By Eileen Moon
RED BANK – On Monday, Dec. 16 and Tuesday, Dec. 17, Holiday Express will present its annual benefit concerts at the Count Basie Center for the Arts.
The concerts help to fund the visits that the nonprofit organization’s musicians and other volunteers make to hospitals, homeless shelters, residential centers for the disabled and other places serving people who could use a little human kindness during the holidays.
For many Two River families, attending the Holiday Express benefit concert is as much a part of their holiday tradition as hanging Christmas stockings for Santa to fill.
You never know who is going to turn up onstage with the band – and it’s never the same show twice.
A couple of years ago, a guitar-toting, spangled-costumed 82-year-old champion runner and veterinarian from San Francisco joined the cast. It happened when Holiday Express founder and bandleader Tim McLoone pretended that he was inviting a random member of the audience up to sing “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer” with the band.
In reality, Dr. Elmo Shropshire was a ringer, with more than a half century of performing behind him and likely several more years at the top of his game yet to go.
“He’s the real deal,” said McLoone.
Shropshire had never sung “Rudolph” in concert before, he said. But once he was on stage with McLoone, there was no turning back. The surprise came as Dr. Elmo donned his spangled jacket, grabbed his guitar and launched into “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” instead of “Rudolph.”
“The place loved it,” said McLoone.
See, Shropshire is the man responsible for recording the silly if slightly horrifying Christmas song back in the 1980s.
“Grandma got run over by a reindeer
Walking home from our house Christmas Eve… You can say there’s no such thing as Santa,
But as for me and Grandpa, we believe.”
2019 marks the 40th anniversary of the debut of “Grandma,” a song some people considered so bad when they first heard it that they called their local radio station to complain.
There was something pretty catchy about it, though – so catchy, in fact, that Dr. Elmo’s recording of “Grandma” knocked Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” off the charts in 1982 and outsold Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” – if only for the month of December, Shropshire points out.
“It’s a little demented,” says Holiday Express founder and bandleader Tim McLoone. But he means that in the best possible way.
It was Holiday Express vocalist Layonne Holmes who first encountered Shropshire while she was performing in “Holidelic,” a “funky Christmas show” at the Paramount in Asbury Park a few years ago.
Holmes and Shropshire hit if off immediately. “I told him, if you ever want to perform for charity, let me know.”
When the holiday season came around the following year, Shropshire was ready – although he didn’t quite know what he was in for. When he and his wife Pam arrived at the Count Basie for the annual benefit concert, they were completely taken by surprise.
And after a few trips with the band to the homeless shelters, long-term care centers, veterans’ organizations and children’s hospitals where Holiday Express brightens the holidays for people in need every year, Elmo and Pam were all in.
“He really got Holiday Express right away,” Holmes said.
It’s just one more surprise in a lifetime of surprises since “Grandma” hit the airwaves. He’d learned the song from the man who wrote it, Randy Brooks, while playing with his bluegrass band at a Lake Tahoe casino.
Brooks, who was in another band that had been performing there, said he had a song that his own band hated for him to play and offered it to Shropshire.
He wasn’t crazy about the song at first, but he decided to record it as a gag gift for friends and family over the holidays. “I didn’t have any grandiose ideas,” he said. “I had 500 copies made, which was the least you could press.”
Somehow, one of those records made its way to San Francisco DJ Steve Nelson, who played it to decidedly mixed reviews. In fact, a number of listeners called in to ask him not to play it.
So, Nelson told his audience that if 50 people called to request it, he’d play it again. They did.
Shropshire heard it on the radio while he was driving to work.
“My first thought was I sounded terrible. It was only a demo – just me, my guitar and a bass.”
Nevertheless, he said, “All hell broke loose.”
For the remainder of the holiday season, “Grandma” was a local hit.
It was all over by Dec. 26 – or so they thought. The next year, DJs around the country began airing tapes they’d made of the song from Shropshire’s demo.
Record companies he contacted were unimpressed, so he made a deal with a distribution company in Nashville that was willing to make 250,000 copies of the song. “It was one of those deals where, if they don’t sell, you buy them back and they end up in your garage,” he said. “We sold out all 250,000 copies.”
Then he got the idea to make a video based on the song, which he and a few of his family and friends made at home for $30,000.
“I played Grandpa,” Elmo said.
Then MTV called. “We really think it’s great and we want to play it,” they told him.
Columbia Epic Records soon turned up with a distribution deal. “I made a whole album,” Shropshire said. That year, Columbia sold more than 500,000 singles and 200,000 copies of his album.
Forty years later, “Grandma” still makes the rounds at Christmastime, a holiday classic of sorts.
The song has brought Elmo many opportunities. Fifteen years after its release, he was invited to perform with Bobby Helms, famous for “Jingle Bell Rock,” and with Brenda Lee, whose song, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” is a holiday evergreen.
“I got to be her opening act on a Christmas tour,” he said.
The “Grandma” song has also been made into an animated video that airs on the Cartoon Channel.
While the fate of Grandma is a little up in the air in the original song, in the film and animated video version, she actually survives her collision with the reindeer and lives, we hope, happily ever after. Holiday Express is one more blessing that “Grandma” has brought to Shropshire and his wife.
“I plan to play as many Holiday Express things as they allow me to,” he said. “I never had as much fun playing music in my life. Pam and I are absolutely overwhelmed by that organization. All of the people connected with Holiday Express have so much talent and such great, good vibes. We love being around them.”
