Brenda Lee – Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree

This is an artist I’ve never covered before, and among all the Christmas songs I have posted, I haven’t posted this one. It’s also one that I really like every year.

I’ve heard of Brenda all of my life. She was involved in Nashville before I was born. This song was released in 1958 and Brenda was only 13 years old! Her nickname was “Little Miss Dynamite” for her powerful voice and 4′ 9″ height. She has had an incredible 36 studio albums, 69 EP’s, and 63 Compilation albums. She had 14 top 20 Billboard hits and many country hits later on in her career. She had 3 number 1’s. I’m Sorry in 1960, I Want to be Wanted in 1960, and a record…63 years, five months, and three weeks later…her last #1 so far… in 2023 with Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree. I was so happy to hear that she reached number 1 again.

Brenda signed with Decca Records in 1956 at just 11 years old. Her early hits showed she could do country, pop, and rock genres. The song was recorded in Bradley Studios in Nashville. It was in Fall and not snowing but to get the mood right…Bradley had the studio freezing cold with the air conditioning, and he had a Christmas tree all set up to kind of get in the mood. Since 2011…the song has made it to the top 3 in the Holiday charts every year. This year it made it to #2. Lee was inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame (1997) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2002).

The song was written by Johnny Marks and he was quite good at writing Christmas songs. He wrote A Holly Jolly Christmas, Silver and Gold, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer just to name a few.

Brenda Lee: “I was only 13, and I had not had a lot of success in records, but for some reason he heard me and wanted me to do it. And I did.”

Johnny Marks: Well, I was laying on the beach and I went to sleep, I woke up and the pine trees were kind of swaying in the breeze. All of a sudden, I thought about Christmas, and I watched them begin and they were kind of rockin’ and I thought about rockin’. I just thought about a rockin’ Christmas, and then I changed it to where people might want to rock around the Christmas tree.’ And that’s kind of how it was born.”

Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree

Rockin’ around the Christmas treeAt the Christmas party hopMistletoe hung where you can seeEvery couple tries to stopRockin’ around the Christmas treeLet the Christmas spirit ringLater we’ll have some pumpkin pieAnd we’ll do some caroling

You will get a sentimental feeling when you hearVoices singing, let’s be jollyDeck the halls with boughs of hollyRockin’ around the Christmas treeHave a happy holidayEveryone dancin’ merrilyIn the new old-fashioned way

You will get a sentimental feeling when you hearVoices singing, let’s be jollyDeck the halls with boughs of hollyRockin’ around the Christmas treeHave a happy holidayEveryone dancin’ merrilyIn the new old-fashioned way

…

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

40 thoughts on “Brenda Lee – Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree”

    1. That was really cool… it’s hard to believe both accounts…being 13 and hitting #1 last year
      Whats odd is all the articles said the song never charter when it was released because she wasn’t very popular then…but Wiki has it at #1 in 1958…and #4 in Canada!

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      1. everything about it is surprising, including how it’s gotten so much more popular in the last 5 years or so. I never gave her age any thought when I heard it for years, but first time I read she was 13 I had to fact-check that – I figured it was a typo or deliberate falsehood!

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      2. Sorry Dave…work was a bitch today… I know…it’s something else how it’s broken out like it has. Maybe people woke up on how good it is.

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  8. I love Brenda, she is amazing. It’s hard to imagine that she was so young at the time but her voice certainly didn’t sound it! The whole story around this song is remarkable, from the writing to recording to the journey on the charts. One of my most favourite Christmas songs.

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  10. I love her! She’s fantastic, and I’m so glad that “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” is finally getting the recognition it so richly deserves.

    I just realized that Johnny Marks wrote all the music for the iconic “Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer” TV special with Burl Ives as Sam the Snowman. His brother-in-law, Robert L. May, wrote the poem on which the “Rudolph” song was based, one that he wrote for Montgomery Ward’s in Chicago. Small world…

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    1. Oh I didn’t know that about May… yea it surprised me when I saw that Marks wrote all of those…it was a niche that probably set him for life.

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      1. It’s from an album of his called Downtown, produced by T-Bone Burnett. I was just looking at comments on YouTube and I guess it’s hard to find. I bought it on a cassette in a bargain bin many years ago.

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