You can’t escape it, nor do you want to. It’s everywhere. That legendary voice inhabiting your Airpods or Bluetooth speaker, cascading from your car radio, in elevators or at the mall.
It can only mean one thing. When the King serenades you with those blue snowflakes and those decorations of red, it’s definitely time to have a Blue Christmas with Elvis.
The song, Blue Christmas, holds a poignant, personal space in my heart, going back to my days in Memphis, Tennessee. More on that in a minute.
Not first, definitely best
Elvis Presley was not the first to record this classic, by the way. In 1949-50, country crooner Ernest Tubb had a juke box hit with it, as did a couple of other artists in the early 50s.
But it was the monstrously popular LP, Elvis’ Christmas Album, released in 1957, that skyrocketed Blue Christmas through the roof. To this day it’s number one on the Billboard U.S. Christmas Singles chart and also sits near the top in several other countries.
Memories calling
I’m not sure I was even aware of the song until I spent some time up close and personal in Elvis’ backyard, living and working in Memphis over the span of two dreamy years.
While still only in my 20s, I had the privilege of anchoring the 6:00 and 10:00 news at a network TV affiliate whose broadcast studios sat high up on a ridge. The building hugged the banks of the Mississippi on the south side of town.
The TV station had quite a pedigree. It was actually the descendant of the venerable WREC radio where Sam Phillips cut his teeth as a sound engineer back in the 1940s.
My final December there was a bittersweet time. I’d just made the difficult decision to move on to greener pastures (or so I thought), a TV job in sunny Florida.
My last night on the air in Memphis, my colleagues on the anchor desk and behind the scenes had put together a farewell video package which ran at the end of the 10:00 newscast.
It was a compilation of some of the “greatest hits” of my time on the news in Memphis. The soundtrack on the video: Blue Christmas.
I’m not gonna lie. It brought tears to my eyes.
Just thinking about it even today still brings on the waterworks. Whenever I hear those lyrics telling of what a blue Christmas it will be without you, I think fondly of those friends, those good people I said goodbye to that year in Memphis.
Hate to admit it, but until that moment I hadn’t realized what I meant to those folks. And what they meant to me.
Oh, and those greener pastures I was hell bent on getting to? They weren’t so green after all. Within a year I was again looking for a new job.
Blue, blue, blue
Back to the song itself, Elvis’ version has certainly inspired many covers in the past 65+ years. The little girl singing it in The Year Without a Santa Claus has to be one of the sweetest renditions.
Elvis performed Blue Christmas on camera for the first time during the famous Singer special on NBC in 1968. He returned to the song from time to time during his Vegas shows and tours in the 1970s.
And of course, he teamed up with Kane Brown for this video just released in November 2023 following the Christmas at Graceland special.
About that “woo-ooh-ooh”
Finally, one last bit. Back in 1957, apparently Elvis didn’t even want to record Blue Christmas. He tried his best to mess it up with silly phrasings and encouraged his backup singers and band to do the same, hoping RCA would never release it.
Well, guess what? All that silliness powered Elvis’ Christmas Album into its long-standing reign as the best-selling Christmas album of all time!
I’d call that, doing all right.
[…] That’s not to say I haven’t had embarrassing memories, just like the fictional Tom. No, I haven’t had throw downs with angry husbands, but I have had wine spilled on me, and awkward moments with holiday dates. Just not at the same time!Seems I was often changing jobs and leaving town around Christmas–that’s a melancholy package for sure. Now put a bow on it with folks making you weep with syrupy goodbyes set to the tune of “Blue Christmas.” […]
I agree. Elvis did it best. Happy Holidays, Jim!
Love that you started to blog (again). Enjoyed this one!