Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree

Continuing my trip back through the 1957 album charts.

22/12/57 : Elvis' Christmas Album - Elvis Presley 

Ah Mr Presley - I haven't see you in ages!  I'm expecting some grade-A Stilton here...

Yeah, it's cheesy but it's enjoyable cheese which is kinda what you need for an Xmas album, isn't it?  "Santa Claus Is Back In Town" features some fine boogie-woogie piano, "Blue Christmas" is obviously a classic and I quite like his version of "O Little Town Of Bethlehem". The warbly backing singers do get a bit too much at times though and it is a bit cheeky that the last four tracks are just tracks from an EP he released in April - they're nothing to do with Xmas at all!

We're at #2 in the charts this week on his fifth week of a six week run and this was as high as it got - and it's never been back in the charts, which somewhat surprises me.  The rest of the chart was TKAI , Elvis, Oklahoma! and Frank - I have a sneaking suspicion we'll be saying that quite a lot this year.

Wikipedia has a lot of text on the album, most of which is pretty pointless but there is some content of interest.  Apparently Irving Berlin was so unimpressed with Elvis's version of "White Christmas" that he called for the entire album to be banned from the radio and got his staff to ring all the stations to tell them so.  Interestingly, Elvis basically just copied The Drifters' 1954 version and Irving didn't complain about that at all.  Wikipedia also tells me that this is the most popular Christmas album of all time in the US (17 million copies sold, apparently), but it does then go on to explain how many different versions of it have been issued, so I'm not sure it really counts.

"Customers also listened to" "no similar recommendations" - Amazon's really not doing well this year, is it?  I liked this slice of Christmas cheese - yes, it's dated but charmingly so (and you still hear quite a few of them pretty often).

22/12/57 - A bit of a lazy album
29/12/57 - Surprisingly enjoyable

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