Let's stroll on back to 1958 and find out how one of the biggest selling Christmas songs almost didn't make it...
"Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"
Johnny Marks, the songwriter who penned “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” was given the job in 1958 by producer Owen Bradley to pen a song that could compete with “Jingle Bell Rock” — the previous year’s hit by Bobby Helms.
Marks took basically the same tune and, inspired by some teenagers dancing to Elvis music on a New England beach that summer, came up with the lyrics for “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”
Bradley passed on passing the record along to Helms, and instead recorded it with Brenda Lee, a relatively unknown teenager singer who was born in an Atlanta charity hospital as a four-pound premie. Lee was a diminutive 4-foot-9, but had a big voice. She recorded “Rockin’” on Oct. 19, 1958. But the record was overshadowed by Elvis’ “Blue Christmas” and sounded too much like Helm’s “Jingle Bell Rock.” Radio stations largely ignored it and “Rockin” sold fewer than 5,000 copies.
“The song was as dead as a four-week-old Christmas tree,” writes Ace Collins in Stories Behind the Greatest Hits of Christmas.
But two years later, Brenda Lee becomes one of the hottest recording artists of 1960 with “I’M Sorry” and “I Want to be Wanted.” Bradley convinces Decca records to re-release the song without reminding anybody it had already flopped in 1958. Stations looking to capitalize on Lee’s popularity played the record, which helped Brenda Lee achieve the kind of success at 18 that the Beatles became her opening act during her European tour.
Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” is the fourth best-selling Christmas single.
While some of the younger generation may think of Hannah Montana (Miley Cyrus) and her version along with all the other singers that performed this song....there is nothing and nobody that beats the original sung by the incomparable Miss Brenda Lee. After all these years she is still Rockin'!
See you at the Christmas party hop....
Lyrics:
Rockin' around the Christmas tree
You will get a sentimental feeling when you hear,
Till we meet again in the New Year!!
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
