a completely different and separate song, it was extremely rare to chart with two sides of a record with it only being considered as one on the charts etc.

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

Career and life highlights

Dickie Goodman timeline

  1. Richard Dorian “Dickie” Goodman (April 19, 1934 – November 6, 1989) was an American musician and record producer.
  2. Dickie Goodman's first known release came in 1952, when he was just 18 years old.

The world when Dickie Goodman was born

Dickie Goodman was born in 1934. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1934

  • #1 song"Stars Fell on Alabama"
  • Top movieIt Happened One Night
  • Best-selling bookTender Is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst Masters Tournament held at Augusta National
  • Top headlineFBI kills John Dillinger outside a Chicago theater
  • Technology milestoneFirst streamlined passenger train (Burlington Zephyr)
  • Defining fadShirley Temple mania
  • Notable inventionLaundromat
  • World population2.20 billion

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderFranklin D. Roosevelt
  • Sports championSt. Louis Cardinals (World Series)
  • U.S. population126.4M

1934 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Dickie Goodman's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19342026
Gas$0.19$3.45/gal
Average home$4,900$435,000
Average income$2,500$67,500
Minimum wage$0.25$7.25/hr (federal)
Movie ticket$0.20$11.95
Postage stamp$0.03$0.73
Population126.4M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, MusicBrainz, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.