For decades, Atlanta native Brenda Lee thought her 1960 No. 1 ballad “I’m Sorry” would be her signature song well into her twilight years.
But that’s not how it played out thanks to the magic of Christmas. Instead, a song she recorded when she was around 12 called “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” has become an enduring staple of holiday playlists worldwide.
The chipper two-minute-and-eight-second gem is the No. 2 most popular Christmas song on Billboard’s “Holiday 100″ all-time list behind only Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” It is already at No. 8 on the most recent Billboard Hot 100 chart sandwiched between hits by Tate McRae and Taylor Swift.
UMG Nashville this year convinced the 78-year-old Lee to do her very first video for the song, which at 65 years old is now officially a senior citizen. Recorded in October, the video is simple, with Lee lip-syncing the song in a lovely red dress interspersed with scenes of a festive Christmas party.
“As ludicrous as it sounds, I had never thought about doing a music video,” said Lee in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
When the label asked her who she’d like to have in the video, she immediately said Tanya Tucker and Trisha Yearwood, two dear friends and country legends. They both said yes. “I love them both,” she said. “I felt comfortable with them. We just let it fly.”
A Grady baby who grew up in Atlanta as a child, Lee became a massive star in the early 1960s with dozens of pop hits to her name.
“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” was just one of many songs she recorded in 1958. She had no clue what would become of it. But she remembers the recording session well.
“It was easy to sing,” she said. “We did it at Quonset Hut Studios in Nashville.” (This was the first commercial studio on what would become Music Row and Lee later recorded “I’m Sorry” there. Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” and Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Velvet” were also recorded there.)
“Rockin’” was written by Johnny Marks, a Jewish songwriter who had already penned Christmas classics “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “A Holly Jolly Christmas.”
Lee said her producer Owen Bradley brought in “the creme de la creme” of musicians including Floyd Cramer on piano and Boots Randolph, who provided the peppy sax solo. But “I wasn’t intimidated at all,” she said. “I loved to sing. They made me feel so comfortable. They didn’t treat me like I was a kid. And they asked for my opinion.”
The song did not do much in 1958 or 1959. But it peaked at No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1960 after Lee’s “I’m Sorry” topped the chart. Over the years, it became part of the holiday canon.
But Lee said the song’s popularity accelerated when it was featured in the 1990 film “Home Alone.” The song plays during a scene where 8-year-old Kevin McAllister (Macauley Culkin) convinces the two cartoonish robbers Harry (Joe Pesci) and Marv (Daniel Stern) he’s holding a big Christmas party.
Lee said she knew the songwriter Marks, who died in 1985, would have loved her doing the video, however belated it may be. “He and I would talk almost every day for years,” she said. “We became really good friends. He had a closing line at the end of every phone conversation. I’d say, ‘Well, Johnny, it’s been really nice talking to you buddy.’ And he’d say, ‘Yah, Brenda, me, too. There are not a lot of us old timers left.’ And I’d say, ‘How old do you think I am?’”
She harbors no resentment toward Carey, whose “All I Want for Christmas is You” has kept “Rockin’” from the top of charts since Billboard magazine began allowing re-releases to enter the chart again. “The charts are the charts,” she said. “I have no control. Mariah has no control. I’m just happy to still be on the charts.”
Lee recently performed the song at the Grand Ol’ Opry in Nashville for an upcoming NBC special “Christmas at the Opry,” which was pre-taped and will air Dec. 7 on NBC. Others who will sing on the special include Trace Adkins, Kelly Clarkson, Mickey Guyton and Lauren Alaina. Wynonna Judd hosted.
“Everyone was in the Christmas spirit,” Lee said. “It was fun! It went over so good.”
Tom Breihan, a music writer for Stereogum who has spent recent years penning essays about every No. 1 song in Billboard Hot 100 history (and is now up to 2012), calls “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” “silly and fun and nostalgic enough. The fact Brenda Lee is still alive and still out there singing it and talking about it is amazing.”
He said the song, with its pleasant references to pumpkin pie and caroling, goes down so smoothly, it offends nobody the way some other Christmas songs might, no matter how many times it gets played every December in the local Walmart or Kroger.
Lee’s hit song “Sweet Nothin’s” is also featured in the recent biopic about Priscilla Presley called “Priscilla.” “That was supposedly Priscilla’s favorite song of mine,” she said.
Her manager Dub Allbritten and Elvis Presley’s manager Colonel Tom Parker “were the best of friends,” she added. “They called themselves old carnies.”
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Lee, who moved to Nashville in the mid-1950s, still visits Atlanta two or three times a year. “My parents are buried there,” she said. “All my relatives live there. My brother is still there. I like to go there and have a good laugh.”
IF YOU WATCH
“Christmas at the Opry”
8 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 7. NBC, also available on Peacock
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