Here’s a bit of Christmas music to get you on your way. In 1958 a young country-western singer named Brenda Lee did a song called “Rocking Around The Christmas Tree.” Two years later it became a huge hit — and a Christmas standard.
Here are two wonderful You Tube renditions of the song.
First, watch this young You Tuber deliver a superb performance of the Christmas standard — and give it a Latina twist:
Next, turn up your computer’s volume a bit and watch the original Brenda Lee perform the song live, one more time — in 1994, as a middle-aged woman…and deliver a note-per-note perfect re-performance with all of her original pizazz:
This has been run twice before on TMV and it is being reposted by request.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.