Brenda Lee reveals origins of hit song ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’

Brenda Lee just got candid about the success her 1958 single, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree has garnered throughout the decades.

Previous Christmas her aforementioned track scored the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the first time making lee, who was then, 78 years old, the oldest artist to top the chart.

Additionally, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree also became the single that took the longest time yet to reach the top spot, that is, 65 years after its initial release.

This year, as the holiday season approaches once again, the Losing You crooner would be celebrating her hit Christmas track with a new PBS American Masters documentary, Brenda Lee: Still Rockin’, a 51-minute-long special including appearances by Keith Urban, Pat Benatar, Tanya Tucker, Trisha Yearwood and Lee herself.

“I recorded ‘Rockin’ ‘ when I was 12,” she said, adding, “Johnny Marks wrote it. I said, ‘Johnny, you don’t even believe in Christmas,’ and I said, ‘Tell me how you wrote ‘Rockin’?'”

“He said, ‘I was laying on the beach in New York,’ and pine trees were over to this side.’ And then he said, ‘I kind of went to sleep to take a little nap, and I woke up and I was facing the pine trees, and they were just kind of swinging like this [moves her hands back and forth].’ And he thought, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree. And there it was,” Brenda Lee further mentioned, revealing how she ended up naming the song.