The Greatest Christmas Songs of All-time - "Blue Christmas" - Elvis Presley

0:03 Caalaroga Shark Media. I'm Garrett Fischer And in September nineteen fifty seven, Elvis Presley was recording Christmas music in Hollywood, and he absolutely did not want to be there. He was twenty two years old and at the peak of his early fame. He'd revolutionize popular music in less than two years Heartbreak, Hotel, Hound Dog, Don't Be Cruel, All shook up. He'd racked up number ones that changed the sound of American radio. He was dangerous, sexy, controversial. Parents hated him, teenagers worshiped him. Ed Sullivan had famously filmed him only from the waist up, and now RCA wanted him to make a Christmas album. To help set the mood for the September sessions at radio recorders in Hollywood, RCA executive Steve Schulz had set up a fully decorated Christmas trees in the studio, complete with presence underneath. Scotty Moore, Elvis's guitar player, later recalled everyone laughing about playing Christmas songs in Los Angeles in the middle of summer, but they were professionals. They'd cut eight of the album's twelve tracks over three days September fifth through seventh. Most of the songs were standards. Elvis could approach his way White Christmas, but using the drifters R and b arrangement, not bing Crosby's crooner version. Santa Claus Is Back in Town, written on the spot by Jerry Lieber and Mike Staller in

1:34 a matter of minutes. When Elvis asked for something with edge. Those songs worked for him. They fit what Elvis Presley was about. But Blue Christmas was different. It was a country ballad originally a hit for Ernest Tubb in nineteen fifty, and, according to Millie Kirkham, the backing vocalist, who was six months pregnant and had been flown in specifically for these sessions, Elvis made his feelings abundantly clear. He didn't want to do it. Kirkhimer called. He said, I don't want to do this song, and they said, well, you've got to, because it's already been scheduled. And so he said, well, okay, and he turned around to us, the musicians and the singers, and said, let's just get this over with. To understand why Elvis resisted, we need to go back to where Blue Christmas came from because the song's journey to Elvis started nine years earlier. On a commuter train heading into New York City. Jay Johnson was writing from his home in Stamford, Connecticut, to Manhattan. He was a radio writer, scripts and jingles, the kind of work that kept you employed but didn't necessarily make you famous. It was nineteen forty eight and White Christmas by Bing Crosby was still dominating the holiday season five years after its release. Johnson started thinking about the flip side of that coin. White Christmas was about longing for home, for the familiar comforts of childhood Christmases. But what if you were longing for a person? What if Christmas wasn't white and magical, what

3:04 if it was blue and lonely. He took the idea to his composer friend Billy Hayes. Together they finished Blue Christmas, a simple melancholic ballad about missing someone during the holidays. The clever wordplay was built in, I'll have a blue Christmas without you. Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree won't be the same, Deer if you're not here with me. Taking all those holiday colors, the festive reds and greens, and turning them blue. Depression, loneliness, heartache, all wrapped up in Christmas imagery. The song was published by Choice Music Company. The first recording came from Doy O'Dell in nineteen forty eight, a Western music pioneer and actor who specialized in cowboy songs. His version didn't do much commercially, but it established the song's existence. In nineteen forty nine, three major artists recorded it simultaneously. Hugo Winterhalter's orchestra version reached number nine on the charts. Russ Morgan and his orchestra hit number eleven. But the version that really mattered came from Ernest Tubb. Tub was country music royalty by nineteen fifty. Walking the Floor over You had made him a star. In nineteen forty one, he was a member of the Grand Ole Opry. He'd opened the Ernest Tub record shop on Broadway in Nashville and started the Midnight Jamboree radio show, both of which are still operating today.

4:28 He had credibility and influence. His version of Blue Christmas spent the first week of January nineteen fifty at number one on the country charts. It returned to the top ten in nineteen fifty one and nineteen fifty two. Tubb's recording had an extra verse that later versions would drop, I'll have a blue Christmas. I know, Dear, I hope your white Christmas brings you cheer. It was pure country, weeper material, pedal, steel guitar, Tubb's distinctive vocal style, the whole package. And here's where the story gets inter. A young Elvis Presley met Ernest Tubb when Elvis was just starting out. Tubb gave him advice about the music business, about navigating Nashville and the country music establishment. It was the kind of mentorship moment that meant something to an ambitious kid from Memphis. So when RCA scheduled Blew Christmas for Elvis's Christmas album in nineteen fifty seven, Elvis knew exactly what he was being asked to cover. Ernest Tubb's song country music sad Christmas ballad. Everything Elvis was trying to move away from. Elvis had come from country music.

5:36 His early Sun record sessions blended country, blues and gospel into something new, But by nineteen fifty seven he transcended those roots. He was creating rock and roll. He was redefining American Popular music recording Ernest Tubb's Country Weeper felt like a step backward, but RCA wanted a Christmas album and Blue Christmas was already scheduled. So Elvis showed up to radio recorders with his usual crew Scotty Moore on guitar, Bill Black on bass, DJ Fontana on drums, and the Jordanaires providing backing vocals, along with Millie Kirkham for the soprano parts, and Elvis, clearly frustrated, told everyone to just have fun with it, do something silly. Let's get this over with. That decision, that moment of resignation mixed with playfulness, created one of the most iconic holiday recordings of all time.

6:28 Let's talk about what makes Elvis' version work, because it's not just a straight cover of Ernest Tubb, it's something entirely different. First, Elvis cut one of Tubb's verses, tightening the song. Where Tubb's version had this extended country storytelling quality, Elvis made it more immediate, more direct. Second, the arrangement this isn't pure rock and roll. Elvis keeps some of that country feeling, the gentle guitar work, the restrained rhythm section, but he adds his vocal style, which by nineteen fifty seven had become one of the most distinctive sounds in popular music. That slightly nasal quality, the way he bends notes, the subtle vibrato. He's not belting it like Jerry Lee Lewis would. He's being intimate, vulnerable even. Third, and most importantly, Millie Kirkham's vocal contributions. When Elvis told the musicians to do something silly, Kirkham started adding these WU backing vocals throughout the song, not words, just WU high ethereal, almost ghostly.

7:36 Elvis immediately encouraged her to keep going. She did it throughout the entire track. When they finished, Kirkham later said we all laughed and said, well, that's one record that the record company will never release because those WU vocals seemed absurd, too playful, not serious enough for a legitimate recording. But here's the genius. Those wu's transformed the song. They add levity to heartbreak. They're simultaneously mournful and tongue in cheek. They prevent the song from becoming too maudlin, too much of a country weeper. They give it personality, character, a sense of Elvis's own attitude toward the material. There's also a musical inside joke happening that most listeners miss. The backing vocalists, especially Kirkham's soprano line, deliberately use what musicians call blue notes. They replace major and minor thirds with neutral and septimal minor thirds. It's a musical pun on the word blue in the title to Trained Ears. It's an easter egg, a little wink embedded in the arrangement.

8:42 The recording session wrapped. Elvis's Christmas album was released on October fifteenth, nineteen fifty seven. It went to number one on the Billboard Album charts, displacing the Around the World in Eighty Days soundtrack. It was the first rock and roll Christmas album to top the charts. But Blue Christmas wasn't released as a single, not in nineteen fifty seven, not in nineteen fifty eight, not for years. It was just a track on the album. RCA apparently shared Millie Kirkham's concern that those woo vocals were too silly for a serious release. The album was huge regardless. It contained Santa claus Is Back in Town, which had real rock and roll attitude. It had Elvis's take on White Christmas.

9:28 It had gospel tracks recorded earlier in the year. It was Elvis doing Christmas his way, and audiences loved it. Blue Christmas became a favorite album track, but it wasn't until nineteen sixty four, seven years after recording that RCA finally released it as a single. The B side was Wooden Heart from the Gi Blues soundtrack. It charted in the UK, reaching number eleven, but Elvis still hadn't performed it publicly. The recording existed. People knew it, but there was no performance footage, no live version, just that nineteen fifty seven studio recording with those silly woo vocals that Elvis had reluctantly recorded on a September day in Hollywood.

10:13 Then came nineteen sixty eight. Elvis's career was in a weird place. He'd spent most of the sixties making movies, lots of movies, mostly forgettable ones. His music had become safe, formulaic soundtrack Botterer, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones had taken over rock and roll. Elvis seemed like a relic, a fifty star past his prime. At thirty three years old, NBC offered him a television special. It was sponsored by Singer Sewing Machines, so it was officially called Singer Pre Sense Elvis, though everyone would eventually call it the sixty eight Comeback Special. The idea was simple, put Elvis on stage, let him perform, remind America why he mattered. The special was recorded in June nineteen sixty eight and aired on December third. It became one of the defining moments of Elvis's career. Raw powerful electric performances that proved he still had it, the leather clad segments, the small stage intimate performances, the full production numbers. It revitalized everything. And in the middle of all that, Elvis performed Blue Christmas for the first time publicly. Before singing it, he introduced it by saying, I'd like to do my favorite Christmas song of all

11:43 the ones I've recorded, which is remarkable, right. The song he didn't want to record in nineteen fifty seven, the one he told musicians to just get over with, had become his favorite by nineteen sixty eight. Something had changed in those lieven years. Maybe it was perspective. Maybe by nineteen sixty eight, after years of mediocre movies and soundtrack albums, Elvis had gained appreciation for that moment of spontaneity in the studio, for those silly woo vocals that captured something genuine. Maybe he'd come to understand what made the recording special. Or maybe, and this is speculation, but it feels right, maybe Elvis had come to understand the song's actual emotional content.

12:30 At twenty two, recording it in nineteen fifty seven, he was at the peak of his powers, invincible, surrounded by success. By thirty three in nineteen sixty eight, he'd experience loss, disappointment, the feeling of being left behind, that loneliness at Christmas, that sense of things not being the same. Maybe it resonated differently. Whatever the reason, that sixty eight Comeback Special Performance is the only video footage that exists of Elvis singing a crisp Christmas song, and he delivers Blue Christmas with genuine feeling, with that same vulnerability from the original recording, but now with understanding behind it. The song took on a life of its own after that. It became a Christmas standard, played constantly during the holiday season. Dean Martin's version from nineteen sixty six became another popular rendition, The Beach Boys covered it, Johnny Cash, Brenda Lee, Willie Nelson, countless others. It appeared in movies and TV shows, the rankin Bass special The Year Without a Santa Claus in nineteen seventy four, various film soundtracks, Verizon commercials, the TV show Glee. In two thousand and seven, Martina McBride recorded a duet with his vocal track. It became part of the Christmas Duets album, featuring female vocalists singing alongside Elvis's original recordings. That version hit the Adult Contemporary charts, Elvis's first time on the chart since nineteen eighty two, and

14:02 then in twenty nineteen, something remarkable happened. Blue Christmas re entered the Billboard Hot one hundred at number forty sixty, two years after it was recorded. It had been streamed over twenty one point three million times in one week in the United States. It was Elvis's first time back on the Hot one hundred since nineteen seventy seven. Think about that trajectory. A song written on a commuter train in nineteen forty eight, A country hit for Ernest Tubb in nineteen fifty reluctantly recorded by Elvis in nineteen fifty seven with instructions to just do something silly. Not released as a single for seven years, first performed publicly in nineteen sixty eight and charting again in twenty nineteen, a genuine hit in the streaming era. What made Elvis's version endure when so many other Christmas songs disappeared. Part of it is simply Elvis's cultural permanence. He's one of the handful of artists whose work transcends generations. But there's something specific about this recording. It's the vulnerability combined with playfulness, the melancholy balanced with those absurd woos, the tension between the song's country roots and Elvis's rock and roll identity, the way he sings it, not overdoing the emotion, letting the lyrics carry the weight while his vocal adds character.

15:22 It's also the relatability of the emotion. Christmas songs are often about joy, celebration, family togetherness, but not everyone feels that way during the holidays. For people who are alone, who've lost someone, who are separated from loved ones, Blue Christmas speaks directly to that experience. It validates sadness without being depressing. It acknowledges that Christmas can be complicated, and those woo vocals the thing Millie Kirkham thought would keep the record from being released. They're essential to why it works. They prevent the song from being too heavy. They add a lightness, almost a self awareness, that makes the sadness more bearable. It's okay to feel blue at Christmas, the song seems to say, but we can also smile about it.

16:12 The irony is perfect. Elvis's least favorite song from the session, the one he wanted to rush through, became the defining holiday recording of his career. Not because he overthought it or labored over it, but precisely because he didn't. He told everyone to have fun, and in that moment of letting go, they captured something genuine. There's a lesson in there somewhere about art and control, about how sometimes your best work comes from the things you resist. Elvis wanted to be a rock and roll rebel, not a Christmas crooner, but his reluctant country ballad with silly backing vocals outlasted most of his fifties hits in cultural permanence. Scotty Moore was right when he said the Christmas sessions weren't that different from any other recording dates. We were just recording some more songs. But sometimes that's exactly when magic happens.

17:04 No pressure, no expectations, just professionals doing their job with a decorated Christmas tree in a Hollywood studio in September. Blue Christmas is now as essential to the holiday season as White Christmas or Silent Night. It's in every Christmas playlist, every holiday compilation. It's shorthand for melancholic holiday feelings. When someone says they're having a blue Christmas, everyone knows what they mean, and they're usually thinking of Elvis's voice delivering those words. For Jay Johnson, writing lyrics on a commuter train, inspired by Bing Crosby to imagine the opposite of a white Christmas, he probably never envisioned this, a twenty two year old from Memphis reluctantly recording his song in Hollywood, telling musicians to do something silly, creating a performance that would still be charting sixty two years later. For Ernest Tubb, who made it a country standard and gave advice to young Elvis Presley, he'd probably be proud to know his version led to this. And for Elvis, who didn't want to do it, who wanted to just get it over with. Well, by nineteen sixty eight he was calling it his favorite.

18:12 Sometimes you don't know what matters until time gives you perspective. Put on some Elvis, listen to those woos, feel blue if you need to. That's what the song is there for. Next week on Hit Maker Chronicles, we visit nineteen fifty eight and the Song that almost didn't exist, a novelty record about a chipmunk wanting a hula hoop that became the fastest selling single in history, The Chipmunk song Christmas Don't Be Late, How David Seville accidentally created Alvin and the Chipmunks, and why three high pitched rodents outsold everyone that year. I'm Garrett Fisher, Don't Be Blue,