"A Holly Jolly Christmas", also known as "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas", is a
Christmas song written by
Johnny Marks and most famously performed by
Burl Ives
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives (June 14, 1909 – April 14, 1995) was an American Folk music, folk singer and actor with a career that spanned more than six decades.
Ives began his career as an itinerant singer and guitarist, eventually launching his o ...
. The song has since become one of the top 25 most-performed "holiday" songs written by
ASCAP members, for the first five years of the 21st century.
Background
"A Holly Jolly Christmas" was written by Johnny Marks in 1962. It was the title song of The Quinto Sisters' first album, ''Holly Jolly Christmas'', recorded in June 1964 for
, featuring guitarist
Al Caiola with arrangements by Frank Hunter and
Marty Manning.
The song was featured in the 1964
Rankin-Bass Christmas special, ''
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (TV special)'', in which Burl Ives voiced the narrator, Sam the Snowman. Originally to be sung by
Larry D. Mann as Yukon Cornelius, the song, as well as "
Silver and Gold", was given to Ives due to his singing fame.
This version was also included on the
soundtrack album.
The song was re-recorded by Ives and released in 1964 as a single and later featured the following year in his 1965 holiday album, ''
Have a Holly Jolly Christmas''. This version of the song has a somewhat slower arrangement than the ''Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'' version and features a twelve-string guitar solo introduction; it is this version that has since become the more commonly heard rendition on radio. This song mentions mistletoe in the bridge, where the singer asks the younger lover to "Kiss her once for me". The song features men and women singing the chorus, whose repeated "Ding-dong" imitation of Christmas bells are heard in the outro of the song, before it fades out.
The song's enduring popularity is evidenced by its reaching No. 30 on the ''
Billboard''
Adult Contemporary
Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the 1980s to the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul ...
chart in 1998, as well as No. 21 on the U.S. Country
Digital Songs chart and No. 5 on the Holiday 100 chart in 2011.
[ The song charted on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 for the first time in 2017, after rules on chart eligibility for older songs had been relaxed several years before, and reached a peak of No. 38.
For the week ending December 8, 2018, the song re-entered the Hot 100 chart. It reached No. 10 for the week ending January 5, 2019.]Louis Armstrong
Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several era ...
's " What a Wonderful World" (which reached the Top 40 when Armstrong would have been 86 years old) as the oldest artist, living or deceased, to have a Top 40 hit. As of December 2019, Ives' recording has sold 664,000 copies in the United States since becoming available for download in the digital era.
Chart performance
Burl Ives version
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Alan Jackson version
Michael Bublé version
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Lady Antebellum version
Certifications
Burl Ives version
Michael Bublé version
Notes
References
External links
* All Music Guidebr>A Holly Jolly Christmas - Burl Ives
* Lyric
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holly Jolly Christmas
1964 songs
American Christmas songs
Burl Ives songs
Decca Records singles
Lady A songs
Olivia Newton-John songs
Songs written by Johnny Marks
Johnny Mathis songs
Michael Bublé songs