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Elvis' Christmas Album

1. "Santa Bring My Baby Back (To Me)"
   Released: November 11, 1957[1]
2. "Blue Christmas"
   Released: November 3, 1964[2]
3. "Santa Claus Is Back in Town"
   Released: November 1965[3]
4. "If Every Day Was Like Christmas"
   Released: November 15, 1966[4]

Elvis' Christmas Album (also reissued as It's Christmas Time) is the third studio album and first Christmas album by American singer and musician Elvis Presley on RCA Victor, LOC -1035, a deluxe limited edition, released October 15, 1957, and recorded at Radio Recorders in Hollywood. It has been reissued in numerous different formats since its first release. It spent four weeks at number one on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart, and was the first of two Christmas-themed albums Presley would record, the other being Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas, released in 1971. The publication Music Vendor listed Elvis' Christmas Album on their singles charts for two weeks in December 1957 – January 1958, with a peak position of #49.

According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Elvis' Christmas Album along with its reissues has shipped at least 17 million copies in the United States. It is the first Presley title to attain Diamond certification by the RIAA, and is also the best-selling Christmas album of all time in the United States. With total sales of more 20 million copies worldwide, it remains the world's best-selling Christmas album and one of the best-selling albums of all time.

Content

While most of the songs selected were traditional Christmas fare, such as "White Christmas" and "Silent Night," two new songs by regular suppliers of material for Presley were commissioned. One was "Santa Bring My Baby Back (to Me)" and the other (selected by Elvis to open the album), was a blues-based rock and roll number, "Santa Claus Is Back in Town," written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. This writer/producer team was responsible for some of 1950s rhythm and blues and rock and roll's most finely-honed satire in their work with the Coasters, as well as penning "Hound Dog" for Willie Mae Thornton and providing Elvis with some of his biggest hits, including "Jailhouse Rock" and "Don't."

Elvis had asked the pair to come up with another Christmas song during sessions for the album; within a few minutes, they had the song written and ready for recording. Originally titled "Christmas Blues", this slyly risqué number is given a full-throated treatment by Elvis who, aided by the gritty ensemble playing from his band, was determined to ensure that this Christmas album would not be easily ignored. Much of the remaining program was performed in a more traditional manner appropriate to the solemnity of Christmas, although Elvis's innate sense of occasion shone through on his left-of-centre reading of Ernest Tubb's 1949 hit, "Blue Christmas."

"Silent Night" and "O Little Town of Bethlehem" were arranged by Elvis Presley.

The Bing Crosby holiday perennial "White Christmas," which appeared every year on the Billboard charts from 1942 to 1962, became the center of controversy upon the album's release, with calls by the song's composer Irving Berlin to have the song, and the entire album, banned from radio airplay. After hearing Presley's version of his song, which Berlin saw as a "profane parody of his cherished yuletide standard", he ordered his staff in New York to telephone radio stations across the United States, demanding the song be discontinued from radio play. While most US radio stations ignored Berlin's request, at least one disc jockey was fired for playing a song from the album, and most Canadian stations refused to play the album.

The controversy was, ironically, fueled by Elvis's performance of the song in a style mirroring the version by Clyde McPhatter's group, The Drifters, which had been a Top 10 hit on the R&B singles chart in 1954 and 1955. Unlike Elvis's recording, however, their version attracted virtually no adverse reaction, and certainly no reported opposition from Irving Berlin. Part of the reason that The Drifters' version of "White Christmas" was less controversial was because that version was played only on black radio stations. Elvis Presley's version brought greater attention to The Drifters' version which gained prominence with its inclusion in the 1990 movie Home Alone.

Reissues

First reissue on RCA Victor

Elvis' Christmas Album was reissued two years after its first release, replacing the cover of the original with a close-up of Elvis as he posed against an outdoor, snowy backdrop. The album continued to reach the album charts each year until 1962, eventually selling more than three million copies in the U.S.

Second reissue on RCA Camden

The original Elvis' Christmas Album was out of print by the late 1960s. Interest in the album prompted RCA to reissue it in a revised version on its budget label RCA Camden in November, 1970. This version replaced the four gospel tracks from the Peace in the Valley EP with the 1966 holiday single "If Every Day Was Like Christmas," along with the 1970 non-seasonal B-side "Mama Liked the Roses", issued as the flip to Elvis's top ten single "The Wonder of You" and originating from Presley's acclaimed 1969 Memphis sessions; neither track had been available on LP format previously. With ten tracks and a shorter running time, it fit the standard for RCA's budget label issues at the time. The religious and secular Christmas songs were also mixed. The initial cover of this revised version echoed that of the 1958 reissue, except a more recent photograph with Elvis wearing a blue racing jacket with two white stripes on the left was used from the set of the 1967 movie Speedway. The album was also released in the UK with an album cover that featured Elvis's face from the 1970 Camden release in a circle in the middle surrounded in white with the title and the song selections in red. The four Peace in the Valley tracks were reissued on RCA Camden the next year on the budget compilation You'll Never Walk Alone.

Track listing

• Jerry Leiber
• Mike Stoller

• Gene Autry
• Oakley Haldeman

• Kim Gannon
• Walter Kent
• Buck Ram

• Billy Hayes
• Jay Johnson

• Aaron Schroeder
• Claude Demetrius

• Phillips Brooks
• Lewis Redner
• Elvis Presley[a]

• Joseph Mohr
• Franz Gruber
• Presley[a]

• Ervin Drake
• Irvin Graham
• Jimmy Shirl
• Al Stillman