“White Christmas” Song Was Once Banned From Radio Airwaves!

What's this? Elvis Presley's version of WHITE CHRISTMAS was actually BANNED from radio airwaves?

It's absolutely TRUE. Read on...

It turns out to be just another tale of the wrong generation attempting to squelch Rock & Roll back in the 1950's. When Rock entered the mainstream in the mid-50's the kids went crazy for it – of course, this displeased their parents and members of the 1930's - 1940's generation of radio crooners and performers like Frank Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Perry Como, etc. So when Elvis' version of WHITE CHRISTMAS came out in 1957 – featured on “Elvis' Christmas Album” - the elders were outraged that their beloved holiday tune had been blasphemed by this greasy punk with the snarling sneer!

The Ohio Penitentiary News called Elvis' version of WHITE CHRISTMAS "a song beloved until this creature recorded his barnyard version of it."

In 1957, Disc Jockey Al Priddy of radio station KEX in Portland, Oregon was fired for violating the radio station's ban against playing the song.

Radio station CKXL in Calgary banned the whole album stating “Presley sings the Christmas songs exactly as we expected he would. It is one of the most degrading things we have heard in some time.”

The album still became one of the best-selling Christmas albums of all time; listening to it today, it stands up well and sounds charming...if the elders had actually paid attention to the music instead of blindly attempting to label it as sacrilegious, they might've actually liked it. (FYI: the song does have a dark side to it. The man who wrote it, Irving Berlin, is said to have hated the Christmas season; reason being, in the early morning hours of Christmas 1928, his son was found dead in his crib.)