Elvis' Christmas Album ensure that "this" Christmas album would not be easily ignored. Much of the remaining program was performed in a more traditional manner appropriate to the solemnity of Christmas, although Elvis's innate sense of occasion shone through on his left-of-centre reading of Ernest Tubb's 1949 hit, "Blue Christmas." "Silent Night" and "O Little Town of Bethlehem" were arranged by Elvis Presley. The Bing Crosby holiday perennial "White Christmas," which appeared every year on the "Billboard" charts from 1942 to 1962, became the center of controversy upon the album's release, with calls by the song's composer Irving Berlin to have the song,
Elvis Presley circle of people ... all those so-called friends". In the Memphis Mafia's defense, Marty Lacker has said, "[Presley] was his own man. ... If we hadn't been around, he would have been dead a lot earlier." Larry Geller became Presley's hairdresser in 1964. Unlike others in the Memphis Mafia, he was interested in spiritual questions and recalls how, from their first conversation, Presley revealed his secret thoughts and anxieties: "I mean there "has" to be a purpose ... there's got to be a reason ... why I was chosen to be Elvis Presley. ... I swear to God, no one