This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:
Songs This article is within the scope of WikiProject Songs, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of songs on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SongsWikipedia:WikiProject SongsTemplate:WikiProject Songssong articles

It is requested that a photograph be included in this article to improve its quality. The external tool WordPress Openverse may be able to locate suitable images on Flickr and other web sites.

Upload

Um, am I the only one who remembers the great cover of "Run, Rudolph, Run" by Keith Richards? It came out in 1979, and I don't think I saw it in that endless cover list. It surely deserves its own paragraph. Shocking Blue ( talk) 13:31, 27 November 2019 (UTC) reply

Can someone please answer me this?

The song was released in 1958. The original authors of the song listed on the first release were: Chuck Berry and Marvin Brodie.

https://archive.ph/9dHJM

In subsequent releases, the authorship changed to Johnny Marks and Marvin Brodie. In other words, Chuck Berry did not play a part in either the music or lyrics.

One year later: 1959.

Chuck Berry releases his musically identical song, " Little Queenie". The only thing different about it are the lyrics. The writing credits for "Little Queenie" are: Chuck Berry.

How can Chuck Berry have been the sole songwriter of the song "Little Queenie", if he was not at all involved in composing the musically identical song "Run Rudolph Run"?

You can't have it both ways.

Then, it gets stranger.

I can not find a single thing anywhere about this "Marvin Brodie"- the listed co-songwriter for "Run Rudolph Run". Nothing. The only thing he ever did in his life, apparently, was be involved in the song "Run Rudolph Run".

So, did Chuck Berry write the song "Run Rudolph Run" from scratch: Both the lyrics and the music. But, for legal reasons, as sometimes happens (see Santa Baby), they had to credit the song to a fake, made up, second songwriter? Perhaps this was related to the fact they knew there might be problems using the name of "Rudolph".

Then, at some point, they went after Berry, or more specifically, the song-writing royalties, since the song was about "Rudolph", which Johnny Marks had been the songwriter for of the song Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer just a decade previously. Thus, they removed Berry's name from the credits altogether.

Which, could have been why Berry decided to create a musically identical song Little Queenie one year later, in 1959, in order to get songwriting royalties on what was, in reality, a good, original musical composition of his.

Also note: in the song Run Rudolph Run, he references "Randolph". Who is Randolph? Why? Apparently, there was a song from several years earlier about "Randolph". Could this be where it was from? Or, could Berry have been trying to distance the song from being too much like Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer?

Then, there is another aspect:

There are a few interesting comments in this article which talk about another possibility, and it's quite interesting. There is a person who claims the song was not written by Marks or Berry, but a third person. Furthermore, they say they actually have a recording of the song by another artist, before Chuck Berry's one in 1958. Could this explain the elusive "Marvin Brodie" songwriter? Is that even related? All of this needs to be kept an eye on. I have seen this page get edited before with unsupported speculations, and in my edits, I have avoided that. However, there really is a lot of very strange things.

If there are people more familiar with Chuck Berry, this song, Johnny Marks, Marvin Brodie, or anything else, please, feel free to respond, and add any factual, well-supported, relevant corresponding information to the song's history. YouarelovedSOmuch ( talk) 16:03, 11 December 2019 (UTC) reply

EDIT/UPDATE: I did find a really good piece by a Chuck Berry researcher. He talked to multiple Chuck Berry experts and this is what he discovered. I definitely recommend it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20151208202935/http://www.crlf.de/ChuckBerry/blog/archives/140-Run!-Rudolph,-the-Red-Nosed-Reindeer-and-the-copyright-mystery.html
YouarelovedSOmuch ( talk) 19:21, 11 December 2019 (UTC) reply

Thanks for that link. I also find it very hard to believe that Chuck Berry shouldn't have written the song, as it's totally his trademark. But apparently a reindeer named Rudolph is an actual trademark, hence the Marks credit?! And "Marvin Brodie" exists on Discogs only as a writer for this song. When in fact the Marvin probably comes from an error... Jules TH 16 ( talk) 10:09, 26 December 2021 (UTC) reply