Ross Bagdasarian a.k.a. David Seville was born in Fresno, California in 1919. His cousin is noted playwright William Saroyan. Ross worked as an actor and spent two years acting in Saroyan's The Time Of Your Life. The two of them wrote a song they called Come On-A My House while they were driving across New Mexico in 1939. The song was used in an off-Broadway play called The Son in 1950 before it was recorded by Kay Armen. In 1951 a recording by Rosemary Clooney of Come On-A My House became a huge hit. Ross continued with his acting career and appeared in some films, including Stalag 17, Viva Zapata and most notably, Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 masterpiece Rear Window.

He decided to use the name David Seville for his work in recording studios, which was becoming more frequent and more interesting to him. He also continued with his songwriting, and composed and recorded an instrumental titled Armen's Theme in 1956. Some novelty songs followed in 1957 and 1958, such as The Bird On My Head and Gotta Get To Your House. And there was another one, one which went on to be his first big hit song as a recording artist.

He had been writing songs and recording at Liberty Records. On April 14, 1958 what proved to be his first big hit entered the charts: Witch Doctor. Seville had read a book titled Duel With The Witch Doctor. He experimented with recording at half speed and then playing his tapes back at full speed. The result was Witch Doctor, and the public liked it. It shot up the US charts until it could go no higher, resting in the #1 position for three weeks of its eighteen week run.

The first Chipmunk record, "The Chipmunk Song", had Bagdasarian doing all the voices. (The spoken coda, when played slowly, reveals Bagdasarian enacting the roles of Theodore, Simon, and Alvin.) Thereafter, most of his Chipmunk records used female voice artists, recorded only about 1/4 slower than the normal playback speed. (Play one of his 45 records at 33 RPM and the original female voices emerge.).

After the success of "The Chipmunk Song", a series of follow-up hit singles were quickly released, also on Liberty Records in the US and London in the UK :-  "Alvin's Harmonica" was the second, "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" the third and "Alvin's Orchestra" the fourth.