{"id":111404,"date":"2015-12-22T08:06:45","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T13:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=111404"},"modified":"2017-12-09T08:37:31","modified_gmt":"2017-12-09T13:37:31","slug":"blue-christmas-two-performances","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=111404","title":{"rendered":"“Blue Christmas”: Two Performances, 11 Years Apart"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elvis Presley came out with a Christmas album in 1957. I just wrote about the opening track<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. 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.) <\/p>\n

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: <\/p>\n

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