On a balmy day 65 years ago, a 13-year-old girl walked into a recording studio in Nashville, Tennessee, that was decorated with colored lights, garlands and a Christmas tree, the air-conditioning cranked up to approximate a late-December chill. Members of the A Team, the session musicians who churned out hits for everyone in town, gamely donned Santa hats.

As she had many times before, the young singer laid down a raspy rockabilly vocal way beyond her years, then packed up and went home, hardly imagining that the result — “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” — would outlive most of the people in the room.

“I would’ve never thought in my wildest dreams that ‘Rockin’ ’ would be my signature song,” Brenda Lee said on a recent afternoon in her Nashville house, which is filled with gold and platinum record plaques and personalized memorabilia. To Lee, the song is just “Rockin.’ ” Always. Only a crimson pillow in her living room is embroidered with its full title: “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”

As if frozen at the age when she became famous, Lee, now 78, still stands at 4-foot-9 — maybe 4-foot-11 with the hair — and wears a size 2 1/2 shoe. Her Christmas classic, even after her retirement, is still climbing the charts. “I think I’m making more now than I did when I was singing,” she said, and laughed.

Johnny Marks — who penned Christmas classics including “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Holly Jolly Christmas” — wrote “Rockin’ ” with Lee in mind. She was a child prodigy whose explosive vocal talent had earned her the nickname “Little Miss Dynamite.” When he sent her a demo, she was extra impressed because Marks was Jewish.

“I said, ‘Johnny! You don’t even believe in Christmas! How did you write this song?’ ” she recounted. On a vacation, he explained, he’d been lying on a beach and was mesmerized by distant trees swaying in the ocean breeze. It almost seemed like they were … rocking. And unto us, a Christmas standard was born.

Not that it was an immediate success. “Rockin’ ” arrived in 1958 but failed to make waves. Then in 1960, after Lee had her first No. 1 hit with the ballad “I’m Sorry,” her label, Decca Records, attempted to capitalize on her newfound popularity and rereleased her Christmas tune. It worked: The song hit No. 14 that holiday season, and throughout the ’60s it continued to chart in December.

Prominent placement in the hit 1990 movie “Home Alone” introduced the song to a new generation. In more recent years, thanks to streaming, back-catalog Christmas music has become more lucrative than ever, and Lee’s tune — along with newer holiday standards like “Last Christmas” and “All I Want for Christmas Is You” — has made annual appearances on the Billboard Hot 100.

For the past four years, “Rockin’ ” has peaked at No. 2, but in honor of its 65th anniversary, Lee’s label gave the song an extra push, including a new music video that features Lee lip-syncing to the tune she recorded as a teenager, and even a TikTok account. Only one woman and her whistle register stood in the way of this decades-old song hitting No. 1.

“Now I gotta worry about Mariah (Carey),” Lee said with a feisty laugh ahead of the holiday season. “Get outta here, girl!” Growing more serious, she added, “Oh, there’s room for everybody. Her song’s good too. I love her singing.”

But the label’s efforts paid off, with “Rockin’ ” finally landing the No. 1 spot ahead of Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” in early December.

Lee and Carey have never met, but they would certainly have a lot to talk about — like how it feels to have a groundbreaking, history-making career reduced in the popular imagination to a seasonal novelty. Because while Lee is a Christmas queen, she’s also so much more.

A lot of people have stories. Lee has stories. She first met Elvis Presley in 1957 when she was 12, the night she made her Grand Ole Opry debut; he was watching in the wings. “I’m never star-struck by anyone, and I’ve met the biggest,” she said. “But I was tongue-tied when I met him.”

Patsy Cline was her early tourmate and mentor. While still in her teens, Lee shared bills with Little Richard, Chubby Checker, Dusty Springfield — the list is seemingly endless. In 1962, at the peak of her worldwide popularity, while in Hamburg on tour, the Beatles opened for her. “They were raw musically,” she said, “but they were fabulous.” The admiration was mutual: Years later, in a Rolling Stone interview, John Lennon declared that Lee “has the greatest rock ’n’ roll voice of them all.”

Lee’s still not quite sure where that voice came from. “I ask myself that sometimes,” she mused. “It’s just how I sing.” Raised poor in the red clay of east Georgia, Brenda Mae Tarpley was born Dec. 11, 1944. By age 3, she was standing on the counter at the general store, singing for change, and by 7 was performing Hank Williams tunes on Atlanta TV.

She was a quick study, picking up the hiccuping vocal style she heard Williams use on the radio as well as the growl of a bluesman who played around town, blending them into a style made even more remarkable by the fact it was coming out of the mouth of a girl who looked and dressed like Shirley Temple. Lee got her national break at 11, performing “Jambalaya” on the popular “Ozark Jubilee.” A recording contract with Decca soon followed.

By then, though, Lee was already the family’s sole breadwinner. When she was 8, her construction-worker father died after a hammer dropped on his head. To support her mother and two siblings, she developed a tireless work ethic, booking countless studio sessions and touring relentlessly.

Lee’s voice was nimble: She could excite teenagers with rockabilly hits like “Sweet Nothin’s” and win over their parents by crooning ballads like “Emotions.” Her ability to straddle the worlds of pop, rock and country made her a fixture on the hit parade. Lee had the fourth most chart hits in the 1960s (47), surpassed only by Elvis, the Beatles and Ray Charles. She was the first woman to be inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

After 65 years of traveling the world, Lee has earned her rest. That’s not to say she won’t break out into an impromptu tune now and then; she recently went viral for surprising passengers by singing “Rockin’ ” on a plane intercom. Just don’t expect to see her on the road. “If somebody said, ‘Brenda, we’re coming to get you in the bus,’ ” she said in no uncertain terms, “I’d say, ‘Oh, no you’re not.’ ”