James Beaty: OPINION: RAMBLIN: It's "A Holly Jolly Christmas" for Burl Ives' timeless recording

Dec. 20—Billboard's Hot 100 songs chart saw a slight change this week, with Mariah Carey regaining the #1 spot, with her modern-day holiday classic "All I Want For Christmas Is You."

Carey hit the top spot once again this year, after her song sat for two weeks at #2, behind Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree," which now is at #2 for the week of Dec. 23, after switching places with Carey.

Lee said earlier she wouldn't mind if Carey knocked her off the #1 spot, saying there's room at the top of the charts for both of them.

Once again, Bobby Helms holds down the #3 spot for the second week in a row with "Jingle Bell Rock."

He's followed by Wham! with "Last Christmas," another modern-day Christmas song holding solid at #4 for two consecutive weeks.

But another Christmastime classic has moved into the #5 position — the highest the song has ever charted in its 59-year history.

Burl Ives and his classic song "A Holly Jolly Christmas" has displaced Jack Harlow's "Lovin' On Me" as the fifth most popular song on the Billboard charts. Once again the popular Christmas classics are dominating the Billboard Hot 100.

We're not talking the Holiday Charts here, but the most popular songs in the nation, reaching across all genres, including pop, rock and country.

Besides Harlow's "Lovin' On Me" at # 6, the only other contemporary song in the week's Top Ten is "Greedy" by Tate McRae, which weighs in at #9.

For the record, the rest of the Top Ten is rounded out by another Christmas classic with Andy Williams and "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year" at #7.

He's followed with the 1960s version of "Sleigh Ride" by the Ronnettes coming in at #8, and with Dean Martin at #10 with "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!"

These classic seasonal Christmas songs began filling out most of the Top Ten spots each Christmas season, when Billboard began adding streaming, downloads and other elements to help determine what songs were really the most popular in the U.S.

That's how a song such as "A Holly Jolly Christmas" began its rise into the Billboard Top 100, culminating with its ascension to #5 this week.

I find it interesting that it's the classic versions of these songs that are currently charting on the Hot 100 — and not the remakes of those Christmas classics by more contemporary artists.

Consider Burl Ives and his rendition of "A Holly Jolly Christmas," for example.

A number of contemporary artists who have recorded their own versions of "A Holly Jolly Christmas."

They include Michael Bublé, whose take on "A Holly Jolly Christmas" is a track on his 2011 album "Christmas."

Country music heavyweights Alan Jackson and Blake Shelton have also recorded versions of the song, with Jackson's version from his 1992 album "A Honky-Tonk Christmas" included on the soundtrack to "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York."

Faith Hill also recorded a version, heard on her 2008 album, "Joy to the World."

Lady Antebellum, now known simply as Lady A, included "A Holly Jolly Christmas" on the group's 2011 album, "On This Winter's Night."

No matter. It's the version by Burl Ives that's now becoming a perennial holiday favorite every time the Christmas season rolls around.

Ives didn't do the original version of the song. That honor goes to the The Quinto Sisters, who were given the song to record in 1964 after they signed with Columbia Records.

It became the title track of their first and only album for Columbia, which dropped the "A" and shortened the title to simply "Holly Jolly Christmas."

Ives' version come about because of the stop-motion television broadcast of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Yes, it's the very same one we see at least snippets of every Christmas season, especially if there are children around.

In the "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" television special, Ives is the voice actor for "Sam the Snowman," the story's banjo-playing narrator. Originally, the show's producers planned to give the song to another voice actor, Larry Mann, who voiced the character Yukon Cornelius.

Since Ives was already a well-known singer, the producers rethought their original plan and gave the song to Ives to sing instead.

His previous entries in the Top 10 were in 1962 — with the country music themed hits "A Little Bitty Tear," "My Funny Way of Laughin' " and "Call Me Mr In-Between." That's in addition to the folk songs he performed throughout his career and became his initial claim to vocal music fame.

Because songwriter Johnny Marks wrote the song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," (which happens to be No. 38 on the charts this week in the original version by Gene Autry & The Pinafores) the television special producers asked him to write some more songs for their upcoming TV show.

Marks did, offering songs such as "Silver and Gold," but he also offered another song, the one he had written earlier and recorded by the Quinto Sisters: "A Holly Jolly Christmas."

Marks included "A Holly Jolly Christmas" in the songs he delivered to the "Rudolph" television special producers and Ives recorded his version.

It's the voice of Ives that is most identified with the song today. He later re-recorded the song in Nashville with famed producer Owen Bradley for inclusion in Ive's 1965 album named "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas" and the rest is musical history — that Ives and the song are still making today!

With streaming and downloads included in compiling today's album charts, songs such as the Ives version of "A Holly Jolly Christmas" began rising on the charts decades after their original release. "A Holly Jolly Christmas" — much like "All I Want for Christmas I You" — first began climbing up the Hot 100 charts during the 2018 Christmas season.

It finally peaked at No. 10 in 2018— but it retained the #10 position on the charts for Jan. 5, 2019. That gave Ives the distinction of having the same song hit No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 twice in different years, both at the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019.

I will be curious to see what the Hot 100 chart looks like for the first week in 2024 — when no doubt many of the holiday season favorites will likely be around for a few more weeks.

In the meantime, have "A Holly Jolly Christmas."