"Run, Rudolph, Run" is a Christmas song popularized by Chuck Berry

Chuck Berry

Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" , "Roll Over Beethoven" , "Rock and Roll Music" and "Johnny B...

 and written by Johnny Marks and Marvin Brodie and published by St. Nicholas Music (ASCAP). The song was first recorded by Berry in 1958 and released as Chess Records 1714. It hit #69 in the Billboard Hot 100.

Even though the song was written by Johnny Marks and Marvin Brodie and published by Johnny Marks' publishing company, St. Nicholas Music, the 1958 45 rpm has the song as written by "C. Berry Music & M. Brodie". The thought was to cover up the known Christmas songwriter Johnny Marks from hip R&B DJs and buyers. The song was subsequently officially always listed as written by Johnny Marks and Marvin Brodie and published by St. Nicholas Music (ASCAP). All cover versions of the song show the composers as Johnny Marks and Marvin Brodie and the publisher as St. Nicholas Music.

Berry's recording of the song bears a close sonic resemblance to Berry's hit "Little Queenie".

This song was covered by Conan O'Brien along with Jimmy Viviano and the Basic Cable Band, Emily Osment

Emily Osment

Emily Jordan Osment is an American teen actress, singer-songwriter and voice actress born in Los Angeles, California. After working in several television films in her childhood, she gained fame for co-starring as Gerti Giggles in Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams and Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over...

, Lynyrd Skynyrd

Lynyrd Skynyrd

Lynyrd Skynyrd is an American rock band prominent in spreading Southern Rock during the 1970s.Originally formed as the "Noble Five" in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1964, the band rose to worldwide recognition on the basis of its driving live performances and signature tune, Freebird...

, Sister Hazel

Sister Hazel

Sister Hazel are an alternative rock band from Gainesville, Florida, whose style also blends elements of folk rock, pop, classic rock 'n' roll and southern rock. Their music is characterized by highly melodic tunes and generally optimistic lyrics. The band's instrumentation often features abrupt...

, Billy Ray Cyrus

Billy Ray Cyrus

William "Billy" Ray Cyrus is an American country music singer, songwriter, actor and philanthropist, who helped make country music a worldwide phenomenon...

, Five Easy Pieces

Five Easy Pieces

Five Easy Pieces is a 1970 American drama film written by Carole Eastman and Bob Rafelson, and directed by Rafelson. The film stars Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, and Susan Anspach. The cast also includes Billy 'Green' Bush, Fannie Flagg, Ralph Waite, Sally Struthers, Lois Smith, Toni Basil, and...

, Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons

Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons

Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons were an Australian blues and rock music band which featured singer, songwriter and saxophonist, Joe Camilleri . The band was active in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and had several Australian chart hits, including "Hit and Run", "Shape I'm In" and "All I Wanna Do"...

, Dave Edmunds

Dave Edmunds

David 'Dave' Edmunds is a Welsh singer, guitarist and record producer. Although he is primarily associated with Pub rock and New Wave, and had numerous hits in the 1970s and early 1980s, his natural leaning has always been towards 1950s style rock and roll.-Early bands:As a teenager Edmunds first...

, Hanson

Hanson (band)

Hanson are an American pop rock band formed in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by brothers Isaac , Taylor , and Zac Hanson . They are best known for the 1997 hit song "MMMBop" from their major label debut album Middle of Nowhere, which earned three Grammy nominations...

, Sheryl Crow

Sheryl Crow

Sheryl Suzanne Crow is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, musician, and actress. Her music incorporates elements of rock, folk, hip hop, country and pop...

, Bryan Adams

Bryan Adams

Bryan Adams, is a Canadian rock singer-songwriter, guitarist, bassist, producer, actor and photographer. Adams has won dozens of awards and nominations, including 20 Juno Awards among 56 nominations. He has also received 15 Grammy Award nominations including a win for Best Song Written...

, Lulu

Lulu (singer)

Lulu Kennedy-Cairns, OBE , best known by her stage name Lulu, is a Scottish singer, actress, and television personality who has been successful in the entertainment business from the 1960s through to the present day...

, Click Five, The Grateful Dead, Keith Richards

Keith Richards

Keith Richards is an English musician, songwriter, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine said Richards had created "rock's greatest single body of riffs", and placed him as the "10th greatest guitarist of all time." Fourteen songs written by Richards and songwriting...

, Brinsley Schwarz

Brinsley Schwarz

Brinsley Schwarz were a 1970s English pub rock band, named after their guitarist Brinsley Schwarz. With Nick Lowe on bass and vocals, keyboardist Bob Andrews and drummer Billy Rankin, the band evolved from the 1960s pop band Kippington Lodge.-Formation:...

, Jimmy Buffett

Jimmy Buffett

James William "Jimmy" Buffett is a singer-songwriter, author, entrepreneur, and film producer. He is best known for his music, which often portrays an "island escapism" lifestyle. Together with his Coral Reefer Band, Buffett's musical hits include "Margaritaville" , and "Come Monday"...

, Foghat

Foghat

Foghat are a British rock band that had their peak success in the mid- to late-1970s. Their style can be described as "blues-rock," or boogie-rock dominated by electric and electric slide guitar. The band has achieved five gold records...

, Paul Brandt

Paul Brandt

Paul Rennée Belobersycky is a Canadian country music artist, known professionally as Paul Brandt. Growing up in Calgary, he was a pediatric RN at the time of his big break...

, The Tractors

The Tractors

The Tractors is an American country rock band composed of a loosely associated group of musicians, headed by guitarist Steve Ripley. Under the band's original lineup, The Tractors was signed to Arista Records in 1994, releasing their self-titled debut album that year; the album went on to become...

, Dwight Yoakam

Dwight Yoakam

Dwight David Yoakam is an American singer-songwriter, actor and film director, most famous for his pioneering country music...

, Reverend Horton Heat, Hanoi Rocks

Hanoi Rocks

Hanoi Rocks was a Finnish rock band formed in 1979, whose most successful period came in the early 1980s. The band broke up in 1985 after the death of their drummer, Nicholas "Razzle" Dingley...

, Billy Idol

Billy Idol

William Michael Albert Broad , better known by his stage name Billy Idol, is an English rock musician. A member of the Bromley Contingent of Sex Pistols fans, Idol first achieved fame in the punk rock era as a member of the band Generation X...

, Luke Bryan

Luke Bryan

Thomas Luther "Luke" Bryan is an American country singer who debuted in 2007 with the single "All My Friends Say", a Top 5 single on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. His debut album, I'll Stay Me, was released on Capitol Records in 2007. This album also produced chart singles in "We Rode in...

, Brian Setzer Orchestra, Joe Perry

Joe Perry (musician)

Anthony Joseph "Joe" Perry is the lead guitarist, backing and occasional lead vocalist, and contributing songwriter for the rock band Aerosmith. He is influenced by many rock artists especially The Rolling Stones and The Beatles...

, Los Lonely Boys

Los Lonely Boys

Los Lonely Boys is a Chicano rock power trio from San Angelo, Texas. They play a style of music they call "Texican Rock n' Roll," combining elements of rock and roll, Texas blues, brown eyed soul, country, and Tejano....

, the cast of Broadway's Million Dollar Quartet

Million Dollar Quartet

"Million Dollar Quartet" is the name given to recordings made on Tuesday December 4, 1956 in the Sun Record Studios in Memphis, Tennessee. The recordings were of an impromptu jam session among Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash. It was arguably the first...

, The Yobs, Vincent Martella

Vincent Martella

Vincent Michael Martella is an American teen actor and singer. He is best known for his role as Greg Wuliger on the UPN/CW sitcom Everybody Hates Chris, and for the voice of Phineas Flynn in Disney Channel's original animated show Phineas and Ferb...

 (as his character, Phineas Flynn

Phineas Flynn

Phineas Flynn is the main protagonist of the animated television series Phineas and Ferb. Voiced by Vincent Martella and created and designed by Dan Povenmire, Phineas first appeared along with the rest of the series' main characters in the pilot episode "Rollercoaster." Phineas, along with his...

, from Phineas and Ferb

Phineas and Ferb

Phineas and Ferb is an American animated television comedy series. Originally broadcast as a preview on August 17, 2007, on Disney Channel, the series follows Phineas Flynn and his English stepbrother Ferb Fletcher on summer vacation. Every day the boys embark on some grand new project, which...

), the muppet

The Muppets

The Muppets are a group of puppet characters created by Jim Henson starting in 1954–55. Although the term is often used to refer to any puppet that resembles the distinctive style of The Muppet Show, the term is both an informal name and legal trademark owned by the Walt Disney Company in reference...

 band Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem

Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem

Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem is the name of a Muppet rock band of The Muppet Show. Following The Muppet Show, they appeared in various Muppet movies and television specials, and have also recorded album tracks. Dr. Teeth and Animal were designed by Jim Henson, while the rest of the original...

 as well as a one-off supergroup

Supergroup (music)

In the late 1960s, the term supergroup was coined to describe "a rock music group whose performers are already famous from having performed individually or in other groups"....

 consisting of Lemmy Kilmister

Lemmy Kilmister

Ian Fraser "Lemmy" Kilmister is an English heavy metal musician....

, Billy Gibbons

Billy Gibbons

William Frederick "Billy" Gibbons is an American musician, actor and car customizer, best known as the guitarist of the Texas blues-rock band ZZ Top. He is also the lead singer and composer for many of the band's songs. Gibbons is known for playing his Gretsch Billy Bo guitar and his famous 1959...

, and Dave Grohl

Dave Grohl

David Eric "Dave" Grohl is an American rock musician, multi-instrumentalist, and singer-songwriter who is the lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter for Foo Fighters; the former drummer for Nirvana and Scream; and the current drummer for Them Crooked Vultures...

 for the 2008 album We Wish You a Metal Xmas and a Headbanging New Year

We Wish you a Metal Xmas and a Headbanging New Year

We Wish You A Metal Xmas And A Headbanging New Year is a compilation album of Christmas songs played by an all-star collection of hard rock and metal artists...

.

Chart performance

Chuck Berry's original 1958 recording charted on the Billboard Hot 100

Billboard Hot 100

The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...

 in 1958, reaching a peak of #69. The only other recording to have charted in the U.S. was by country music

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

 artist Luke Bryan

Luke Bryan

Thomas Luther "Luke" Bryan is an American country singer who debuted in 2007 with the single "All My Friends Say", a Top 5 single on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. His debut album, I'll Stay Me, was released on Capitol Records in 2007. This album also produced chart singles in "We Rode in...

, whose late 2008 rendition peaked at #42 on the Hot Country Songs

Hot Country Songs

Hot Country Songs is a chart published weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States.This 60-position chart lists the most popular country music songs, calculated weekly mostly by airplay and occasionally commercial sales...

 charts. Berry's version also made the 1963 UK list, peaking at #36.

Chuck Berry

Chart (1958)	Peak position
U.S. Billboard Hot 100	69
Chart (1963)	Peak position
UK Singles Chart	36

Luke Bryan

Chart (2008—2009)	Peak position
U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs	42

In the media

"Run, Rudolph, Run" has been played in many movies, including:

• Cast Away
  Cast Away
  Cast Away is a 2000 drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks as a FedEx employee stranded on an uninhabited island after his plane crashes in the South Pacific. The film depicts his successful attempts to survive on the island using remnants of his plane's cargo, as well as his...
  
  
• Diner
  Diner (film)
  Diner is a 1982 comedy-drama film written and directed by Barry Levinson. Levinson's screen directing debut, Diner is the first in his "Baltimore films", which also include the subsequent Tin Men, Avalon and Liberty Heights.-Plot:...
  
  
• Home Alone
  Home Alone
  Home Alone is a 1990 American Christmas comedy film written and produced by John Hughes and directed by Chris Columbus. The film stars Macaulay Culkin as Kevin McCallister, an eight-year-old boy, who is mistakenly left behind when his family flies to Paris for their Christmas vacation...
  
  
• Jingle All The Way
  Jingle All the Way
  Jingle All the Way is a 1996 American family comedy film directed by Brian Levant and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sinbad, Phil Hartman, Rita Wilson, Jake Lloyd, James Belushi and Robert Conrad...
  
  
• The Santa Clause 2
  The Santa Clause 2
  The Santa Clause 2 is a 2002 American comedy film and the sequel to the 1994 film, The Santa Clause. All the principal actors from the first film reprise their roles, except for Peter Boyle, who returns portraying a different minor character...
  
  
• Stealing Christmas
  Stealing Christmas
  Stealing Christmas is a TV movie starring Tony Danza and Lea Thompson. It premiered on USA Network in 2003. As of 2009, it was shown in the 25 Days of Christmas programming block on ABC Family, but it was not part of the block in 2010.-Plot:...
  
  
• Deck the Halls