YouTube Gold: Run Rudolph Run

Chuck Berry’s classic Christmas song

Whatever else you want to say about him, and people have said many things and not all of it is good - the man had some terrible flaws - but Chuck Berry is an absolute American original.

When he first got into music, much like Little Richard and James Brown, he idolized Louis Jordan, an amazing talent of the late 1930’s through the early 1950’s.

Berry wanted to have a band like Jordan’s Timpany Five, and if you flip the beat of a lot of his songs, you could easily imagine a band like Jordan’s playing them.

But when rock and roll came along, Berry’s incredible energy could no be contained. He exploded into rock and roll like a super nova. Songs like Johnny B. Goode, Mabellene and Roll Over Beethoven still cast a long shadow over popular music. His lesser-known work from the late ‘60’s, including songs like Tulane, were rhythmically similar but the lyrics dealt with much more mature material. It’s not at all the teeny bopper stuff of his early years. If you’ve never explored that era of Berry’s music, you really should. It’s incredible.

But al of his songs were fun, including his best Christmas song, Run Rudolph Run which is about you-know-who.

It’s one of the most fun Christmas songs ever written and none have a better beat and momentum than this one.