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While gymnast Carly Patterson was backflipping towards a gold medal in Athens on Thursday to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy's "Mr. Pinstripe Suit," the band's singer was home in Ventura, California, turning cartwheels of his own.
"We watched it on TV," says Scotty Morris of the sixteen-year-old Louisiana native's Olympic performance (Patterson is the first U.S. woman since Mary Lou Retton in 1984 to win the Olympic all-around gold for gymnastics). "All of a sudden this chopped-up trumpet thing starts happening and I kind of perked up. Then 'Mr. Pinstripe Suit' came in, and I pretty much fell on the floor. Then she won, and of course my phone blows completely up, with all my friends and family calling. It was incredible!"
Released as part of the band's 1998 self-titled release at the height of the retro-swing craze, "Mr. Pinstripe Suit" was inspired by a New York hipster Morris met on tour.
"He was just the coolest guy," Morris says. "He took me to all the most insane old-school places, he always had a cocktail in his hand, and he smoked Export cigarettes. I literally wrote it in a hotel room of the Holiday Inn in Times Square. So it's pretty classic that it's gone from that to Carly winning the gold."
The Olympic triumph of "Mr. Pinstripe Suit" comes during a busy time for Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Earlier this month, they celebrated ten years as a group with the release of the Big Bad Voodoo Daddy Live CD/DVD, and this week they will serve as the house band for Last Call With Carson Daly for a later broadcast. On October 12th, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy will release a Christmas album, Everything You Want for Christmas, composed largely of originals like "Last Night I Went Out With Santa Claus." "It's about going out with Santa Claus and raising hell," Morris says of the song. "It's a total party, wild, fun Christmas record."