Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer-The Man Behind the Song

Dr. Elmo Shropshire

Veterinarian Dr. Elmo Shropshire, who grew up in Ocala during its halcyon equestrian days, became part of a Christmas novelty song that has become one of the most-played every season. This is the true-life story of the holiday classic...

BY JAMES BLEVINS • PHOTOS BY PAM WENDELL

The year is 1979. Ronald Reagan is gearing up for his third presidential campaign (it would turn out to be the charm). The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (or ESPN) is launching its first cable news channel. The sci-fi horror masterpiece “Alien” is scaring up big box-office returns on silver screens all across the country. And a twisted little Christmas song about a grandmother’s ill-fated collision with a reindeer in the snow is just beginning to make the rounds among San Francisco’s elite group of disc jockeys, building up some rather unexpected momentum.

Twelve million copies later, “Grandma Got Run Over by A Reindeer” has fast become one of the few, relatively new songs to enter the touted Christmas musical canon in recent memory, a song as equally clever and concise in concept as it is bizarre and irreverent in content. Love it or loathe it, it’s a song with the legs to stick around, as it has proven time and time again over the last 40 years. But despite all the success with “Grandma” being a household song around the holidays, very few people seem to know the name of the song’s recording artist (pssst it’s Dr. Elmo Shropshire), or even less well-known, that this very same recording artist once called Ocala his home.

The year is 1952. Elmo Shropshire is 14. He has just moved to Ocala from Kentucky with his parents. His father, and namesake, who had once been a famous jockey and horse trainer in his own right, took a job as farm manager at Dickey Stables. Elmo works at the stables with his dad as an exercise boy, walking and riding the horses and helping to oversee their foaling.

“This was back when Ocala was in its thoroughbred infancy,” remembers Elmo, now 83, during a phone interview recorded earlier this year, “back before people realized how great a place Ocala was for breeding and training horses. They thought it was only Kentucky!”

Before graduating from Ocala High School in 1955, Elmo crossed paths with another famous former Ocala resident: Needles, the first Florida-bred racehorse to win the Kentucky Derby in 1956.

“When he was a yearling,” says Elmo, “I used to walk and ride Needles.” After a few years of riding horses and soaking up the Florida vibe, Elmo quickly grew to love his new hometown, and Ocala was ready to love him back. “It is an absolutely wonderful, beautiful place,” reminisces Elmo of Ocala. “Throughout my life, my memories of Ocala are full of the most welcoming, warm, and loving group of people I’ve ever been around.”

In 1958, Elmo would face personal tragedy, losing both of his parents in an automobile accident, leaving him alone to support himself. In stepped two of his best friends, brothers Lanny and Craig Curry, along with their family, who took the bereaved Elmo in and gave him a new home.

“They told me I was welcome to stay for as long as I needed,” says Elmo. “They were kind of my family and a wonderful influence on my life.”

The Curry family encouraged Elmo to go to college, and he did, graduating from the University of Florida in 1960. “None of my folks ever went to college,” explains Elmo. “And when I graduated, I expected to go back to Ocala and be an exercise boy on a horse ranch and live a life like that. But I did really love to see the veterinarians work with the horses.”

So off he went to study veterinary medicine at Auburn University, graduating in 1964. He would go on to work for a short time in Miami, then in New York at Aqueduct, Belmont Park, and Saratoga racetracks as a staff veterinarian in 1966 and 1967. But Elmo came to find that little about this specific work satisfied him. He wanted a change, so he moved to San Francisco in 1968 and opened up his own veterinary hospital.

Also around this same time, he started learning to play the banjo. Before long he was playing in bluegrass bands and fast becoming a key member of the burgeoning San Francisco bluegrass musical movement of the early 1970s. “I just did it as a hobby,” claims Elmo. “I knew I could never make a living at it.”

Despite improving as a banjo player, Elmo noticed something about his singing that needed to be reconciled with.

“I was such a terrible singer,” admits Elmo. “But when I sang funny songs, nobody cared. If you sing funny songs, it’s not like you’re going to be compared to Frank Sinatra!”

Then one night in 1978 came a fortuitous storm and a fortuitous meeting with a man who would introduce Elmo to the song that would change his life. “I got a job playing at the Hyatt Hotel in Lake Tahoe at the casino,” recalls Elmo. “And the same day, there was a huge blizzard. The other band that was there was Randy Brooks’ band. They couldn’t leave because of the blizzard, so they came to see our show.”

Brooks, a songwriter, performer, and fellow former-Kentuckian, recognized something kindred in Elmo’s performance immediately.

“Afterwards,” says Elmo, “Randy was like, ‘You sure write a lot of funny songs. I have a song that I think would be perfect for you.’ He said, ‘My band never wants to play it.’ He gets his guitar and plays me ‘Grandma Got Run Over by A Reindeer,’ and I thought, ‘Wow! That’s a fantastic song, cleverly written.’” Soon after leaving Lake Tahoe, Elmo had it in his mind to record Brooks’ song. He admits that most people close to him at the time didn’t seem to understand his feelings on the song, but he just believed there was something there. “I recorded it the following spring,” says Elmo, “and in the fall of 1979, I made 500 vinyl 45s—that was the smallest we could make—to sell at shows. I gave some copies of the song to some of my friends. I guess my thought process was that maybe something would happen.”

Totally unbeknownst to Elmo, one of the friends he gave a copy of the “Grandma” vinyl to was friends with legendary San Francisco disc jockey Gene Nelson.

“One day I was at work at my hospital,” remembers Elmo, “and Gene Nelson is on the radio and he says, ‘We played this song a little while ago and everyone said they didn’t like it, but if we get 50 requests for it, we’ll play it again.’ Then a little later on he goes, ‘Okay. We got 50 requests for it. We’ll play it.’ And there was my song on the radio. I couldn’t believe it! My favorite guy in the world is playing my song. And the first thing I could think of was, ‘Oh my God! I sound terrible!’”

Over the next four years, the song continued to gain traction. More and more DJs up and down the California coast were clamoring for a copy to play on their airwaves around the holidays. Then, in 1983, Elmo sold his hospital. He used the $30,000 from the sale to shoot a music video for the “Grandma” song.

“We completely gutted my house making room for film equipment and lights,” says Elmo. “We spent an entire week setting up for it, and then we spent two 16-hour days shooting for that three-minute video.

“When it was over,” continues Elmo, “I was kind of devastated. Because I was thinking, ‘Have I gone crazy?’ We weren’t selling anything yet. We weren’t making any money. There were no records in the stores. I was wondering what I had done.”

At first, it had seemed like Elmo had gone crazy. December was fast approaching and nothing had happened yet. “But then,” says Elmo, “there was this man-and-wife team based out of Nashville who said they wanted to distribute the song and pressed 250,000 copies.”

After that, everything happened at once. MTV picked up the video and started playing it around the clock during December 1983. The song started selling.

“All the radio stations got wind of it and we sold that whole pressing,” says Elmo. “This all happened in two to three weeks. Not long after, the song went to number one, beating out Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas.’”

The following year, Epic Records, a division of Sony, approached Elmo to distribute the song even wider. “Grandma” would soon after become one of the top-selling records of 1984, peaking at Number 92 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart.

“Mind you,” reminds Elmo, “we had Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ to contend with at that time.”

The rest is Christmas music history. “I’m very proud of that song,” states Elmo. “We worked really hard to make that song work. And it’s palpable. That song has a life of its own.”

Nowadays, Elmo, and his wife, Pamela Wendell, split their time between New York City, where he plays shows with his band Holiday Express, and Novato, California, where he works on his publishing business and runs competitively as a nationally ranked long-distance runner.

As far as retirement goes, Elmo claims to have a rather funny take on the subject. He doesn’t exactly plan on doing it so much as redefining what it means to him to be retired in the first place.

“I absolutely can’t wait to go out for a run. I can’t wait to go to competitions and get ready for them,” asserts Elmo. “And I love playing music. I feel like if you stop doing stuff, it’s not a healthy thing at all.

“Nobody makes you retire,” continues Elmo with a smile in his voice. “You have to find something that you love to do and make that your retirement. Then it won’t feel like retirement.”

The year is 2019. Another presidential election is on the horizon. ESPN is broadcasting on smart phones in a multitude of different channels. Ridley Scott has made two (count ‘em, two) different prequels to his original “Alien” film (with, it would be fair to say, mostly mixed results). And that very same twisted little Christmas song about a grandmother and her run-in with a reindeer is improbably celebrating its 40th anniversary this December as the holiday earworm that just won’t quit.

Every once in a while, Elmo—the song’s original, equally-as-improbable recording artist—returns to visit his hometown of Ocala (the one very few people know he’s from) and visits the Currys. And he visits his childhood memories of the “warm, loving people” who accepted him at a time when he needed it most.

It sounds like a story good enough for a song, which begs an interesting question: What would be the title of a Dr. Elmo Shropshire song about Ocala? “I haven’t thought about that too much,” admits Elmo after a lengthy laugh, “but I guess I’d have to call that song ‘Ocala: The Land of Sunshine and Good Juju.’ Because that’s what it was for me.”

Grandma Lives—Literally!

In the music video, Grandma survives the accident— unlike in the actual song—and reappears toward the end of the video alive and well but somewhat disoriented by the trampling.

The 2000 animated TV special (pictured above) is obviously made for children, so Grandma survives. Moreover, Santa is innocent of the crime, which was instead masterminded by Cousin Mel, mentioned briefly in the song. Elmo Shropshire narrates the special and voices Grandpa. The special is a staple of Cartoon Network’s holiday programming.