These days Brenda Lee is best known for the perennial 1958 holiday classic “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” which she recorded when she was 12 years old. But during the ’60s, she was the hottest female pop star on the planet — the Taylor Swift of her time.
She was such a huge star that she scored back-to-back No. 1 hits in 1960 with “I’m Sorry” and “I Want to Be Wanted” while she was still in her teens. Early in the decade, she even headlined a show where her opening act was The Beatles. Lee talks about her connection to her fellow rock and roll legends in the new PBS American Masters documentary Brenda Lee: Rockin’ Around.
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When I started touring in England, I was popular [there] before I ever was here,” Lee, 80, says in the documentary. “There was this group that opened this show for me known as The Silver Beatles, who became The Beatles.”
While hanging out with the Fab Four, she says, she forged an especially close connection to one of them in particular.
“John was my favorite Beatle,” Lee recalls. “I loved them all, but John was, to say the least, irreverent, had a great sense of humor. He was magical. He was a genie in the bottle, and he let me have the cork. John Lennon said I was the first female rocker.”
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To that revelation, Keith Urban chimes in. “Yeah, she deserves that,” he says in the film. “Of course. John Lennon didn’t give out compliments easy.”
Although Lee made her biggest mark on the charts with her lovelorn pop ballads in the ’60s, her country hits in the ’70s and ’80s, and, of course, the aforementioned Christmas classic, she started out as a rockabilly singer. One of her biggest hits was the rock-edged 1959 Top 5 single “Sweet Nothin’s,” which Kanye West sampled on his 2013 song “Bound 2.”
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Lee is one of only a handful of acts to have been inducted into the both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Country Music Hall of Fame. And last Christmas, after 65 years in circulation, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” finally ascended to the summit of Billboard‘s Hot 100, making her the oldest performer, at 78, to score a No. 1 single on the chart. She celebrated her 79th birthday two days later with a second week at the top.
Country superstar Trisha Yearwood, who appears in the documentary and in Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” video, marvels at Lee’s tremendous staying power — and her history with The Beatles.
“There’s not very many people you can be around with and they talk about that time they hung out with The Beatles,” Yearwood says.
Brenda Lee: Rockin’ Around is streaming on pbs.org through Jan. 14.
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