“Blue Christmas”: Two Performances, 11 Years Apart

Elvis Presley came out with a Christmas album in 1957. I just wrote about the opening track, the raunchy shameless “Santa Claus Is Back In Town”. The rest of the album is pretty traditional. Side A is the secular side (“White Christmas,” “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” etc.) and Side B is the religious side with “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Silent Night,” etc.

The now-classic “Blue Christmas” was on Side A of that album in 1957, one of the few “new” songs on that album. Elvis thought the whole thing was a joke. He had no idea it would now be a classic, covered by everyone (Kelly Clarkson just did it on her Christmas album, Dino did it, Michael Buble did it). Written by Billy Hayes and Jay Johnson, it was originally recorded by Doye O’Dell in 1948, although the second Elvis sang it, it became his. On the heels of his recording, everyone started recording it. Ernest Tubb, Billy Eckstein, and others recorded it (and also had Billboard hits with it.) The song has a very mildly bluesy feel to it – almost a lampoon of the blues, and in the studio they created the part for the soprano, woozing it up and down the scales in the background throughout the entirety of the song. Millie Kirkham (who just died a couple of years ago) sang on a lot of Elvis’ albums, and she was called in to do that soprano part. Elvis was surprised when she walked into the studio, because she was pregnant. It was such a boys’ club in Elvis’ studios she was an anomaly as 1. a woman and 2. a pregnant woman. Elvis raced around trying to make her comfortable, and scolded his dumbo buddies for not getting her a chair. As they recorded the song, Elvis thought what Kirkham was doing behind him, in her part, was hilarious. He wanted her to do it throughout, not as punctuation, but as a consistent presence. In other words, let’s highlight what a silly goof of a song this is. (Important to remember that even though his studio albums had RCA producers, it was always Elvis who was in charge of the sessions.)

Elvis’ vocals are hilarious, too, if you remove the fact that you’ve heard the song 1,000 times, and really listen to what he’s doing. You can tell he’s busting on the song as he’s doing it:

He’s got all those Elvis “tricks,” the little flourishes on notes, the goofy low-notes where he has the most fun, where he’s the most sexual. (And listen to the guitar part, too. There’s some funny stuff going on there.)

When this song went on to become a classic, Elvis thought it was somewhat ridiculous, but whatever, he collected the royalty checks. You never know what will “hit.” “Santa Claus Is Back In Town” is the REAL classic, but it’s too rough and sexual (even now) to get much radio play.

Cut to over 10 years later.

Elvis is a superstar. He’s been appearing in 3 movies a year (most good, a couple really bad), and tied up in his movie contract. He does not perform live for almost the entirety of 60s, except for a benefit concert in 1961 to raise funds for the USS Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor. During his time away from live performances, the British Invasion happened, and Elvis was shuffled to the side in Beatlemania. He may have inspired the Beatles (John Lennon: “Before Elvis, there was nothing.” George Harrison was asked what his musical roots were, and he replied that he had none. The closest “root” he had was hearing “Heartbreak Hotel” coming out of an open window when he was a kid), but the teenagers swept away by The Beatles were a new generation, unconnected to the Elvis furor 10 years before. Elvis had to have been extraordinarily anxious as he looked on, although publicly he was a good sport about it (for the most part).

Finally, in 1968, plans were set in motion for Elvis to do a Christmas special on CBS. Colonel Parker had set up a deal with Singer sewing machines as sponsor, and the idea was a nice family-friendly special, with Elvis standing by a Christmas tree singing Christmas songs. The fact that the special so does not go that way – and instead has become a mythical moment in the Elvis Story (even MORE mythical than his original breakout because it re-asserted his unique power. How did this bizarre and revolutionary TV special even happen?

When Elvis appeared in front of the live studio crowd in what is now known as the “comeback special,” head to toe in black leather, it was quite literally breathtaking.

I mean, I wasn’t there, but Elvis fans from the 50s have spoken about how emotional it was, to see Elvis appear again, and to not be lessened in any way by his time away. If anything, he was even more powerful. He sang all his hits. But he sang them in a new way, even more ferocious than the versions from the 1950s, because now he had so much more to prove. Now he was re-claiming the territory that belonged to him.

Steve Binder, who had made his name with the extraordinary TAMI Show broadcast, was the director of the Elvis special. (The TAMI Show was another special that was meant to be one thing – a concert featuring different artists geared at teenagers – and became something else entirely, as well as a completely unpredictable event.) Binder – an enormous Elvis fan – was in touch with the culture of the 60s and the possibilities of television in a way that Elvis – cocooned in his own life – was not. Binder began to subvert Colonel Parker’s conventional plans for the Elvis TV special. Elvis got on board. The Christmas motif was thrown out the window. The special, instead, would be a celebration of Elvis’ career, but done in a contemporary way, not a re-tread nostalgic way, which would have made Elvis seem like a square old-fogey.

One of the many highlights is what is now known as the “informal sit-down sessions” of the special, where Elvis, and the remaining members of his original group – guitarist Scottie Moore and drummer DJ Fontana, sat on a little circular stage, surrounded by an audience, and went through a series of numbers in an almost improvisational way.

Elvis ends up giving some of the best performances of his career here (“Trying to Get to You” blows your hair back) – not only the best of his career, but the best period. It’s up there with Judy Garland singing “Battle Hymn of the Republic” on her television show the week after JFK was assassinated. It’s still almost hard to believe that Steve Binder overrode the Colonel’s objections, and we got THIS instead. It’s still so radical.

These “informal sessions” are pared-down, raw. DJ Fontana doesn’t even have a drum set. He raps his drum sticks on a guitar case in front of him. It’s meant to be a reminder of how little Elvis started out with, how simple those first recordings really were.

The difference, though, is in Elvis himself. He’s now a superstar, with a suntan, in black leather, and gorgeous in an otherworldly way. It almost hurts to look at him. And, as always, he knows it, and uses it in a way that somehow feels humble. He offers himself up to his audience in a way he hadn’t done in years. Here I am. Get a good look at me. I know I’m pretty. I’ll let you look. I’ll give you a good show.

During the sit-down session, Elvis almost jokingly refers to the supposed Christmas theme (making fun of the original intention) and says he will now play his “favorite Christmas song,” and the audience – THINKING he will launch into “Blue Christmas” – freak out before he’s sung a note. Full of surprises though, toying with the audience and teasing them, as only he knew how to do, he starts “Santa Claus Is Back in Town.” The audience deflates, but then start screaming again, because he’s so raw, and the song reminds them (if his physical appearance didn’t, although that is not likely) of the sheer force of Elvis’ sexual energy. (And his sexual energy was not a struttingly male kind of thing like Mick Jagger’s or the other rock icons of the 70s. Elvis’ is far more compelling because it draws you in. It’s still a showoff – Here. Here is this private part of me. Get off on it, ladies. – but it also has a level of receiving to it – typically seen as “female” – that makes the whole thing completely destabilizing. It’s not a STRUT, it’s not cock-swinging, it’s … well, what is it. Who knows. You know it when you see it, only Elvis could bring it like that, and girls knew it when they saw it. They responded to the cock-swinging of Jagger too. Listen, we love it when men show us that side of themselves in 1. a way that is free and personal and 2. in a way that does not somehow put us down. It’s super-attractive and it’s also friendly, because its goal is to turn us on. Shades of Magic Mike XXL, which shows the joy/almost political consequences of gearing your life, as a male, to catering to women. It’s almost old-school chivalry, as bizarre as that sounds. Elvis presented his sexuality like that, as an offering, a feel-good proposal. Elvis included us in his private world in a way that very few people do, let alone rock stars.)

And then, Elvis forgets the words to “Santa Claus Is Back in Town” and the song kind of peters out. (The informal sessions were that informal!) Again, the audience deflates a bit, because he was giving something that they needed, something that they weren’t even aware they missed so much. Still on the upswing, though, Elvis being a master of controlling an audience’s response, he launches into “Blue Christmas.”

He turns that joke of a song into a deep and rich and ADULT MALE revel in his own powers of expression, his own strong roots in the blues, as well as a sense of humor, an almost jaunty acknowledgement of the silliness of the song … He keeps it light. There’s a smile on his face.

But when he leans into the microphone, going low in his voice like he liked to do, there is no mistaking the sexual come-on, the REALITY of it. It’s not a put-on. It’s not an “act.” It’s Elvis making love to the audience, his only long-lasting and pure relationship of that kind.

A couple of things:
1. I think it’s DJ Fontana, who encourages Elvis from offscreen: “Yeah, play it dirty, play it dirty.” This is a Christmas song and that comment is hysterical.

2. Elvis took Scotty Moore’s electric guitar (they swapped) and actually plays the electric guitar. Scotty Moore had some funny things to say about THAT afterwards, but of course Elvis was in charge so he handed it over. Elvis was never a virtuoso player, like Scotty was. And he never played the electric guitar. But here he does.

3. And watch early on for one of my favorite moments: The women in the audience are undone, almost immediately. You get a shot of woman almost in tears, her hand to her mouth. Almost immediately after that, during a close-up of Elvis (it’s around the .40 mark), you can hear a woman give a frankly sexual moan. Off to Elvis’ left. And Elvis hears it. And looks over, suddenly lit-up: He knows that sound, he follows it. He wants to see who made that sound. And the women SCREAM. That’s what I mean about Elvis’ receiving nature, his capacity to still be somewhat surprised at the effect he has, at the same time that you can see that making a woman moan like that was his whole purpose in the first place.

4. He’s drenched in sweat. This matters to him. It’s life or death. But you don’t feel that it’s life or death. You feel that he is doing what he is supposed to be doing.

And that, that bluesy jaunty sexual “Blue Christmas” is Elvis’ ONLY acknowledgement of the Colonel’s original intentions (a bold move on Elvis’ part, since he usually did what the Colonel said.) But Elvis is in HIS zone now, not the Colonel’s. On that little circular stage, it’s HIS arena, the space he created for himself all by his lonesome, without any help from anyone at all.

There it all is. It’s risky and bold … but it doesn’t feel that way. Or, it does, but the overwhelming sense is that this kind of thing is EASY for Elvis. And for him it is.

This is not your mother’s “Blue Christmas.”