Christmas Rockabilly

The Christmas season isn’t complete without hearing the Christmas music classics, including “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee at least once.  This song combines Christmas with some country and rock and roll for a bit of rockabilly. The song was written by Johnny Marks, a prolific songwriter of many holiday standards, including “Ruldolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” “Silver and Gold,” and “Run Rudolph Run.” Lee was only 13 at the time they recorded the song, and was known at the time as “Little Miss Dynamite.” (The little referred to her diminutive size.) Lee said  in a 2006  interview with the Chicago Tribune that the recording session occurred in July, 1958, in Nashville. Producer Owen Bradley “had the studio all freezing cold with the air conditioning, and he had a Christmas tree all set up to kind of get in the mood just a little bit. We had a lot of fun.” The recording features Hank Garland on guitar and Boots Randolph on the saxophone. The song was released in 1958 and 1959, but was not that successful. Decca Records tried again in 1960 when Lee was more popular, and it went to #14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #3 on Billboards Christmas Singles chart. The song was featured in the 1990 film Home Alone.

The artists who have recorded a cover version are too numerous to mention for a comprehensive list, but a few include Bill Haley & His Comets, The Partridge Family, Amy Grant, Ronnie Spector and Darlene Love, Dion, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Cyndi Lauper, Alabama, Green Day, LeAnn Rimes, Rhonda Vincent, Miley Cyrus, Toby Keith, and She & Him.

Here are the lyrics to “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee:

Rockin’ around the Christmas tree
At the Christmas party hop
Mistletoe hung where you can see
Every couple tries to stop

Rockin’ around the Christmas tree
Let the Christmas spirit ring
Later we’ll have some pumpkin pie
And we’ll do some caroling

You will get a sentimental feeling
When you hear
Voices singing let’s be jolly
Deck the halls with boughs of holly

Rockin’ around the Christmas tree
Have a happy holiday
Everyone dancing merrily
In the new old fashioned way

You will get a sentimental feeling
When you hear
Voices singing let’s be jolly
Deck the halls with boughs of holly

Rockin’ around the Christmas tree
Have a happy holiday
Everyone dancing merrily
In the new old fashioned way

For other songs by Brenda Lee: “I’m Sorry,” “Sweet Nothin’s,” and “All Alone Am I.”

If you would like to know about Brenda Lee’s life, her autobiography, written with Robert Oermann and Julie Clay, is Little Miss Dynamite: The Life and Times of Brenda Lee.

 For More Golden Oldies Music

The Daily Doo Wop Rec Room has daily featured doo wop, rock and roll, R&B, or rockabilly songs that were hits during the first era of rock and roll (that is, from about 1952 until the British invasion in 1964). After a song is featured, it then goes into the juke box. You are welcome to listen to any of the 40+ selections there. Every weekend, there is a Golden Oldies Juke Box Saturday Night, and the juke box is full of song requests from the 1950s and 1960s.

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