"I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas" | |
---|---|
Single by Yogi Yorgesson with The Johnny Duffy Trio | |
B-side | "Yingle Bells" |
Released | November 1949 |
Recorded | 1949 |
Genre | |
Length | 3:12 |
Label | Capitol 57-781 |
Songwriter(s) | Harry Stewart |
"I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas" is a 1949 Christmas novelty song and monologue written and performed by Harry Stewart as fictional Swede "Yogi Yorgesson". Stewart was backed by the Johnny Duffy Trio on the song.
The song is made of two parts. The first is a short musical number (in thirty-two-bar form) in which Yogi shops for his wife and, considering buying a nightgown for his wife but not knowing her size, opts to buy her a carpet sweeper as his gift to her. The second is a parody of the poem "A Visit from Saint Nicholas." The spoken monologue begins with a peaceful house on Christmas Eve as Yogi sneaks off to the local bar; instead of staying to his original plan of drinking a single beer, he gets caught in the Christmas spirit and binge-drinks a dozen Tom & Jerrys.
Yogi comes home, seriously drunk, and gets too little sleep before Christmas morning arrives and the children wake him up. The severely hung-over Yogi must not only cope with his rambunctious children, but both his own relatives and his wife's, who do not get along with each other but nevertheless both visit the house for Christmas dinner. The in-laws quickly get drawn into an argument that soon escalates into violence; as Gabriel Heatter's voice is heard reciting the annunciation to the shepherds preaching peace and good will, "just at that moment, someone slugs Uncle Ben." The monologue ends with the fight spilling out of the house and Yogi grateful that Christmas only comes once a year. The song ends with a short eight-bar verse.
Throughout the song, a mock Scandinavian dialect is used, with words beginning in "j" pronounced with a "y" sound (hence the spelling of the title), and "w" sounds pronounced as a "v".
"I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas", backed with "Yingle Bells", peaked at #5 on Billboard's Best Sellers in Stores chart for the week after Christmas 1949. [1]
Farm broadcaster Orion Samuelson, himself of Norwegian descent, covered the song in the late 1960s with backing by the Uff Da Band. Other than some minor tweaks (a lower key and replacing Gabriel Heatter with Perry Como) it was almost identical to the original. [2]
Stan Boreson and Doug Setterberg recorded the song as the title track to their 1968 Christmas album Stan and Doug Yust Go Nuts at Christmas, a Harry Stewart tribute album. This version replaces Heatter with Walter Cronkite and is more loose with the narration, with Setterberg slipping in retorts at certain points to Boreson's story.
A Tom and Jerry is a traditional Christmas-time cocktail in the United States, sometimes attributed to British writer and professional boxing journalist Pierce Egan in the 1820s. It is a variant of eggnog with brandy and rum added and served hot, usually in a mug or a bowl.
Shenandoah is a 1965 American film set during the American Civil War starring James Stewart and featuring Doug McClure, Glenn Corbett, Patrick Wayne, and, in their film debuts, Katharine Ross and Rosemary Forsyth. The picture was directed by Andrew V. McLaglen. The American folk song "Oh Shenandoah" features prominently in the film's soundtrack.
Trees Lounge is a 1996 American comedy-drama film and the debut of Steve Buscemi as writer and director. It was produced by Brad Wyman and Chris Hanley and features a large ensemble cast of actors, including Buscemi, Anthony LaPaglia, Chloë Sevigny, and Samuel L. Jackson. The film's black humor is based on examination of characters' self-destructive behavior, revolving around their shared hangout of the eponymous bar and lounge.
"Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" is a novelty Christmas song. Written by Randy Brooks, the song was originally performed by Elmo Shropshire in 1979 under the brand of Elmo and Patsy, the double act Shropshire had with his then-wife Patsy Trigg.
Gabriel Heatter was an American radio commentator whose World War II-era sign-on, "There's good news tonight," became both his catchphrase and his caricature.
A Trap for Santa Claus is a 1909 one-reel American silent drama film. A Biograph Company production, it was directed by D. W. Griffith and stars Henry B. Walthall, Marion Leonard, and Gladys Egan.
Harry Stewart, born Harry Skarbo, was an entertainer, singer, comedian, and songwriter. He was best known for his portrayal of Yogi Yorgesson, a comically exaggerated Swedish American.
Orion Samuelson is a retired American broadcaster, known for his agriculture broadcasts and his ability to explain agribusiness and food production in an understandable way. He was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2003.
"Uncle Valentine" is a short story by Willa Cather. It was first published in Woman's Home Companion in February 1925.
A Day to Remember is a 1953 British comedy drama film directed by Ralph Thomas and starring an ensemble cast including Stanley Holloway, Donald Sinden, James Hayter and Bill Owen.
William Frederick Kirk was an American baseball writer, columnist, humorist, poet and songwriter.
Roald Dahl's Willy Wonka, also known simply as Willy Wonka, is a musical with music and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley and a book by Bricusse and Timothy Allen McDonald. It is based on 1964 novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. The musical was commissioned by Music Theatre International and is licensed for performance by amateur theatre groups.
A Monkey in Winter is a 1962 French comedy-drama film directed by Henri Verneuil. It is based on the novel A Monkey in Winter by Antoine Blondin. Set in a Normandy seaside town, it recounts the meeting and parting of two men at odds with life, one an old hotel keeper who dreams of dashing deeds in pre-war China and the other a young advertising executive who imagines he is an incarnation of Hispanic masculinity.
Stan Boreson, the "King of Scandinavian Humor," was a Norwegian-American comedian, accordionist and singer from Everett, Washington. Boreson was an early local TV star in the Seattle area, with a career that included 12 years as the host of "King's Klubhouse" on KING-TV. In addition to his television show, Boreson was adept at musical parody and brought his “Scandahoovian” stylings to the genre. Throughout his career he released 16 albums. With Doug Setterberg, he formed a comedy duo Stan & Doug, and recorded comedy albums in the early 1970s.
The Christmas Chronicles 2 is a 2020 American Christmas comedy film directed and produced by Chris Columbus, who wrote the screenplay with Matt Lieberman. A sequel to the 2018 film The Christmas Chronicles, it features Kurt Russell reprising his role as Santa Claus. Also reprising their roles are Goldie Hawn, Darby Camp, Judah Lewis, and Kimberly Williams-Paisley, with new cast members Julian Dennison, Jahzir Bruno, Tyrese Gibson, Sunny Suljic, Darlene Love, and Malcolm McDowell. The film had a limited theatrical release before moving to Netflix on November 25, 2020.
Jul på Vesterbro is a 2003 Danish satire TV Christmas calendar targeted adults by Anders Matthesen. It originally aired in December 2003 on DR2, and has since been rebroadcast in 2004, 2009, and 2013. The Christmas calendar is satire on the way Christmas is traditionally presented in TV, by instead presenting drug-addicts, gangsters and religious fanatics, and a social realistic parody on the underclass. It is based on a radio show by Matthesen of the same name, transmitted in 1999 on DR P3.