Redneck Dracula

Elmo Shropshire (aka Dr. Elmo), the man who inflicted "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" upon the world, seems to have milked Christmas dry and set his sights on Halloween. Sadly, this seems to be a growing trend among those who specialize in Christmas music. Originally appearing as a song on his 2005 "Sings the Boos" release and later getting its own album with the same name, "Redneck Dracula" is (in my opinion) a trainwreck of a song.

Obviously made to cash in on the "Blue Collar" craze, the song amazingly doesn't do much with the concept. It's as if he thought that just calling Dracula a redneck in the title was enough to get the point across. Other than that, it's limited to the occasional awful pun, like "...drove a chicken-fried stake through my heart," and having the title character ride a mechanical bull. Not that the song's concept wasn't terrible to begin with, but you'd think that Dr. Elmo would've at least tried a little harder. In the end, Dracula has been lowered to awkwardly hitting on truck stop regulars in order to suck their blood, thus making this the most depressing Halloween novelty song ever recorded. Coupled with the poor attempt at a "scary vampire" voice and music that sounds like a demo selection from a Casio keyboard, it all adds up to one crappy song. The music video only makes it worse, as they decided that farts and having Dracula look at a stroke mag would make things "funnier":



The rest of the album consists of cover songs and more painfully unfunny original material, including another carry-over from the previous album and yet another variation on the "Grandma" concept.

Some might say that I'm being too hard on a man who primarily records material aimed at children. All I can say is listen to the samples on these pages. No matter who your target audience is, there's no excuse for poor quality.

Besides, Unknown Hinson offered the definitive take on redneck vampires ion his song "Undead Blues," so Dr. Elmo best step back. Hell yeah. You can check it out for yourself on his Myspace page or by watching the following music video: