Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer

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Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer is a novelty Christmas song and the eponymous animated movie.

Written by Randy Brooks, the song was originally performed by the husband and wife duo of Elmo and Patsy Shropshire in 1979. In the lyrics,[1] the grandmother of the family gets drunk from drinking too much eggnog and decides to return home to retrieve her forgotten medication. In the course of her walk, she is run over by Santa and killed (however the video has her stagger in alive at the end).

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[edit] Releases

According to Brooks, he played the song while sitting in with Elmo & Patsy at the Hyatt Lake Tahoe in December of 1978, and after the show they had him make a cassette of the song for them to learn. A year later, they were selling 45s of the song from the stage, and a friend took a copy to KSFO in San Francisco where disc jockey Gene Nelson became the first to play it on the air.[1]

The song was originally self-released in the San Francisco area by the Shropshires in 1979 on their own record label ("Elmo 'n' Patsy"), with the B-side called "Christmas". By the early 1980s, the song was becoming a seasonal hit, first on country stations and then on Top 40 stations. In 1982, the "Elmo 'n' Patsy" record label changed its name to "Oink" when the song was re-recorded. Oink Records, still based in Windsor, California, continued distribution of the 45 rpm record in the western U.S., with "Nationwide Sound Distributors" of Nashville, Tennessee pressing and distributing the song on its Soundwaves Records in the eastern U.S. In 1984, with the song now a big hit nationally, CBS Records was interested and signed Elmo & Patsy to Epic Records. A new recording was made with a new B-side ("Percy, the Puny Poinsettia"). The 1984 re-recording can be distinguished from the original 1979 & 1982 versions by the emphasis placed on the words "You can say..." in the chorus. By the end of 1984, it was reported that sales of "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer" were, by record label: Oink: 50,000 45s sold; Soundwaves: 175,000 45s sold; Epic: 150,000 45s sold and 90,000 LPs sold.

Following the Shropshires' divorce, Elmo re-recorded it solo in 1992 and again in 2000.

The song has twice been covered by The Irish Rovers in studio recordings, in 1999 and a recording made before 1985. It has also been covered by Christian crossover crunk rock band Family Force 5 (in the song, the word "beer" was edited out and replaced with root beer), and in 1996 by Poe. It was also covered by Less Than Jake on their album Goodbye Blue and White. A sequel "Grandpa's Gonna Sue the Pants Offa' Santa" was released by Elmo Shropshire in 2002. Grandpa gets lawyers to fight Santa in court.

[edit] Chorus

  • "Grandma got run over by a reindeer, walking home from our house on Christmas Eve. You can say there's no such thing as Santa, but as for me and Grandpa, we believe."

[edit] Television

The 2000 animated television program Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer portrays the events depicted in the song — though, being made for children, the cartoon is toned down of adult content, so that Grandma does not die, and Santa is actually innocent of the crime, which was instead masterminded by a scheming relative ("Cousin Mel," depicted briefly in the song but made into a gold-digging villainness on the show). Elmo Shropshire reads for the voice of Grandpa (as well as being the narrator of the special).

[edit] Parodies

  • Bob Rivers performed Osama Got Run Over by a Reindeer on his album White Trash Christmas.[2]
  • Country music parodist Cledus T. Judd turned the song into "Grandpa Got Runned Over by a John Deere" on his album I Stoled This Record. Judd later performed a re-orchestrated cover of "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" on his Cledus Navidad album.
  • Michigan musical comedy group Da Yoopers re-wrote the song as "Grandpa Got Run Over By a Beer Truck" on their album One Can Short of a Six Pack. The group regularly performs the song in concert year-round, despite it being a Christmas song.
  • Select personnel from Z100, a radio station in Portland, Oregon, performed New Kids Got Run Over by a Reindeer, a reference to 1980s boy band New Kids on the Block.
  • The Boogie Knights performed Gandalf Got Molested By a Balrog on their album of Mythic Distortions.
  • Paul Shanklin recorded a version for The Rush Limbaugh Show called "Grandma Got Run Over by Obama," referring to a speech Illinois Senator Barack Obama gave March 18, in which he said could no more disown Reverend Jeremiah Wright than he could his white grandmother. The song also references a March 20 interview in which Obama clarified the remark by saying that his grandmother was a "typical white person." It was first played on March 24.

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Edit made to this page by a user claiming to be Brooks
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