Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (song) Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (song) "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is a song by songwriter Johnny Marks based on the 1939 story "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" published by the Montgomery Ward Company. Gene Autry's recording hit No. 1 on the U.S. charts the week of Christmas 1949. In 1939 Marks's brother-in-law, Robert L. May, created the character Rudolph as an assignment for Montgomery Ward and Marks decided to adapt the story of Rudolph into a song. The song had an added introduction, paraphrasing the poem "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" (public domain by the time the song was written), stating the
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (song) 1.75 million copies its first Christmas season, eventually selling a total of 12.5 million. Cover versions included, sales exceed 150 million copies, second only to Bing Crosby's "White Christmas". In December 2018, Autry's version entered the Billboard Hot 100 at #36, nearly 70 years after it first charted. The lyric "All of the other reindeer" can be misheard in dialects with the cot–caught merger as the mondegreen "Olive, the other reindeer", and has given rise to another character featured in her own Christmas television special, "Olive, the Other Reindeer". The song in its Finnish translation, "Petteri Punakuono", has led to