Rudolph Almost Didn’t Get a Chance to ‘Glow’

Each year, at some point amid the food, fun, family and festivities between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I have a tendency to find myself a quiet place, settle in with a cup of coffee and a fine cigar and take a walk back through some old holiday memories.

This year I wandered across Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and singing cowboy legend Gene Autry.

As a TV news reporter in Dallas in the 1980s, I was assigned to interview Mr. Autry – or, as he told me with his famous smile, “It’s Gene. That’s what my friends call me.”

Now, like millions of kids, I grew up hearing his hit songs on the radio or listening to them when his movies came on TV, like Back in the Saddle, Again and South of the Border-Down Mexico Way. In these classic old cowboy movies, the good guys always wore white hats and Gene never had to kill a bad guy. If he had to use his six-shooter, it was just to nick them with a “flesh wound” to the hand to disarm them. 

Of course, his Christmas songs like Here Comes Santa Claus and Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town were at the top of the music charts. But none were better known than Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. In fact, most music recording stats show Rudolph was his biggest hit of all and second in popularity only to White Christmas by Bing Crosby.

So, naturally, when we sat down in Dallas to talk, I wanted to know about Rudolph. It turns out it was his wife who urged Gene to record what would become a Christmas classic.

Gene had already selected most of the songs for his 1949 Christmas album, including Here Comes Santa Claus – a song he wrote after riding in the 1946 Santa Claus Lane Christmas Parade in Hollywood and hearing all of the children along the parade route yelling “Here comes Santa Claus.”

But when Gene and his producer Art Satherly needed one more song to round out the album, Gene’s wife suggested Rudolph.

“I didn’t really think much of it either way,” Gene told me. “But she liked the story it told and the moral it taught.”

Gene was big on teaching morals and values to his many fans, especially the younger ones. He quickly realized how the kids that the album was aimed at could relate to Rudolph and his situation – and how the song would illustrate the love, understanding and compassion that should not only be a part of the season, but a part of life every day of the year.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was written by Johnny Marks, a very successful song writer who had penned several Christmas classics, including I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day for Bing Crosby as well as Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree for Brenda Lee and even Holly Jolly Christmas that became a huge hit for Burl Ives as the finale number for the 1964 TV production of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

It was a story that Gene would tell again and again in various interviews – after all, everyone wanted to know the story behind Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  But Gene Autry had a knack for making everyone he talked with feel like a friend and each conversation seem unique.

We talked about a few other things, discussed the upcoming Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo and even compared cowboy boots.

Yep. I was wearing cowboy boots – and still do.

And we talked about the people he worked with like Johnny Marks as well as his old buddy, Smiley Burnette.  A comedic “sidekick” in Gene's movies, Smiley was - by his own right - an accomplished songwriter and singer who later went on to play the train engineer on the TV show Petticoat Junction during the 1960s. 

When we ended the interview, Gene, who was using a walking cane by those days, switched hands with his cane, shook my hand with a firm grip and said “Good to meet ya’, Randy. We’ll see you on down the trail.”

I kid you not, that’s what he said - and I thought it was cool. After all, he was the Singing Cowboy and we were both Texans. 

Talking with Gene Autry was, indeed, like talking with an old friend and has been a favorite Christmas memory of mine ever since.