Things you didn't know about Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree! Behind the Christmas Hits

How did seeing a group of teenagers dancing to Elvis music on the beach in the middle of summer inspire one of the biggest Christmas hits of all? This is the story behind… Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.

Nobody wrote more Christmas hits than Johnny Marks. His biggest was his first in 1949: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Over the course of his career, he’d also write Run Run Rudolph, Holly Jolly Christmas, Silver and Gold and Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.

It was 1958 – one year after Bobby Helms had the first rock and roll Christmas hit, Jingle Bell Rock. Johnny Marks was enjoying some summer sun on a New England beach when he saw a group of teenagers listening and dancing to Elvis.  

Marks didn’t write his songs from personal experience – he took what was trendy and put it in a musical formula. When he saw the kids dancing on the beach, he remembered Jingle Bell Rock and thought he’d try taking the vibe of what was happening on the beach and put it in a Christmas setting. Maybe he could have as big a hit with that as Bobby Helms had a year earlier.  

After the song was written and mailed off to Decca Records, Marks even thought Helms should be the one to sing the song. But the record company had other ideas. 
 
According to the Ace Collins book, Stories Behind the Greatest Hits of Christmas, the execs at Decca thought Helms already had a Christmas hit that would likely get airplay again that Christmas. Why not give this new song to someone who needed a hit.   

Enter: 12-year-old Brenda Lee. A prodigy of sorts Decca wanted to make into a star. Her voice was amazing. Did we mention she was 12?  She didn’t sound THAT young. She had recorded a few country songs at this point, but none had been hits. They thought a rock and roll Christmas song would be the perfect thing to put her on the map.
 
So, into the studio she went for a recording session that didn’t start until midnight because the session players all had day jobs. Again…did we mention she was 12?
 
They recorded a few other songs first…sort of us a warm-up…and finally got around to Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree near dawn. Producer Owen Bradley put up a Christmas tree in the studio, strung some lights and turned the temperature down to zero to give it a real Christmas feel.  That session felt like magic. After slogging away all night on other songs, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree was done in less than an hour. Everyone felt like they had something special, so Decca pushed the song hard to both country and rock radio stations that Christmas.
 
Only…it flopped. There didn’t seem to be much room for new Christmas songs in the late 50’s. Instead of playing Brenda Lee, radio stations leaned on the biggest hits from the year before: Jingle Bell Rock and Elvis’ Blue Christmas. It’s estimated that Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree only sold 5,000 copies in it’s first year and the label lost money. Meanwhile, Johnny Marks was furious that his song was wasted on a child singer.  

But a funny thing happened. Owen Bradley believed in Brenda Lee and wasn’t giving up on her being a star. Over the next two years, he’d keep bringing her back for more recording sessions and eventually, those sessions produced country hits like Sweet Nothings and I’m Sorry. By the time Brenda Lee was 15, she had become the star Owen Bradley believed she could be. So, at Christmas time, 1960, it was a no-brainer.  After putting two songs in the top 10 that year and having a Christmas song already in the bank, Decca Records went back to the radio stations that ignored the song the first time – only, they didn’t tell them it was an old record. Instead, they positioned it as a new holiday song from one of the hottest new acts of the year. They went for it and finally, years after it was recorded, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree was finally a hit.
 
Johnny Marks would continue to write Christmas songs for the rest of his career.  In fact, he started his own publishing company called St. Nicholas Music. A company that still exists today and run by his son Michael.  

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With Research from: Stories Behind the Greatest Hits of Christmas by Ace Collins