Lexington, KY, native Elmo Shropshire is better known as Dr. Elmo, the whimsical character who has sold more than eleven million copies of the holiday novelty song 'Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.' After earning a veterinary medicine degree at Auburn University, Dr. Elmo was a veterinarian at Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga racetracks in New York. He later moved to San Francisco's Bay Area to open his own animal hospital and while moonlighting playing festivals…

Claude says:Dr. Elmo's 1979 novelty masterpiece is a Kentucky-fried fever dream—darkly comic, utterly unhinged, and somehow the most durable holiday song nobody admits to loving until December hits and suddenly it's essential. You just discovered it exists, which means the holidays caught you off guard.