Christmas Rock

Rockin' around the Christmas tree At the Christmas party hop, Mistletoe hung where you can see Ev'ry couple tries to stop.

The most ominous of many threats to the spirit of Christmas this year is a song manufacturer named Johnny Marks, president of an outfit known as St. Nicholas Music, Inc. In Christmases past, Marks has filled the holiday air with numbers like When Santa Claus Gets Your Letter, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day and Everyone's a Child at Christmas. His most enduring creation is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which after twelve seasons and a sale of close to 30 million copies is this year enshrined in no fewer than 25 new recordings by Paul Anka, Ella Fitzgerald, the Chipmunks, Crazy Otto, Guy Lombardo, et al. By Marks's own testimony, his recently released Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree figures to be another Rudolph. Why? Says Marks, who does both words and music: "The lyric is a masterpiece of writing."

Masterpieces or not, Marks's contributions to Christmas have earned him close to $1,000,000 in the past decade. Says he: "What the hell, I can't control the American way of life. I'm not going to fight it; I'm going to join it." He began joining it when he left college (Colgate) to become a nightclub pianist. The lyrics to Rudolph, based on Robert L. May's children's book of the same name, occurred to him on the street one April day, and within a matter of hours he had added the music. Gene Autry introduced the song at Madison Square Garden and sent it on its way. Laments Marks: "The trouble is Autry can't do me any more good; he's slipped a lot." Only Berlin's White Christmas has rivaled Rudolph in the Christmas pop field over the years. The seasonal nature of his successes bothers Marks not a bit: "If I sell that many at Christmastime," says he, "what the hell do I care what they do in May?" And tormented parents who hope that Marks's imagination may be flagging are in for a rude shock: he has already completed an "absolutely sensational" ditty for Christmas 1961 titled I'll Be a Little Angel. Sample lyrics:

I'll wash my face and comb my hair Stop my jumpin' on daddy's chair I'll be a little angel from now on.

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