Content material

The unique 1957 LP consisted of six standard Christmas songs, two conventional Christmas carols and 4 gospel songs which had been beforehand launched on the EP Peace within the Valley, catalogue EPA 4054, issued March 1957, peaking at No. 3 on the Pop albums chart and at No. 39 on the singles chart.^[11] The 2 album sides divided right into a program of secular Christmas songs on facet one, with two conventional Christmas carols and the gospel numbers on facet two. These included two spirituals by innovator Thomas A. Dorsey, “Peace within the Valley” and “Take My Hand, Treasured Lord”. Coincidentally, A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra, launched the earlier month, was additionally divided into secular and conventional sides.

Whereas a lot of the songs chosen had been conventional Christmas fare, reminiscent of “White Christmas” and “Silent Night time”, two new songs by common suppliers of fabric for Presley had been commissioned. One was “Santa Convey My Child Again (to Me)” and the opposite (chosen by Presley to open the album), was a blues-based rock and roll quantity, “Santa Claus Is Again in City”, written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. This author/producer staff was answerable for a few of Nineteen Fifties rhythm and blues and rock and roll’s most finely-honed satire of their work with the Coasters, in addition to penning “Hound Canine” for Willie Mae Thornton and offering Presley with a few of his largest hits, together with “Jailhouse Rock” and “Do not”.

Presley requested the pair to give you one other Christmas track throughout periods for the album; inside a couple of minutes, they’d the track written and prepared for recording. Initially titled “Christmas Blues”, this slyly risqué quantity is given a full-throated therapy by Presley who, aided by the gritty ensemble taking part in from his band, was decided to make sure that this Christmas album wouldn’t be simply ignored.^[12] A lot of the remaining program was carried out in a extra conventional method applicable to the solemnity of Christmas, though Presley’s innate sense of event shone by way of on his left-of-centre studying of Ernest Tubb’s 1949 hit, “Blue Christmas”.

“Silent Night time” and “O Little City of Bethlehem” had been organized by Presley himself.

The Bing Crosby vacation perennial “White Christmas”, which appeared yearly on the Billboard charts from 1942 to 1962, turned the middle of controversy upon the album’s launch, with calls by the track’s composer Irving Berlin to have the track, and your complete album, banned from radio airplay.^[13] After listening to Presley’s model of his track, which Berlin noticed as a “profane parody of his cherished yuletide normal”, he ordered his employees in New York to phone radio stations throughout america, demanding the track be discontinued from radio play. Whereas most US radio stations ignored Berlin’s request, at the least one disc jockey was fired for taking part in a track from the album, and most Canadian stations refused to play the album.^[14]

The controversy was, paradoxically, fueled by Presley’s efficiency of the track in a mode mirroring the model by Clyde McPhatter’s group, The Drifters, which had been a High 10 hit on the R&B singles chart in 1954 and 1955. Not like Presley’s recording, nevertheless, their model attracted nearly no opposed response, and positively no reported opposition from Berlin. A part of the explanation that The Drifters’ model of “White Christmas” was much less controversial was that this model was performed solely on black radio stations. Presley’s model introduced better consideration to The Drifters’ model which gained prominence with its inclusion within the 1990 film Residence Alone.

Packaging

Unique 1957 copies of Elvis’ Christmas Album (LOC-1035) had been issued with a pink booklet-like album cowl (as proven above) that includes promotional photographs from Presley’s third film Jailhouse Rock. Even rarer than the duvet and document itself is a gold foil worth tag-shaped “reward giving” sticker hooked up to the shrink wrap, studying “TO __________, FROM _____________, ELVIS SINGS”, adopted by an inventory of the tracks. Unique copies with the gold sticker intact on the shrink wrap have confirmed to be among the many most dear of Presley’s albums. Including to its already excessive worth are restricted pink vinyl albums and album covers with gold print down the backbone.

File labels for all unique 1957 pressings are black with all-silver print, the well-known RCA Victor “His Grasp’s Voice” canine emblem on the prime of label, and “LONG 33

1⁄3 PLAY” on the backside.

45 RPM releases

The opposite new composition on the album, “Santa, Convey My Child Again to Me” was paired with “Santa Claus Is Again in City”, and issued as a UK single concurrently with the album’s launch. The one reached quantity seven on the UK Singles Chart in November 1957.^[15]

No singles had been issued within the US till 1964, when “Blue Christmas” was paired with “Wood Coronary heart”, and reached No. 1 on the Billboard Christmas Singles chart; nevertheless, a pairing of “Blue Christmas” b/w “White Christmas” turned a High 20 UK hit in late 1964. “Santa Claus Is Again In City”/”Blue Christmas” was a 1965 single launch for the US market, and reached No. 4 on the Billboard Christmas Singles chart. “Blue Christmas” would re-enter the Christmas or Vacation Singles chart a number of occasions within the years that observe.^[16]

Two totally different EPs, Elvis Sings Christmas Songs, EPA 4108 in December 1957, and Christmas with Elvis, EPA 4340 in December 1958, divided the eight Christmas numbers between them. The previous topped the newly established Billboard EP Chart, whereas the latter did not chart.

Reissues

First reissue on RCA Victor

Elvis’ Christmas Album was reissued two years after its first launch in October 1959 whereas Presley was on responsibility in Germany. The deluxe fold-out cowl was changed with a daily cowl with a close-up of Elvis as he posed in opposition to an outside, snowy backdrop. The album continued to succeed in the album charts every year till 1962, finally promoting greater than three million copies within the U.S.

Second reissue on RCA Camden

In 1971, Elvis recorded a brand new Christmas album, Elvis Sings the Great World of Christmas; The unique Elvis’ Christmas Album went out of print, however continued curiosity within the album prompted RCA to reissue a revised and truncated model on its finances label RCA Camden in November 1970. This reissue changed the 4 gospel tracks from the Peace within the Valley EP with the 1966 vacation single “If Each Day Was Like Christmas”, together with the 1970 non-seasonal B-side “Mama Preferred the Roses”, issued because the flip to Elvis’s prime ten single “The Marvel of You” and originating from Presley’s acclaimed 1969 Memphis periods; neither observe had been out there on LP format beforehand. With ten tracks and a shorter operating time, it match the usual for RCA’s finances Camden label points on the time. The spiritual and secular Christmas songs had been additionally blended. The preliminary cowl of this revised model echoed that of the 1958 reissue, besides a newer {photograph} with Elvis carrying a blue racing jacket with two white stripes on the left was used from the set of the 1967 film Speedway. The album was additionally launched within the UK with an album cowl that featured Elvis’s face from the 1970 Camden launch in a circle within the center surrounded in white with the title and the track picks in pink. The 4 Peace within the Valley tracks had been reissued the following yr on the RCA Camden compilation You will By no means Stroll Alone.

Third reissue on Pickwick

Throughout the mid-Seventies, RCA leased the rights to a few of its Camden recordings to the finances reissue label Pickwick Information. Pickwick reissued the 10-track Camden Christmas album in 1975 with yet one more cowl design, Elvis’s photograph from the RCA Camden model surrounded by pink ribbons with holly beneath and a darkish blue background. Earlier than and throughout the vacation season after Presley’s loss of life in August 1977, the Pickwick LP was marketed and bought on tv through mail order to monumental gross sales, later licensed by the RIAA as promoting in extra of ten million copies. Demand for Presley’s recordings elevated significantly after his loss of life, and RCA promptly reclaimed the reissue rights to its Camden line from Pickwick. The Christmas Album was reissued within the Eighties on LP and compact disc as an RCA Particular Merchandise launch on the RCA Camden label and on CD in Canada within the RCA Camden Classics sequence. This reissue, with its Pickwick cowl artwork however carrying RCA logos, was in print all through the Nineteen Nineties; the observe itemizing remained unchanged from the unique 1970 RCA Camden launch.

Different reissues

In 1976, the album was reissued on cassette with the title Blue Christmas; this reissue additionally had an alternate observe itemizing. In 1985, the album was reissued once more however with a brand new title, It is Christmas Time; shortly after, RCA reissued the unique 1957 model of the album with a recreation of its unique cowl artwork on CD, and gatefold sleeve on LP. In 1995, RCA/BMG Particular Merchandise once more reissued the Camden/Pickwick compilation retitled Elvis Christmas with new cowl artwork. By the second decade of the twenty first Century, It is Christmas Time had grow to be the second largest promoting album within the sequence, incomes a 4× Platinum certification on March 8, 2018, prompting the unique 1957 model to be out there as soon as once more within the 2016 60 CD boxed set containing all of Presley’s unique RCA albums, Elvis Presley – The RCA Album Assortment.

Within the January 5, 2019 situation of Billboard, It is Christmas Time appeared for the primary time inside the highest 40 albums of the Billboard 200 chart, inserting at quantity 25.

All the above tracks are additionally out there on a number of different RCA compilations of Presley’s Christmas recordings, together with Christmas Peace from 2003 and Elvis Christmas (a special, expanded model of the 1995 situation) from 2006. All the tracks are additionally out there on the 1992 RCA boxed set The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Full 50’s Masters. In late 2007, Speaker’s Nook Information from Germany reissued the album on a top quality heavy vinyl urgent; this reissue additionally featured a replica of the unique album cowl and RCA Victor label from 1957. As well as, in 2010, a DVD was launched in a sequence from Sony Music referred to as The Yuletide Log DVD, wherein the music from Elvis’ Christmas Album (however with out “I am going to Be Residence for Christmas”) is featured with three totally different vacation visuals (one in every of them the xmas log of the sequence’ title). The unique LP cowl is featured on the DVD menu.

Monitor itemizing

Notes

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  ^a signifies organized by

Personnel

The Blue Moon Boys

• Elvis Presley – lead vocals, acoustic rhythm guitar
• Scotty Moore – electrical lead guitar
• Invoice Black – double bass
• D. J. Fontana – drums

The Jordanaires

• Neal Matthews – backing vocals
• Hugh Jarrett – backing vocals
• Gordon Stoker – backing vocals, piano (tracks B3-B5)
• Hoyt Hawkins – backing vocals, organ (observe B6)

Extra Personnel

• Dudley Brooks – piano (tracks A1-B2, B6)
• Millie Kirkham – backing vocals (tracks A1-B2)

Charts

Certifications

See additionally

• Record of best-selling albums
• Record of Billboard number-one albums of 1957
• Record of Billboard 200 number-one albums of 1958

Notes

• Guralnick, Peter. The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Full 50’s Masters, insert booklet. RCA 66050-2, 1992.
• Guralnick, Peter. From Nashville to Memphis: The Important ’60s Masters, insert booklet. RCA 66160-2, 1993.
• Guralnick, Peter (1994). Final Practice to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. Little Brown GBR. ISBN 978-0-316-91020-0.
• Hopkins, Jerry (1971). Elvis: A Biography. ISBN 978-0-671-20973-5.
• Jorgensen, Ernst (1998). Elvis Presley: A Life in Music : The Full Recording Classes. St Martins Press. ISBN 978-0-312-18572-5.
• Wolfe, Charles. Elvis Presley: If Each Day Was Like Christmas, liner notes. BMG Australia Restricted, 7863664822, 1994.
• White Christmas by Irving Berlin