Johnny Marks wrote the beloved holiday song, as well as “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” But he felt pigeonholed by the success of “Rudolph.”
There were “years of heartbreak,” the songwriter Johnny Marks once recalled of his start in the music business in 1935. He eventually found some modest success collaborating on a No. 1 hit for the Ink Spots, “Address Unknown,” and songs made popular by Bing Crosby and Glenn Miller. It was just enough renown for Billboard magazine to briefly note his decision to pause to volunteer for World War II in the spring of 1942, when he enlisted as a U.S. Army private.
“I was getting a little attention but with the war coming on I had to put it aside,” he told a radio broadcaster decades later. “And then 1949 and ‘Rudy’ came into my life.”
“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was recorded 75 years ago by the country-music singer and movie star Gene Autry, and quickly rocketed off on a flight that’s yet to land. It spent the last week of December 1949 as Billboard’s best-selling pop single and children’s record, and fourth best-selling country and western record; it was that week’s third most-played song on the radio and the fourth among jukeboxes, according to the magazine.
The next year, it was still dominant — this time against more than a dozen competing covers. By 1985, when Marks died at 75, there reportedly were some 500 versions that tallied 150 million records sold. Marks had sold as many as eight million copies of the sheet music and 25 million copies of orchestral and choral arrangements.
“If I told you today how much money I made on Rudolph,” the songwriter told The Associated Press in 1958, “my kids would be kidnapped tomorrow.”
