If you were going to know only one Brenda Lee song, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” would be a perfectly good one. The 14-year-old Lee recorded it just as Nashville was only starting to figure out how to harness the atomic energy of her early recordings. Ironically, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” finally became popular two years later when Lee’s two number one hits had taken her in a very different direction. But you should know more than one Brenda Lee song.
For some people, that second Brenda Lee song is her version of “Jingle Bell Rock.” Lee’s mid-’60s version has emerged in recent years. Lee hasn’t quite overtaken Bobby Helms in the Christmas-radio canon, but she’s made the song a three-way race. With “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” finally going to No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 this week, Lee would now also be the most currently relevant artist of the three, if it weren’t for the current travails of Hall v. Oates. But you should know more than two Brenda Lee songs.
I’m not sure when I learned about “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” It was probably family driving trips at holiday time in the early ’70s, but it now seems as if it were always there. The songs that were most available on the Oldies radio of that time were her early-’60s ballads. “I’m Sorry” was still Lee’s career song then, perfectly representative of the pink-chiffon filter through which we viewed that era of music in the early ’70s, but too sappy for a nine-year-old as a starting place.
When I was learning oldies, I couldn’t appreciate the “It’s Now or Never” moment in 1960 when a lot of teen rockers began reinventing themselves through MOR ballads. Eventually, I realized those songs were the backseat memories of radio friends and mentors who grew up in that era. They had genuine affection for those songs; but I heard 1960-63 as “you had to be there.”
Even now, streaming playlists tend to represent Lee largely through those early-’60s MOR ballads—“I Want to Be Wanted,” “Emotions,” “Break It to Me Gently.” (best known to my generation through Juice Newton.) Spotify’s “This is Brenda Lee” playlist is heavy on ballads and covers (“Blue Velvet,” “Kansas City,” “The End of the World”). Apple Music’s Brenda Lee Essentials represents the rockers a little better, in between the ballads and Christmas titles.
I’m countering with my own playlist, “Rockin’ Beyond the Christmas Tree,” meant to show off the amazing breadth of Lee’s career over a 35-year span. I’ve also thrown in a few outlier rockers from other acts represented mostly today by their Christmas MOR-era offerings.
The playlist (available on iTunes because not everything is still in print) includes:
- “Rock the Bop” and “Let’s Jump the Broomstick,” two late-’50s rockabilly ravers that came out in the year before Lee began having hits that I discovered years later as a record collector;
- “Sweet Nothin’s,” Lee’s breakthrough hit before “I’m Sorry” took her in a different direction;
- “That’s All You Gotta Do,” the Jerry Reed-penned song that was meant to be the A-side of “I’m Sorry,” but still reached No. 6.
- “Dum Dum,” one of several Lee songs written by Jackie DeShannon and Sharon Sheeley that was Lee’s most rockin’ moment during the ballad hit streak that followed “I’m Sorry.” Also ROR editor Ken Barnes’s favorite of the ballads, the DeShannon/Sheeley song “Heart in Hand.”
- “Is It True,” introduced to me by Gene Sculatti, a writer/rock historian friend who did make me appreciate the early ’60s more. The moment when 19-year-old Lee went to London during the British Invasion and found another prodigy, 20-year-old Jimmy Page. “Is It True” was a startling change-up when I heard it. The UK B-side was an even more unleashed version of “What’d I Say.”
- “Coming On Strong,” known first to me as an American Motors commercial in the early ’70s, then through its shout-out in Golden Earring’s “Radar Love.” (They were right about it being forgotten. I didn’t hear it on the radio and had to find it as a used 45.) Her last significant pop hit before beginning a transition to the Country charts in the early ’70s.
- “Big Four Poster Bed,” a great Shel Silverstein song that was her biggest Country chart hit. Lee had a second run of Country hits in the early ’80s, but by then, this song was so unjustly lost that when Highway 101 broke through with the very similarly themed “The Bed You Made for Me” in the late ’80s, nobody else even picked up on it.
- “I’m Takin’ My Time,” from 1985, just as Country was reasserting its own rock side. A few months later, another prodigy, Tanya Tucker would start her own comeback with some very similar songs that were the hottest things on the very AC’ish Country radio of the time. Now, Tucker is part of the “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” video that helped propel the song to No. 1 this year.
I have a more nuanced view of the late ’50s/early ’60s now that extends to a lot of hitmakers from that period. I still like Lee’s early-’60s rockers better than the ballads, but I now understand the thru-line in Lee’s music to be both the powerhouse vocals and the wise-beyond-her-years interpretations she brought to everything.
I’m also happy for Lee this week in a way that makes me cautious about even admitting that it took me a while to find my favorites. During the years when “All I Want for Christmas Is You” was holding Lee out of No. 1, I wondered why Mariah Carey didn’t at least use the topspin to release a new single at the beginning of the year. It’s unlikely, but the only thing cooler than that would be Lee somehow having new music ready in January. Or at least “Is It True” somehow finding a new life on TikTok!
This story first appeared on radioinsight.com