She has just become the oldest person ever to top the US chart, with the classic she recorded at 13 – Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree. She recalls touring with Jerry Lee Lewis, forming a bond with the king of rock’n’roll and what she learned from Judy Garland
Recorded in 1958, Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree has long since joined the select group of festive songs that boom out of radios, shops and pubs at this time of year. The song – which also featured in the hit 1990 film Home Alone – is definitively seasonal, from its gentle rock’n’rolling groove to its: “Deck the halls with boughs of holly”.
Now, 65 years after its first release, Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree has finally reached No 1 in the US chart. “It’s been a week, I tell you!” says Lee over a Zoom call from her home in Nashville. Aged 78, she became the oldest person to score a US chart-topper (she is now 79), overtaking Louis Armstrong, who was 63 when Hello, Dolly! went to No 1 in 1964.
