Bobby Helms’ signature yuletide hit “Jingle Bell Rock” leads off the new collection A Bobby Helms Christmas, coming this October in CD and digital formats. The set also features two long-lost holiday rarities, “The Bell That Couldn’t Jingle” and “Those Snowy, Glowy, Blowy Days Of Winter,” plus the Ryan Riback remix of “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Captain Santa Claus (And His Reindeer Space Patrol),” the B-side from the original “Jingle Bell Rock” single.
Though Helms first came to prominence as a country western singer, topping the Billboard country chart with his single “Fraulein” in 1957, he landed his biggest hit by putting a yuletide spin on rock ‘n’ roll, matching jingle bells and Hank Garland’s electric guitar with Helms’ warm, friendly vocal. The Indiana native was initially skeptical of recording a Christmas rock song, but upon its release on Decca Records at the dawn of the 1957 holiday season, “Jingle Bell Rock” made it to No. 13 on the Most Played C&W chart and crossed over to the Billboard and Cashbox pop charts—then kept lingering in the public imagination.
For a few years after its release, “Jingle Bell Rock” kept returning to Billboard’s newly launched Hot 100 chart, peaking at No. 35 in 1958 and reappearing a few more times through 1962. Over the years, “Jingle Bell Rock” became a standard, covered by The Beach Boys, Chubby Checker, Hall & Oates, Kylie Minogue, and Mariah Carey among many others. Helms’ original version of the track enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s, appearing in movies like Home Alone 2: Lost In New York and Jingle All The Way. But it was the advent of on-demand streaming that took the song to new heights of commercial success.
“Jingle Bell Rock” re-entered the Hot 100 in January 2016, largely on the strength of Christmastime streams. By the following December it had reached a new peak, and in 2018 it soared to the top 10 for the first time. In January 2020, it achieved a new peak of No. 3. “‘Jingle Bell Rock’ has made itself a part of Christmas,” Helms said in a retrospective last year. “It lifts people up.”
Order A Bobby Helms Christmas now.