Elmo Shropshire - a.k.a DR. ELMO - is
best-known for his recording of "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer,"
the Christmas classic which has sold more than 10 million copies since
it was first broadcast by a San Francisco radio station in 1979.
Consistently the most requested holiday
song of the past two decades, "Grandma" has secured its place in
American pop culture and made Dr. Elmo the king of comedy carols.
Each December, radio stations throughout
the country call Dr. Elmo for his Christmas commentary and live on-air
renditions of "that Grandma song." With the quirky sing-a-long as
centerpiece, a radio visit from Dr. Elmo has become part of the
nation's holiday tradition.
As a whole new generation sings along,
Dr. Elmo continues to spread good cheer in his chats with disc jockeys
and their listeners all across America. Along the way, he has released
two CDs of seasonal satire, appeared on many television programs and
been the subject of numerous magazine and newspaper articles.
That this Lexington, Kentucky, native
would ride a reindeer to success is a slightly different scenario than
the namesake of famed jockey and horse trainer Elmo Shropshire might
have envisioned. After working alongside his father in the Bluegrass
State and at racetracks in Florida, the future Dr. Elmo earned his
degree in veterinary medicine and tended to the thoroughbreds of New
York's Aqueduct and Belmont Park racetracks.
A move to the San Francisco Bay Area,
where he established his own animal hospital, was his proverbial
changing of the horses in the middle of the stream. He became a
competitive runner. His bluegrass band performed in venues throughout
Northern California. And, in 1979, he came upon a little song written
by his friend Randy Brooks that everyone but Elmo agreed was one of the
weirdest Christmas songs they had ever heard.
"Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer"
immediately became a regional phenomenon. Picketed by ageism-protesting
Gray Panthers during a local performance, Elmo soon found himself
interviewed on the Bay Area's airwaves and beyond. His distinctive
voice led to castings and voice-overs in national advertising
campaigns. When MTV began airing the campy video of this
stranger-than-strange holiday song in 1983, it surpassed Bing Crosby's
"White Christmas" on Billboard's Christmas charts. The song and its
singer were off to the races.
Today, "Grandma" romps in the Marin
County fields of Laughing Stock Records, where it has sired numerous
songs included on the label's full-length CD releases "Up Your
Chimney,"
"Dr. Elmo's Twisted Christmas," "Love, Death and Taxes" and "Dr. Elmo's
Twisted Tunes."
Elmo is still running, too, maintaining a
25-mile weekly training schedule in the nearby hills. In the past year,
he was first in his age division at Silicon Valley's prestige Compaq
10K and finished second in the San Francisco and Humbolt half marathons.
Every Christmas, he dons his traditional
red and green silks and heads off for the holiday's annual run for the
roses. As December 25th approaches, Dr. Elmo and his "Grandma" song
come round the stretch and triumphantly gallop toward the finish line -
a yearly Christmas Eve performance where he is joined in the winner's
circle by fans, friends, family and band for a rousing celebration.
Dr. Elmo, D.V.M, has always known how to
nurture a long shot. More than twenty-five years after he first led it
to the starting gate, the dark horse song has won the Triple Crown.
“Hanky Panky,” “Mony
Mony,” “Crimson and Clover,” “Crystal Blue
Persuasion,” “Draggin’ The Line”, “I
Think We're Alone Now”, “Sweet Cherry Wine.” ...
The music of Tommy James is heard continuously, everyday, in
every country in the world: on the radio, television or a film
soundtrack. To date, he's sold over 100 million records and has been
awarded 23 gold singles plus nine gold and platinum albums.
Born Thomas Jackson on April 29, 1947 in Dayton, Ohio, his family
finally settled in Niles, Michigan, where he made his first stage
appearance as a child model at age four. In 1959 he formed his first
rock band, The Tornadoes, which developed a sizable regional following.
In 1964 a local DJ asked Tommy and the group to sign with his new
label, Snap Records. Among the four sides they recorded was an obscure
song written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich called “Hanky
Panky.” The group changed their name to "The Shondells" and
released it as a single. Although it was a local hit, it didn't break
nationally and was soon forgotten.
Amazingly, two years later, a copy of “Hanky Panky”
was discovered in a record bin by a Pittsburgh nightclub DJ who played
it at his weekend dances. The crowd response to it was so overwhelming
that radio deejays started spinning it and an enterprising record
distributor bootlegged it, selling 80,000 copies in ten days. By May of
1966 “Hanky Panky” was the number one record in Pittsburgh
and Tommy James was a sensation.
A Pittsburgh promoter tracked Tommy down at his home in Niles, told him
of the success tale of “Hanky Panky,” and urged him to
“come on down!” Unable to put the original group back
together, Tommy went alone and hired a hot local bar band to become the
Shondells. Two weeks later he and his new group signed a record deal
with Roulette Records in New York. The label, in turn, put their
promotion team to work on “Hanky Panky” and made it the
biggest hit of the summer of '66. Thus, began one of the longest
strings of nonstop hits in recording industry history.
The Shondells promptly followed “Hanky Panky” with
two more million selling singles - “Say I Am (What I Am)”
and “It’s Only Love” - and the Hanky Panky album,
which went gold just four weeks after its release.
With three hits under his belt, Tommy brought in producers Bo
Gentry and Ritchie Cordell who, over the next two years, produced seven
more back-to-back smash singles: “I Think We’re Alone
Now,” “Mirage,” “I Like The Way,”
“Gettin’ Together,” “Out Of The Blue,”
“Get Out Now,” and the party rock rave-up “Mony
Mony.” The Gentry/Cordell/James team also produced three platinum
albums: I Think We’re Alone Now, Something Special, and Mony Mony.
In 1968, Tommy and The Shondells became one of the first acts to
experiment with music videos, creating a mini-film around “Mony
Mony” for theatrical showings, thirteen years before MTV hit the
airwaves.
After spending three months on the road with Vice President Hubert
Humphrey's presidential campaign, TJ and company took the creative
reins of their career into their own hands by writing and producing
their next record, the groundbreaking “Crimson and Clover”
single and the accompanying album. Released in early 1969, it went
multi-platinum, and spawned two more monster hits for the group:
“Do Something To Me” and “Crystal Blur
Persuasion.” A fourth song from the LP, “Sugar On
Sunday,” rose high on the charts in a cover version by The
Clique.
The Shondells followed up the Crimson and Clover album with Cellophane
Symphony, which featured the newly developed Moog Synthesizer and
included yet another Top Ten single, “Sweet Cherry Wine.”
Tommy James and The Shondells were on a roll! Not only did the total
sales of “Sweet Cherry Wine” and the band’s other
three hits in 1969 top those of the Beatles that year, their second
volume of greatest hits - The Best Of Tommy James and The Shondells
(featuring “Ball of Fire”) – also appeared that year,
and ultimately sold over 10 million copies.
In 1970 the group released the gritty rock ‘n’ roll
Travelin’ album which contained the gold singles
“She” and “Gotta Get Back To You.” Thought by
many to be the band's best work, this innovative concept album was the
last LP Tommy made with The Shondells. After four hectic years, both he
and the band decided to take a break.
When Tommy returned, he did so as a solo act, writing and producing the
million selling single “Tighter, Tighter” for the group
Alive And Kickin'. Over the next four years Tommy scored an additional
12 chart singles, among them “Come To Me,” “Ball and
Chain,” “I’m Comin’ Home,” and
“Draggin’ The Line.” During that time he also
produced the albums Tommy James, Christian Of The World, and My Head,
My Bed And My Red Guitar; the latter of which he recorded in Nashville
with an all-star cast that featured ace guitarist Pete Drake and Elvis
Presley sidemen, Scotty Moore and DJ Fontana.
In 1974 Tommy left Roulette Records and released the In Touch and
Midnight Rider albums for San Francisco-based Fantasy Records.
Returning to the east coast in 1980, he signed with Millennium Records
and racked up three more chart singles, including the million selling
AC chart-topper “Three Times In Love.” In the 1990s, Tommy
formed Aura Records and racked up three Top Five AC hits from his Hold
The Fire studio album.
Meanwhile Tommy’s songs had become pop culture classics and were
being covered by everyone from punk rockers (Joan Jett and the
Blackhearts) to country icons (Dolly Parton). In 1987, Tiffany and
Billy Idol’s versions of “I Think We’re Alone
Now” and “Mony Mony” respectively battled for the top
spot on the pop chart for a solid month, each eventually going number
one. It was the first time in music history that two cover versions of
songs by the same artist went number one back-to-back.
As of 2011, over 300 artists have recorded their rendition of a
Tommy tune (among them Prince, R.E.M, Tom Jones, Cher, and Concrete
Blond) or performed his songs in concert (including Bruce Springsteen,
Kelly Clarkson, Santana, and Broken Bells).
Over the years, Tommy's music has graced countless movies, television
shows, and advertisements. Notable appearances on the big screen
include spots in Forrest Gump, Oliver Stone's Heaven And Earth, Cape
Fear, Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead, We Are Marshall, Pirate
Radio, and the 1999 summer blockbuster Austin Powers: The Spy Who
Shagged Me.
Small screen fans also caught “Draggin’ The Line” in
My Name Is Earl and Men Of A Certain Age, “Mony Mony” on
Boston Legal, “Sweet Cherry Wine” in Life On Mars, and
“I’m Alive” on Criminal Minds. TV viewers and
Tommy’s fans got a further treat when Kohl's chose
“Tighter, Tighter” and Mitsubishi used
“Draggin’ The Line” in major ad campaigns.
In 2008, Tommy marked the start of his fifth decade as a recording
artist with the release of the I Love Christmas CD. Along with the
title track – a holiday favorite with radio programmers
everywhere since its 2005 release – another instant TJ classic,
“It’s Christmas Again,” reunited Tommy with original
Shondells (Mike Vale, Eddie Gray, and Ronnie Rossman) on vocals.
Tommy also put out a career-spanning retrospective for his fans, 40
Years: The Complete Singles Collection (1966-2006), which included all
48 of his singles. In 2010 and 2011 UK-based Angel Air Records released
Tommy’s post-Roulette music internationally in Europe, Japan,
Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand and other countries.
In 2010, he headlined the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s annual
benefit gala, which raised a record-breaking two-hundred thousand-plus
dollars for the Hall’s educational and community activities.
While in Cleveland Tommy was the featured speaker at the Rock
Hall’s Legends Series, fielding questions from the audience as he
has done during his ongoing series of special music seminars at
colleges and universities, including Rutgers University and New York
University’s Tisch School of the Arts/The Clive Davis Department
of Recorded Music.
Last year Tommy’s autobiography – Me, The Mob and The Music
– became a bestseller for Simon & Schuster and garnered rave
reviews from Rolling Stone and Mojo magazine as well as Howard Stern,
Don Imus, Andrew Loog Oldham, and Dave Marsh.
This thrilling tale of Tommy’s career and his tumultuous
relationship with the “Godfather” of the music industry,
Morris Levy, will be brought to life on the Broadway stage with a
script penned by director, writer, and Oscar-nominated actor, Chazz
Palminteri. The production will feature some exciting new Tommy James
songs that will showcase yet another facet of his composing talents.
Me, the Mob and the Music is also in development as a major motion
picture to be produced by Barbara De Fina of Casino, Goodfellas, and
The Age of Innocence fame.
Recently Lyric Culture, a music-inspired lifestyle brand specializing
in designer clothing and jewelry, created a tank top highlighting the
lyrics for “Crimson and Clover” with more TJ-inspired
offerings planned for the future.
And…as if that weren’t enough…the Michigan State
legislature named Tommy a “Favorite Son” with a special
presentation honoring him on the senate floor.
Today, Tommy is busier than ever: performing to sell out crowds across
the country, working on his Broadway and Hollywood ventures, and
developing new business opportunities through his artist-based Aura
Entertainment Group.
“I Love Christmas” produced and released in 2008 has been
making perfect stocking stuffers for the past 3 Christmas's. The album
features both original Christmas songs written by Tommy and also some
of Tommy's favorite traditional Christmas Carols. Although Tommy adds
his unique style to the Traditional Carols, he still trys to preserve
the true essense of those good ole favorites we know and love. A
feature of the album is Tommy teaming up with three of the original
Shondells, which includes guitarist Eddie Gray, Bass Player Mike Vale,
and Keyboard player Ron Rosman, on several of the songs on the album.
This album is Christmas, a combination of love, passion, and the true
menaing of Christmas. The album also features Tommy reading the
Christmas Story from the book of Matthew. “I Love
Christmas” is available at Walmart, and other music stores,
online and at Tommy's website at
http://www.tommyjames.com
The CD makes a perfect Christmas perfect or Stocking Stuffer. You
don't even have to wrap it, the cover art resembles a perfect Christmas
Present!!!
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An Interview With
Nosakhere Bell
"Papa Soul"
Singer/Songwriter/Musician/Performer/Producer
Nosakhere Bell "Papa Soul" is a singer/writer/Producer in The Chicago,
Illinois area and He would like to share His voice with the world. He
likes to keep things exciting & fresh and He is always looking for
ways to share His music or network His products. He loves life and He
loves adventure, and He really enjoys new enlightening experiences. He
is, well,..creative. He has met many stars in His line of work. What He
realizes is that one thing we all have in common as stars & people
alike is our passion for life. Things we believe in, and the ability to
see the beauty & gifts in others. See Papa Soul Perform and Host
with exciting guest, Every Sat. on Comcast Cable Access ch. 19 @ 9:00pm
airing in over 100 cities in Illinois. You can always hear more
Nosakhere Bell "Papa Soul" by visiting his official site @ http://www.papasoullive.com
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An Interview With Emmanuelle Lo
Singer/Songwriter/Performer/Musician
Discussing Her Christmas Song - "Night of our Lives"
