Lonely This Christmas - Mud / Santa Claus is Back in Town - Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae7CtryWCkc
"Lonely this Christmas" is the greatest Elvis pastiche ever unless you count the Bonzo's "Canyons of Your Mind" (that's a treat for 2025). Mud's Les Gray effortlessly gets "the King's" phrasing and emphasis down to a tee by not trying too hard and underemphasising his vocal traits. The Elvis he's impersonating is the slushy homogenised version of the rock and roll star rather than the original raw phenomenon that electrified a generation of teenagers. The result, paradoxically, is better than any of the "soft" recordings of Christmas standards and assorted yuletide offerings that comprise most of his two Christmas albums.
The first of these, the 1957 "Elvis' Christmas Album" is still the bestselling US Christmas album of all time, which just goes to show that selling out, especially in the season of goodwill, does pay. The true Elvis, however, makes an appearance on the first track of the disc, in the raunchy "Santa Claus is Back in Town", a raw blues written by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller who had already written Presley hits "Hound Dog" and "Jailhouse Rock" for Presley as well as a host of other classics. If Elvis was already seen as someone from whom the parents of America had to lock up their daughters, then the swaggering "Santa Claus is Back in Town" did nothing to allay this worry: Elvis makes no bones about it, he's coming to take them away.
Although he says he's Santa Claus, he
"Got no sleigh with reindeer,
no sack on my back.
You're gonna see me coming
in a big black Cadillac...."
and he tells the girls to
"Hang up your pretty stockings
and turn out the light"
because
"Santa Claus is comin' down your chimney tonight."
Now wonder they loved him, and no wonder their parents waited up with a cigar and a brandy.
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