How old was Brenda Lee when she recorded 'Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree'?

'Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree' is a Christmas song written by Johnny Marks and recorded by Brenda Lee in 1958. Lee recorded this song when she was only thirteen years old. It has since been recorded by numerous other music artists. By the song's 50th anniversary in 2008, Lee's original version had sold over 25 million copies with the 4th most digital downloads sold of any Christmas single.

The song's declaration of a rock and roll sound notwithstanding, its instrumentation also fits the country music genre, which Lee more fully embraced as her career evolved. The recording features Hank Garland and Harold Bradley on guitar, Floyd Cramer on piano, Boots Randolph on sax, Bob Moore on bass, and veteran session player Buddy Harman on drums. The song is written in the key of A-flat major.

Listening to Lee’s voice – which blended the rural country-blues and gospel of her small-town Georgia upbringing with the sophisticated crooning styles of Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett – is like hearing the various histories of mid-20th-century American pop collide in real time. She had fans in high places. Among them, The Beatles and Elvis Presley.

And what is she doing these days? She still loves the thrill of getting onstage, still performs a dozen or so concerts each year, but she also doesn’t need the thrill to sustain her anymore. “I do just enough to keep the urge from coming up, to satisfy my creative juices that I need to expose every once in a while,” she says.