Country singer Marty Brown recently performed a live version of the Christmas classic “The Little Drummer Boy.” Accompanied by harmonica and fiddle, Brown shows his great singing voice especially when he takes the song into the higher register. Check it out.
If you want more holiday music from Marty Brown, check out this home recording of “Blue Christmas.” The video is completed by Brown doing his Elvis Presley imitation starting at around the 50-second mark. Check it out below (and for more on Elvis’s connection to “Blue Christmas” check out this story).
What is your favorite version of “The Little Drummer Boy”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
In what is now known as “The ’68 Comeback Special,” what was originally conceived as a Christmas special ended up with only one holiday song, “Blue Christmas.”
It was the Christmas television special that never was. Peter Guralnick explained in his wonderful two-volume biography of Elvis Presley how Elvis’s famous 1968 “Comeback Special” started with the idea of a holiday special. But it turned into something completely different.
By the late 1960’s, Elvis had become largely irrelevant to the current music scene. In recent years he had spent his time in a wasteland of movies of declining quality.
For a change in strategy, Colonel Parker negotiated a deal with NBC for a TV special around the holidays. And Parker envisioned it as a Christmas special.
But Elvis and Steve Binder, the director of the program, had something else in mind. They designed the special in a way to reestablish Elvis as a relevant music artist.
The special featured several big set productions and an outstanding closing number written just for Elvis. But the centerpiece of the special featured Elvis in black leather singing out the raw blues of his early work — both in stand-up and sit-down segments.
Binder recorded two sit-down sessions with Elvis on June 27, 1968 for the December TV special. Both versions of “Blue Christmas” are available on DVD. In one of the sessions, Elvis also sang “Santa Claus Is Back in Town,” but it was not used in the show.
The special, promoted as “Elvis” but now known as The ’68 Comeback Special, was a turning point in Presleys career. It relaunched him as a relevant music artist who would soon record such great songs as “Suspicious Minds.”
“Blue Christmas”
In the special, which was broadcast on December 3, 1968, Binder agreed to allow only one Christmas song in the show. The song was “Blue Christmas,” which Elvis had first recorded in 1957.
Elvis’s 1957 rock and roll performance defined “Blue Christmas.” But the song had been recorded almost a decade earlier in 1948 by Ernest Tubb. One of the most recent covers of the song was released by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band with a horn section on a fun version of “Blue Christmas.”
One can see why Binder allowed this one holiday song in the 1968 special. “Blue Christmas” is steeped in the blues, and Presley knocks it out of the park.
Watching the performance feels like being in the living room jamming with the greatest singer in the world. The King had returned.
Bonus Ranking: See where “Blue Christmas” ranks among the top depressing holiday songs of all time here.
Bonus History Trivia: This week in 1957, Elvis was at Graceland celebrating the holidays when he received his draft notice on December 20, 1957.
of Elvis Presley how Elvis’s famous 1968 “Comeback Special” started with the idea of a holiday special. But it turned into something completely different.