The Little Old Lady from Pasadena

"The Little Old Lady from Pasadena" 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 #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1964. Jan and Dean were known for their music of the 1960s surf era with songs like "Dead Man's Curve" and "Surf City".

Premise of the song

"The little old lady from Pasadena" was a kind of folk archetype in Southern California in the mid-20th century. Early in the century, many white couples from the Midwest had moved to the region, especially to Pasadena, California. The trend was accelerated by the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression and World War II. Since men tended to die earlier, Pasadena became known for its high percentage of elderly widows. As political columnist and language expert William Safire has noted, the phrase "little old ladies in tennis shoes" was used in the 1960s to refer to social and political conservatives in Southern California.

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 50-some-odd Cadillac, a vintage Ford, an old Packard, Studebaker, De Soto, La Salle. Used car salesmen in California, so the story went, 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. This joke became part of the material of some comedians based in Los Angeles, and because of television, the phrase "little old lady from Pasadena" became familiar to a national audience.

From this premise came the comic song, about a little old lady from Pasadena who had a hot "Super Stock Dodge" a 1964 Dodge Polara or Dodge 330 in her garage. (These vehicles had low production number "Max Wedge" (Maximum Performance Wedge Engine) lightweight race specials built in 1964 for drag racing. These are highly collectible today.) The twist was that unlike in the usual story, this little old lady not only drove the hot car, but was a peerless street racer.

Notes

• The little old lady on the album cover was portrayed by Kathryn Minner, who starred in one of the largest Dodge commercial campaigns of the sixties with her famous tag line: “Put a Dodge in your garage, honey!”
• The song was later revised on an episode of Animaniacs where Slappy Squirrel was the little old lady driving around Pasadena in a Dodge Viper.
• The Dead Kennedys pay tribute to this song in the track "Buzzbomb From Pasadena" (a rewritten version of their song "Buzzbomb") from the album "Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death".