"The Little Old Lady" is a song written by Don Altfeld, Jan Berry and Roger Christian, and recorded by 1960s American pop singers, Jan and Dean. The song reached number three on the BillboardHot 100 chart in 1964 and number one on Canada's RPM chart. The session musicians who played on this record included Leon Russell on piano; Tommy Tedesco, Bill Pitman and Billy Strange on guitar; Ray Pohlman and Jimmy Bond on bass; and Hal Blaine and Earl Palmer on drums. Jan & Dean reworked the lyrics from "The Little Old Lady " in 1967, renaming the track "Tijuana" and releasing it as a single that same year. The lyrics now contained thinly-veiled references to marijuana use. "Tijuana" was to be included on the act's final album Carnival of Sound, completed in 1969, but the LP went unreleased for several decades. The record was circulated as a bootleg until it garnered official release in 2010. The song was performed live by The Beach Boys at Sacramento Memorial Auditorium on August 1, 1964 for inclusion on their No.1 album Beach Boys Concert. The Beach Boys, and particularly Brian Wilson, who co-wrote several of Jan & Dean's biggest surf hits, had supported Jan & Dean in the recording studio to initiate them in the surf music genre.
Premise
The origins of "The Little Old Lady " stem from a very popular Dodgead campaign in southern California that launched in early 1964. Starring actress Kathryn Minner, the commercials showed the white-haired elderly lady speeding down the street driving a modified Dodge. She would stop, look out the window and say "Put a Dodge in your garage, Hon-ey!". The song soon followed and Minner enjoyed great popularity until she died in 1969. "The Little Old Lady " was a folkarchetype in Southern California in the mid-20th century. Part of this lore was that many an elderly man who died in Pasadena would leave his widow with a powerful car that she rarely, if ever, drove, such as an old Buick Roadmaster, or a vintage 1950s Cadillac, Ford, Packard, Studebaker, DeSoto, or La Salle. According to the story, used car salesmen would tell prospective buyers that the previous owner of a vehicle was "a little old lady from Pasadena who only drove it to church on Sundays," thus suggesting the car had little wear.
The song was one of many California related songs played throughout "Sunshine Plaza" in the original Disney California Adventure. The Dead Kennedys satirized the concept in their own song "Buzzbomb from Pasadena," where an elderly driver likewise terrorizes the city with her driving before getting into a shootout with police at a 7-11. In Animaniacs, Slappy Squirrel once takes over the old lady's role in the song. That episode ends with her revealing that she "never took a lesson in her life" and being arrested.
