Yule Groove #3: "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"

Brenda Lee (1958)

If push came to shove, although I can’t imagine why anybody would be shoving me over it, I’d have to go with Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” as my all-time favorite rock & roll Christmas single.

Should you think “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” gets played to death every year, you are wrong. Recent streaming suggests millions of people still love it. You and I will die long before it ever will.

I dig “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” Something about how Lee says “pumpkin pie” and throws in those little hiccups here and there sends me every time. I can’t really put my finger on it. I look forward to these moments the first time I hear the song each year.

Let’s listen to it before we start, as if you can’t sit there and sing it yourself while you’re reading. (I hope the video isn’t too subtle for you.)

Everything about the record works for me, and that only makes sense, given the collective talent behind it.

Written by Johnny Marks, who also wrote “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Holly Jolly Christmas”—not bad—and produced by Nashville legend Owen Bradley for Decca Records in 1958, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” features such stellar session musicians as Hank Garland (guitar), Harold Bradley (guitar), Floyd Cramer (piano), and Boots Randolph (tenor sax).

These guys were in demand back in the day, playing on hits by Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, Roy Orbison, Eddie Arnold, Jim Reeves, and Chet Atkins. And that’s a partial list.

I mean, Cramer plays the piano on “Heartbreak Hotel,” and Garland rocked out behind the King on everything from “Little Sister” to “I Got Stung!” And, at the risk of belaboring it, Randolph played the sax on “Oh, Pretty Woman!”

But even with all that rhythmic artillery, the star of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” is a sassy, prematurely mature four-foot-nine-inch vocalist named Brenda Lee.

Lee was raised in abject poverty in Atlanta, in several different houses with no indoor toilets or running water (“It was like the Flintstones,” she later said). Tragically, her father died in a construction accident when she was 8 years old, and, not long thereafter, little Brenda was pulling in the bulk of the family income.

Brenda Lee had far more gumption than most, and she fought for everything she got. For lack of a better phrase to describe her, she was—and still is—a badass.

You may well know that Lee was pretty young when she recorded “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” or you may assume the singer of that particular standard is a 24 year old woman with a muscular growl in her voice.

Well, Brenda Lee wasn’t even close to being a legal adult when she recorded the tune. In fact, she was 13 years old! That’s a lot of throaty vocalizing from someone who wouldn’t be allowed to drink a beer for another eight years!

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Lee didn’t become famous via “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” In fact, the song died a quick death when it was originally released. It didn’t become the favorite it is today until Lee had established her name as a vocalist with other hits. Then it was re-released and caught on forever.

Brenda had even earned a nickname by that point, and it’s one of the coolest I’ve ever heard—“Little Miss Dynamite!” That comes from her first hit single, “Dynamite,” which made a bit of a splash when she was a mere 12 years old.

This five-thousandth-generation video looks like it’s being broadcast from the planet Zoltron-7, but it’s the best available way to convey the magic of a mere kid who could belt out a tune from somewhere down around her toes. (Note the hilarious botched special effect when the emcee pretends to blow up some dynamite during the introduction. Lee was supposed to toss powder in the air so it would look like a cloud of smoke from the dynamite blast, but her timing is off. The magic of live TV).

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Brenda Lee is by all accounts a very funny lady. Everybody mentions her sardonic sense of humor. She is also a gifted raconteur, and she’s got tons of stories from the early days of her career that are way better than any anecdotes you and I can tell at a party...unless your parachute didn’t open and you survived by landing in a marsh, like a guy I once saw on TV did.

Lee’s house is reportedly loaded to bursting with autographs, gold records, photos, and assorted rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia she’s gathered over the years. She says she’s even hung onto a tube of lipstick Cyndi Lauper left in her bathroom years ago!

She first met Elvis Presley when she was 11 years old—the only time in her life, she says, when she was actually tongue-tied while meeting a star. He was always very sweet and big-brotherly with her. He’d invite her to visit him on movie sets and things like that.

Presley may have been keeping an eye on the competition. Believe it or not, in the 1960s Brenda Lee was in fourth place behind Elvis, the Beatles, and Ray Charles for charting the most hit singles in the decade!!

She was the real deal, not a one-hit wonder. She’s been inducted into both the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Speaking of those lovable mop tops from Liverpool. When Lee was appearing at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany in 1962, the Beatles, who were the Star-Club’s house band at the time, actually opened for her! Years later, John Lennon said in a Rolling Stone interview that Brenda Lee “has the greatest rock ‘n’ roll voice of them all.”

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Brenda Lee is very much still alive and kicking, and she remains a fireball.

Last year, through the miracle of holiday streaming, which obviously wasn’t a thing in 1958, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” became the oldest song to ever reach number one on the charts, making it to the pinnacle a mere 63 years after it was recorded!

At age 78, Lee became the oldest person to ever have a number one hit, a record she then broke when she turned 79 while the song was still lodged at the top.

It’s really nice that she was around to enjoy the moment. I hope she celebrated with a self-deprecating remark and a great big slice of pumpkin pie!