To promote the forthcoming album "Elvis Sings The Wonderful World Of Christmas" RCA Victor released a single with "Merry Christmas Baby" and "O Come, All Ye Faithful" on November 9, 1971. With global sales of just 100,000 copies (according to the RIAA this amount of physical sales translates to 1.5 million paid streams) the 45 didn't chart anywhere. At the end of 1971 Elvis, Colonel Parker and the management of RCA Victor had to face the situation, that none of the current singles had been a success. With the exception of the two gospel singles of 1966 (which both contained songs that were available for half a decade) no Presley single had sold worse than this one.

Of course this single is not available on the streaming platforms, but both tracks can be found on the album "Elvis Sings The Wonderful World Of Christmas" (1971). In 2016 the complete Presley catalogue was restored and remastered by Vic Anesini for a boxed set of 60 compact discs called "The Album Collection". Sony Music Entertainment provides the streaming platforms with the same versions of the individual tracks, albeit in 24 bit/90 khz flac. That means, if the platform of your choice supports high resolution audio, you can enjoy the songs in the same quality Sony used to scan and master them. On Spotify, which has a market share of approximately 30% and is the only platform that publishes streaming figures, "Merry Christmas Baby" accumulates 9 million streams (with 2 million owned by the RPO remake and 1.5 by the duets remake), "O Come, All Ye Faithful" clocks in at 5.5 million. So in the age of streaming the least successful Presley single of 1971 becomes the most successful one - albeit on a very low level.

The design of the sleeve matched the layout of the album cover. Of course RCA Victor advertised the album "Elvis Sings The Wonderful World Of Christmas" and also suggested to buy the costly boxed set "The Other Sides - Worldwide Gold Award Hits Volume 2" as a Christmas gift.  

This is an outstanding performance, on this album as well as in general. Without doubt "Merry Christmas Baby" is one of the best blues recordings Elvis has ever done. The song was put on tape on May 15, 1971 within a single take. The man is on fire and the band is playing at full throttle. It's almost a jam and it's a joy to hear how the guys were reacting to each other and how much fun they had. Felton Jarvis shortened the recording and had Eddie Hinton add a guitar solo on July 26, 1971. By the way: The song was written by Johnny Moore and Rou Baxter and recorded for the first time in 1947 by Johnny Moore's Three Blazers.

The hymn is based on "Adeste Fideles" and was composed in 1743 by John Francis Wade. In 1823 Friedrich Heinrich Ranke translated it to "Herbei, O Ihr Glaeubigen", twentynine years later Frederick Oakeley and Thomas Brooke turned it into "O Come, All Ye Faithful". Elvis recorded two takes of this classic on May 16, 1971 and chose the first attempt as master take. On June 21st horns and strings were added, on July 26th Felton Jarvis also added an organ. The arrangement is bombastic and somewhat kitschy, but the drums are played quite hard, like on a rock song. I like this version of "O Come, All Ye Faithful" very much.