Colonel Parker Wanted a Christmas Song — Elvis Chose “If I Can Dream” Instead
By 1968, Elvis Presley had a problem.
He was still one of the most famous men in America, but the music world had changed dramatically around him.
The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and a new generation of artists had transformed popular music. Elvis, meanwhile, had spent much of the decade making Hollywood movies and recording soundtrack songs.
Then NBC offered him a television special.
Colonel Tom Parker originally imagined something safe and familiar — even wanting Elvis to close the show with “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
Director Steve Binder had another idea.
He wanted audiences to see the Elvis who had once shocked America.
More importantly, he wanted the final song to say something about the turbulent country Elvis was returning to.
1968 had been devastating.
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in April. Robert F. Kennedy was killed only two months later.
According to people involved with the television special, Elvis was deeply affected by both events.
So Binder asked songwriter Walter Earl Brown to create a new closing number.
Brown came back with “If I Can Dream.”
When the song was played for Elvis, he did not immediately answer.
He asked to hear it again.
Then again.
After several listens, Elvis decided he wanted to perform it — despite Colonel Parker’s reservations.
The song was unlike almost anything Elvis had released before.
It was not about romance.
It was not rock and roll rebellion.
It was a plea for peace, understanding and a world where people could somehow live together without hatred.
Elvis recorded the song with extraordinary intensity.
Then came the television performance.
Dressed in a white suit and standing alone in front of enormous red letters spelling ELVIS, he began quietly.
But the performance kept building.
By the final moments, Elvis was no longer simply singing a television number. His voice sounded almost desperate, as if he personally needed the dream inside the song to become real.
The special aired on December 3, 1968.
For millions of viewers, it was a reminder of something they had almost forgotten:
Elvis Presley could still command a stage.
“If I Can Dream” reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 — his highest-charting single in several years — and the television special helped restart his career.
Soon afterward came the legendary Memphis sessions, “In the Ghetto,” “Suspicious Minds,” and his return to regular live performances.
But “If I Can Dream” remains different from all of them.
It captured Elvis at a moment when he was trying to become more than the image the world had created for him.
For one night in 1968, the King of Rock and Roll stood almost motionless beneath his own name and asked America to believe that something better was still possible.
More than half a century later, that performance still feels less like a comeback.
It feels like a confession.
Barbara Mandrell Retired From Music at 18 — One Night at the Grand Ole Opry Changed Her Mind
Long before Barbara Mandrell became one of the biggest stars in country music, she had already decided her music career was over.
She was only 18.
That decision sounds almost impossible in hindsight.
Because Barbara Mandrell had been preparing for the stage practically since childhood.
Born in Houston on Christmas Day in 1948, she learned accordion and how to read music before entering first grade. After her family moved to California, she began studying steel guitar at about ten years old while also learning saxophone at school.
Then someone important noticed her.
Country guitarist Joe Maphis saw the young Mandrell performing at a music trade convention in 1960.
He was impressed enough to bring her into his Las Vegas act.
Barbara was still a child, yet she was already sharing a musical world populated by professional country performers.
Before long, she appeared on the Los Angeles television program Town Hall Party and joined a national package tour headlined by Johnny Cash.
By 14, she was performing with her family band at military bases in the United States and Asia. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
It looked as though music had already chosen her.
Then Barbara walked away.
She had fallen in love with Ken Dudney, the drummer in the Mandrell family band.
Dudney eventually joined the Navy and trained as a pilot.
The couple married in 1967.
Barbara decided that was enough.
At 18, she retired from music.
For someone who had spent much of her childhood performing, it was an extraordinary choice.
But the retirement did not last.
When Dudney was away with the Navy, Barbara visited her family in Tennessee.
One evening, she attended a taping of The Porter Wagoner Show before the Grand Ole Opry.
As Barbara watched the performers, something came back.
She leaned toward her father, Irby Mandrell.
She told him she could do what she was watching onstage.
More importantly, she wanted to do it again.
She asked whether he would manage her.
Her father believed in her.
The decision made that night changed everything. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
Barbara soon signed with Columbia Records.
In 1969, she entered the Billboard country chart with her version of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.”
More hits followed.
By 1972, she had joined the Grand Ole Opry — the same institution connected to the night that helped convince her to return.
Then the career accelerated.
“Sleeping Single in a Double Bed” reached No. 1.
Her version of “If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don’t Want to Be Right)” also topped the country chart.
But Mandrell was becoming more than a recording artist.
She could sing.
She could dance.
She could play multiple instruments.
And onstage, she could move between traditional country, pop, soul, gospel, and show-business spectacle without losing her identity.
By the beginning of the 1980s, Barbara Mandrell was everywhere.
From 1980 to 1982, she starred with her sisters Louise and Irlene on NBC’s Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters, bringing country music into millions of American homes every week.
And the industry recognized what was happening.
The Country Music Association named Mandrell Entertainer of the Year in 1980.
Then she won again in 1981.
She became the first artist in CMA history to win the award in consecutive years. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
That same period produced the song that would become inseparable from her name.
“I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.”
The song looked back at a time when openly loving country music was not always fashionable.
Then country culture exploded into the American mainstream.
George Jones appeared on the recording, and the song became another No. 1 country hit for Mandrell
The title almost seemed to describe Barbara herself.
She had been playing steel guitar as a child long before television superstardom.
She had toured before she was old enough to drive.
She had quit.
She had started again.
And she had reached the top.
Her life would still bring serious challenges.
In 1984, a devastating automobile accident left Mandrell with multiple injuries and required a long recovery.
Yet she returned again, continuing to record, tour, and act before eventually retiring from performing in 1997. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
In 2009, Barbara Mandrell was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
It was a remarkable ending to a story that could easily have stopped decades earlier.
At 18, Barbara Mandrell thought she was finished with music.
Then she sat in an audience in Nashville and watched other performers doing what she had once done.
Something inside her changed.
She told her father she wanted another chance.
He believed her.
And the young woman who had retired before her career truly began eventually became one of country music’s defining entertainers.
