'Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer' Celebrates 30 Years

Dec. 12, 2009— -- Just over 30 years ago, up in the mountains of Lake Tahoe, Calif., two musicians embarked on a journey they had never dreamed of -- creating a one-hit Christmas wonder. "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" is a single that has not just received a gold record but platinum, and it is one of the most downloaded ring tones during the holiday season.

Randy Brooks and Dr. Elmo Shropshire met in 1979 while playing with their bands around the holiday season. For most of Brooks' life, songwriting was just a hobby, a creative outlet. He found inspiration from Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan.

One Christmas season, he was listening to Merle Haggard's "Grandma's Homemade Christmas" in which family members anxiously await grandma's card because of its beauty, and he found himself getting a little annoyed. He realized more than halfway through the song grandma died.

"I got angry and said, 'Merle, that's so unfair to do to people,'" Brooks said. "If you were half the songwriter you think you are, you would admit in the first line of the song that grandma was dead and then if you could come up with three verses and a chorus you'd really have something. So that was my exercise, a parody of a Merle Haggard song."

He reflected on his own childhood memories to add color to the song.

"My grandmother did like to drink herself happy on occasions, and we did worry about her leaving the house," Brooks said.

Not long after the duo sang together on stage, Dr. Elmo, as the former veterinarian likes to be called, laid it to vinyl.

"I thought if I record this song as a gag gift, my friends will think it's funny," Dr. Elmo said. So I made a recording of it, I think, in March of 1979, and then in December of '79 a friend of mine took one of those 45 RPM records to a disc jockey in San Francisco named Gene Nelson."

Nelson, who worked at KSFO 560am, picked up the 45 and just laughed. He liked to find those kooky records in the pile, tunes that were offbeat and satirical.

"It was around the Christmas season and here's this record 'Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.' So I listened to it and I thought, 'Aw, yeah.' I just thought it was hilarious, so I played it," Nelson said.

Nelson, who's been retired for 15 years, said he'd never seen such an immediate response. The phones rang off the hook, listeners wondered where could they get a copy of the song, and would Nelson play it again?