{"id":23293,"date":"2015-10-14T09:07:29","date_gmt":"2015-10-14T15:07:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/?p=23293"},"modified":"2015-10-14T08:22:05","modified_gmt":"2015-10-14T14:22:05","slug":"when-elvis-butchered-white-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/when-elvis-butchered-white-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"When Elvis Butchered White Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>White <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a><\/em> remains, more nearly 75 years since it was written, the most popular <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> single of all time. Bing Crosby immortalized it with two recordings and a film. <\/p>\n<p>And an entire generation embraced it as not only a <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> song but also an anthem of home and family. <\/p>\n<p><em>White <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a><\/em> has been recorded by literally hundreds of artists &#8212; many to critical acclaim, such as Tony Bennett and Dean Martin. Others have failed to do justice to the song. But there stands one who is accused of making a mockery of the song: Elvis Presley. <\/p>\n<p>Presley recorded White <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> for his 1957 <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> album, which has in our time become a cherished classic. But back in the day, many questioned Elvis&#8217; artistry:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SNLpawUrfcc\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Song writer Irving Berlin was especially offended. He considered it &#8220;a profane parody of a cherished yuletide standard&#8221; and Berlin ordered his staff in New York to telephone <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/a-glimpse-of-christmas-100-years-ago\/\">radio<\/a> stations around the country demanding the song be discontinued from airplay. And many <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/a-glimpse-of-christmas-100-years-ago\/\">radio<\/a> stations complied with the request with most in Canada refusing even to give it a chance. <\/p>\n<p>But not all the controversy was genuine. <\/p>\n<p>Portland, Oregon <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/a-glimpse-of-christmas-100-years-ago\/\">radio<\/a> station KEX launched a publicity stunt when disc jockey Al Priddy played the song on a Sunday and was fired, on the air, a manufactured event that made national headlines that perpetuated the ongoing publicity of Elvis\u2019 <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a> album. Priddy was brought back two weeks later as the stationed claimed it was responding to overwhelming listener support for Priddy and Elvis Presley. <\/p>\n<p>Like it, <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/sneaking-christmas\/\">love<\/a> it &#8212; or not &#8212; Elvis&#8217; <em>White <a href=\"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/celebrating-20-years-of-the-merry-forums\/\">Christmas<\/a><\/em> will never go away. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>White Christmas remains, more nearly 75 years since it was written, the most popular Christmas single of all time. Bing Crosby immortalized it with two recordings and a film. And an entire generation embraced it as not only a Christmas song but also an anthem of home and family. White Christmas has been recorded by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23294,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","iawp_total_views":151,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,36,6],"tags":[349,157],"class_list":["post-23293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-features","category-christmas-history","category-christmas-music","tag-elvis","tag-white-christmas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mymerrychristmas.com\/x\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}