Brenda Lee

In 1958, a thirteen-year-old girl recorded a Christmas song in a Nashville studio.

The record flopped. It sold a few thousand copies and charted nowhere.

Sixty-five years later, in December 2023, that same recording went to number one in the United States.

Let us put it properly: the one who waited was the song

It tends to be told as the story of an artist who waited her whole life to be recognised. That is not it, and the distinction is worth making, because the truth is more interesting.

Brenda Lee had already been number one. Twice, in 1960, when she was fifteen: with "I'm Sorry", which spent three weeks at the top, and with "I Want to Be Wanted".

In the sixties she put forty-seven songs on the American charts. More than any other woman of the decade. Only Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Ray Charles placed more.

So this is not a forgotten artist who was rescued. It is something rarer: an enormous star who at thirteen recorded a record that did nothing for her, and which took sixty-five years to come looking for her again.

The girl who is four foot nine

They called her "Little Miss Dynamite", and the nickname was literal in both halves.

She is four foot nine. Out of that height came a thick, rasping, adult voice that made no sense at all coming from a child.

That is the first oddity of her story. People listening on the radio in 1960 took it for granted that she was a grown woman. When they saw her, they did not believe it.

"Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" was written by Johnny Marks, the same man who had written "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". She did not compose it: she performed it. At thirteen.

The record was reissued in 1960, when Lee was already a star, and that time it did work: it reached number fourteen.

And there it stayed, for decades, in a curious place: playing every December everywhere, in every shop, at every party, and number one of nothing.

What changed was not the song

What changed was the way songs are counted.

For half a century, a chart measured what sold that week. An old Christmas song did not sell: it was simply there, in the air, free. In the streaming era, by contrast, every December millions of plays add up and are counted.

In November 2023, for the sixty-fifth anniversary, an official video for the song was finally released. Lee, aged seventy-eight, decorating the tree and baking cookies, lip-syncing to her own recording as a child, with Tanya Tucker and Trisha Yearwood as guests.

The video pushed. On the chart dated 9 December 2023, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" was number one.

Two records at once: the longest journey in history to the top of the Hot 100, and the oldest artist ever to lead it — passing Louis Armstrong, and Cher among the women. Two days later she turned seventy-nine.

What to remember

Brenda Lee is proof that a song can have a longer life than the career that produced it, and one fairly independent of it.

Put on "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" and you will hear a thirteen-year-old girl singing with a voice that does not belong to her. Then put on "I'm Sorry" and you will understand why she was one of the great artists of her decade.

What is moving is not that the world took its time to thank her — the world thanked her early and generously. It is that a recording which failed at the time stayed there, playing every December for sixty-five years, waiting for the way of counting hits to change enough to notice it.

Remember her like this: not as the forgotten one who came back, but as the star who as a child recorded, almost by accident, the song that would outlive everything else.

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Sources

Brenda Lee, real name Brenda Mae Tarpley, born in Atlanta on 11 December 1944; she is still alive. She is 1.45 m tall, hence the nickname "Little Miss Dynamite". She recorded "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" in 1958, aged thirteen; the song was written by Johnny Marks, also the author of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer". The original 1958 release failed commercially; the 1960 reissue reached number fourteen on the Billboard Hot 100. The song reached number one on the Hot 100 on the chart dated 9 December 2023, sixty-five years after it was recorded: the longest journey on record to the top spot, and the record for the oldest artist to lead the chart (78 years old), surpassing Louis Armstrong and, among women, Cher. The first official video for the song was released on 3 November 2023, featuring Tanya Tucker and Trisha Yearwood. It should be made clear, since the opposite is often stated, that this was not her first number one: she had already topped the Hot 100 in 1960 with "I'm Sorry" (three weeks) and "I Want to Be Wanted". During the 1960s she placed forty-seven songs on the American charts, more than any other woman and behind only Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Ray Charles. She was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1997 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of her work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Billboard, Wikipedia, AllMusic and other coverage.