I'm pleased to report that my 20th annual holiday mix, "I Wish It Was Christmas Today," is now complete and available for your listening pleasure. It runs a little over 75 minutes, contains 41 tracks and features my typically divergent mix of good, bad and ridiculous holiday tunes and other sounds. I'm especially proud to have it completed before Thanksgiving for the second year in a row, which allows folks to play it during dinner tomorrow should the conversation turn to politics.
This mix opens with an excerpt from the 1954 holiday episode of TV's "Liberace Show." Noted for his colorful and flamboyant style, Liberace's weekly program made him one of the country's most successful performers in the 1950s, and his schmaltzy, enthusiastic style is immediately apparent in this year's opening number. It's followed by the title track, "I Wish It Was Christmas Today," which should be familiar to fans of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" (SNL). This track features SNL cast members Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan, Tracy Morgan and Horatio Sanz. The song was first performed on December 9, 2000, and was sufficiently popular that the foursome returned to do it on 10 additional episodes of the show over the subsequent decade. SNL is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, so it seemed like a good time to feature this classic number.
(L to R): Horatio Sanz, Jimmy Fallon, Christ Kattan and Tracy Morgan.
Information about the other 39 tracks will be posted in this space between now and the end of the year in groups of around two or three per day. My aim, as in previous years, is to share at least a little background about every track. Many if not most of the cuts will probably be unfamiliar to you, so I hope this background will be of some interest. I will also include a number of posts about holiday music in general, and each Saturday we'll once again feature a vintage SNL holiday sketch as part of our SNL Holiday Flashback series.
For more information about this year's mix, please visit my holiday music website via the link below. The website also contains links to my previous mixes and other holiday-related material. It's hard to believe I've now been doing this for 20 years, but it's been worth it if I've managed to help make your holidays even a little brighter.
Greetings, friends — and happy fall! Here in Los Angeles we've been enjoying beautiful weather lately with temperatures in the 90s, so it's a little hard to imagine that we're nearly halfway through October. But today is Columbus Day and in just 77 days it will be Christmas. Isn't that a kick in the head?
Columbus Day is, without a doubt, my least favorite federal holiday. In school, we were taught to revere Christopher Columbus and the other brave "explorers" who "discovered" the "New World" and introduced the native savages who'd been living here for centuries to God and the European way of life. While this story sounded OK to us in grade school, it doesn't take much research to figure out as we grew older the myriad ways in which this trope defies reality and ignores the unforgivable atrocities committed against indigenous Americans and their progeny. As it happens, the Columbus Day holiday was created less as an homage to Christopher Columbus as an atonement for the mistreat of Italian-Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Moreover, a growing number of communities now celebrate the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples' Day, which strikes me as a more appropriate focus.
Regardless of all of that, there's little we can do about our headlong rush toward Christmas. Or is there? Everyone I know, including many genuine Christmas enthusiasts, complain that the holiday season seems to start a little earlier every year. In my case, the holiday season typically begins when I start putting together my latest annual holiday mix. In the past, I've started as early as August and as late as Thanksgiving weekend. This year, I started pulling some things together about 10 days ago, and I've already got a rough cut for the first eight tracks. But I'd be more comfortable as a general matter if the Christmas season didn't get started until at least a couple of weeks after Halloween.
Tom X. Chao
I had an email the other day from a fellow named Tom X. Chao, who apparently feels the same way. Tom's written a song called "It's Too Early to Celebrate Christmas," which is available via Bandcamp for as little as $1 (see link below).
Tom X. Chao is a playwright, actor, and musician based in lower Manhattan, NYC. He's released a couple of singles and two EPs: "The Only Record," and "Statement of Intent," which came out just recently. He's also composed and performed original songs for several of his plays.
As the lyrics to this latest song make clear, Tom takes an even more drastic position than I with respect to shortening the Christmas season:
I don't expect to be back for the next several weeks but should return sometime in November with news and background about the material from my latest holiday mix for 2024. We've all got lots of non-Christmas business to tend to until then, including defeating Trump and the MAGA movement. There will be plenty of time to celebrate once that vital piece of business is done.
My 2023 holiday mix is now complete and ready for you to review and/or
download! It’s called My Christmas Dream, it includes 37 tracks and runs almost
exactly one hour and 20 minutes. For more details and links to the mix itself
visit the “Latest” page
of my holiday music website.
Now that the 2023 mix is available it’s time for this blog to turn its
attention to what is, after all, its primary purpose — namely, providing a
little background on each of the this year’s holiday tracks. We’ll cover
anywhere between two and five tracks each day over the next four weeks, except on
those days when I don’t feel like writing. Hopefully we’ll share a little
something about all 37 tracks by Christmas Eve. Sometimes we make it. Sometimes
we don’t. But I’ve got a good feeling about this year’s endeavor.
One quick and silly note about presentation before we get started. In
previous years, for reasons I can’t begin to recall, we posted each day’s track
listings in reverse order. So, for example, if we opted to post notes on the
first four tracks on Monday and the next two tracks on Tuesday, Monday’s post
would cover Track 4, Track 3, Track 2 and Track 1, in that order, and Tuesday’s
post would begin with Track 6, followed by Track 5. Crazy. This year, the
tracks will be simply be posted in numerical order. Despite the overwhelming
weight of evidence to the contrary, I’d like to think this shows I haven’t
completely lost my mind.
Ready, set … here we go!
Track 1 Jingle Bells, Sonny & Cher
(1972)
During the
1960s and ‘70s, network television was the country’s chief source of popular
entertainment, and all three networks worked tirelessly to prepare the nation
for Christmas each December. Regular weekly series programs, whether comedy or
drama, typically offered at least one holiday-themed show each year; each
network offered a variety of annual animated shows including such favorites as
“A Charlie Brown Christmas,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”
and “The Little Drummer Boy”; some
of Hollywood’s biggest names starred in annual variety specials; and, of
course, major sponsors tied the whole package together with an endless stream of holiday-themed advertising,
some of which was at least as popular as the programming the ads supported.
Among the most popular of the variety show programs during this period were the
shows hosted by Sonny & Cher, both together and individually. The first
track of my 2023 holiday mix is the introduction to the 1972 Sonny &
Cher Christmas Special, which features the duo performing a swinging
version of “Jingle Bells.”
Of course,
Sonny & Cher had been popular entertainers long before their 1972 holiday
special aired, and they would go on to
enjoy even greater success afterward. They met in late 1962 while they were
both working as background singers for legendary producer Phil Spector. They
soon became romantically involved and started recording and performing as a
duo. Sonny, who was 11 years older than Cher, managed their career and wrote a
number of original songs they performed. In the summer of 1965 they released
their first album, “Look
at Us,” and topped Billboard’s Hot 100 with a tune of Sonny’s called “I Got You, Babe.” This initial
success led to more, and they followed their first smash with another album, a
string of hit singles including the Top 10 hit “The Beat Goes On,” and
appearances on many of the biggest TV variety shows, clubs and concert venues.
Unfortunately,
by start of their show’s third season the couple’s personal relationship had
begun to come apart. In late 1974, they formally separated. (I don’t know
whether this was a factor in their relationship problems, but it’s worth noting
that Cher released a bunch of successful solo records during the first half of
the 1970s that Sonny didn’t produce, and three of her solo singles hit #1 on
Billboard’s Hot 100 during that same period.) Not surprisingly, the end of the
marriage meant the end of the show. Both Sonny and Cher were each given their
own network shows in 1975, but these were short lived. By 1976, the couple were
back on speaking terms and they returned to television with “The Sonny & Cher Show,”
which had a similar format to the former “Comedy Hour.” The new show remained
on the air for nearly two years, after which Cher turned to acting and Sonny
became involved in politics.
The Sonny
& Cher franchise produced several successful Christmas specials during the
1970s, including “Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour” programs in 1972 and 1973, a
Cher holiday special in 1975, and a “Sonny & Cher Show” holiday broadcast
in 1976. All of these specials followed the same general pattern with an
opening song and welcome from the host(s) followed by anywhere from five to
eight comedy bits and musical numbers featuring a variety of familiar guests
before an emotional send-off.
Among the performances from the 1973 special is
a medley of holiday carols featuring William Conrad, star of the popular ‘70s
detective series Cannon. This number
has become almost legendary thanks to the colorful description Paul Shaffer
repeatedly offered each year as one of the many holiday traditions of The Late Show with David Letterman.
I wrote about Shaffer’s bit several years ago, and you can read about it HERE.
You can also watch the entire 1973 special below. The medley Shaffer discussed begins at 17:50.
Here’s the
first of the Sonny & Cher holiday shows from 1972, with the intro I use to
kick-off “My Christmas Dream” at the very beginning:
Just to
bring things current, Cher recently released her first album of holiday songs
called “Christmas.” She noted on Twitter that while she’d previously been
reluctant to record a holiday album, she’s pleased with result and thinks it’s
as good as any of her other releases. Darlene Love, Stevie Wonder, Cyndi Lauper
and Tyga appear with Cher on this one, and you can preview the album HERE.
Track 2 I Wish You A Merry Christmas, Big Dee Irwin, featuring Little Eva (1963)
The second
track on this year’s mix is a fun little number by New York native Big Dee Irwin.
Irwin got his start as a member of The Pastels, a group he formed in 1955 with
a bunch of air force buddies on Greenland’s Narsarsuaq Air Base. In 1957, The
Pastels won a recording contract as the first prize in a military talent show.
The song they recorded, “Been So Long” became
a hit on the R&B charts and the group hit the road to promote the record,
appearing in Alan Freed’s Big Beat Show with Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and
others.
In 1958, Irwin
set off on his own, and over the next 20 years he released a string of records,
mostly soul and R&B, while also writing songs for stars including Ray
Charles, Bobby Womack and The Hollies. On several recordings, he teamed with
Little Eva Boyd, best known for her 1962 version of “The Locomotion,” written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin. The
first of these was their version of the old Bing Crosby song, “Swinging on a Star.” Another was a 1963 song written especially
for Irwin called “Happy Being Fat.” The third release
with Little Eva was this one, “I Wish You a Merry Christmas,” released in late 1963
as the B-side to “The Christmas Song.” Toward the end of this record, Little
Eva jokingly returns to the subject of Irwin’s weight by asking:
Big Dee, did anyone ever tell you you was big … strong … handsome …
kindhearted – and FAT!?
Irwin’s last
record was released in 1978, though he continued to make live appearances for
another 15 years or so after that. He died in 1995.
If you’ve
listened to any of my previous mixes you know that I like to break things up a
little by inserting brief holiday greetings from various celebrities between
the regular songs. They give listeners a chance to relax for a moment in much
the same way that commercials do on television. It’s surprisingly difficult to
find such clips in the form I’m looking for. To work as an audio clip, each celebrity
needs to identify themselves by name and pass along some kind of holiday wish.
The recording must also be free of excessive background noise and irrelevant
content. The first greeting on this year’s mix is from Shirley MacLaine.
Shirley MacLaine
I’ve been a
fan of MacLaine’s for years. She’s a terrific actor, singer and dancer, of
course, and I especially loved her work in Being There (1979), Terms of Endearment (1983), Steel Magnolias (1989) and Postcards from the Edge (1990).Wikipedia notes that MacLaine is known for “her portrayals of quirky, strong-willed
and eccentric women,” which may explain her great success as an actress – after
all, who better fits the “quirky, strong-willed and eccentric” description than
MacLaine herself!
As a child,
it was MacLaine’s love of dancing that led her to pursue a life in show
business. She started ballet school at the age of three and says it was the fun
of performing that really grabbed her interest. She scored her first Broadway
gig before graduating high school. Her next job was as understudy for one of
the major roles in the musical The Pajama Game(the
character who sings “Hernando’s Hideaway”). As luck would have it, the lead
suffered an ankle injury that kept her out of the show for several weeks, and a
noted film producer who saw MacLaine filling in signed her to a deal with
Paramount Pictures. Her first role was in the Hitchcock thriller The Trouble with Harry, for which she won a Golden Globe — and
she was off!
MacLaine was
nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award five times for her work in Some Came
Running (1959), The Apartment (1981), Irma la Douce (1964), The Turning Point
(1978) and Terms of Endearment (1984), winning for the last of these. She also
won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special for her 1976 show “Gypsy in
My Soul.” In 1998, she earned a Cecil B. DeMille Golden Globe Award, and in
2013, President Obama awarded her the Kennedy Center Honors for her contributions to American
culture.
For me,
MacLaine’s professional achievements are only part of her appeal. I also enjoy
her forceful personality, her political activism and her unique range of
interests and enthusiasms. She’s a genuine character, and we’re all the better
for having her among us.
Track 4 Christmas Cheer, The MSR Singers
(1978)
Folks who
follow this blog and/or listen to my annual mixes know that I’m nuts about
“song poems,” an offbeat and sometimes outlandish subgenre within the larger
and increasingly popular category known as “outsider music.” Outsider music
refers basically to material created outside the professional music industry,
often by members of marginalized or disfavored communities. Song poems
typically feature lyrics written by non-professionals that are set to music and
recorded for a fee by companies set up for that purpose.
Throughout
most of the 20th century, song-poem companies advertised in the back of pulp
and other general interest publications offering to set amateur poems to music to
satisfy the demand for new music and help would-be lyricists become famous and
rich. The going rates were generally between $100 and $500 in exchange for
which the submitting poet would get a couple of 45 RPM discs of their fully
realized songs. The quality of the final product varied wildly, of course, as
did the submitted lyrics. But thanks to the song poem, more than a few ordinary
citizens had the thrill of hearing their words come to life as actual songs on
the family stereo.
Well, this
year’s mix is truly top-heavy with song poems — nine in all — and this first
one, “Christmas Cheer,” is a true classic. Released in 1978 as part of a full
album of holiday song poems, “Christmas Cheer” was produced by an outfit known
as MSR, one of the largest song-poem factories. The performance is credited to
The MSR Singers, a group of paid employees who sang on dozens if not hundreds
of songs MSR created from lyrics they received from their paying customers. The
lyrics of this little gem are by Joan Tomaini, and they’re truly special,
indeed:
Christmas is a glad
time,
Christmas is a sad
time,
It’s a time of joy,
For every girl and
boy.
But how about the
lost souls,
The ones whose lives
never unfold,
Does anyone ever
think of those
whose life compares
to a dead rose?
They’re living, too.
And every day gets
duller and duller in every way.
Who is going to
bring them cheer?
Isn’t that why you
and I are here?
Think of them at
Christmas time,
As you go bustling
in your prime,
And when somebody
says, “Brother, can you spare a dime?”
That this could
happen to you sometime.
Now, the sentiment that folks should help cheer the less fortunate at
Christmas is a common holiday theme. There’s nothing novel about that. What
makes this song incredible is its dramatic descriptions. “Does anyone ever
think of those whose life compares to a dead rose?” Wow. “Every day gets duller
and duller in every way.” This is the kind of Christmas cheer I suspect many of
us would just as soon do without!
My latest holiday mix is complete and now available on my holiday website for your listening and downloading pleasure. My 19th annual compilation is called Christmas Cheer, and it's stuffed to the brim with unheralded gems, seasonal greetings and unforgettable little nightmares just for you! There's nothing unusual about that, of course. It's pretty much the same formula I've been using for nearly two decades now. But this year it's ready not only before Black Friday but before you go shopping for your Thanksgiving turkey! Somehow I knew you're going to need your coping skills finely honed to make it through this season, and playing this mess in your car from the supermarket parking lot is simply the best way I know to prepare for the coming onslaught.
I'm not going to tell you too much about this mix at this point. You'll find all kinds of details by returning to this blog now and then between now and Christmas Eve. But I will tell you that Christmas Cheer contains a record number of song-poem tracks. You're familiar with song-poems, of course, right? They're those cute little numbers produced when non-professionals write a heartfelt verse and ship it off to a record company along with a sizeable piece of next year's grocery allowance in exchange for a 45 RPM record and empty promises to maybe make the lyricist a star. Just to set the stage, I've posted links below to a few song-poem tracks from my previous mixes. This should bring the memories flooding back, so I'd get ready with a bucket and mop! There's also a link to the appropriate page of my holiday music website. There you'll find links to this year's mix and a SoundCloud link where you can preview the first few tracks.
I hope we can have a little fun together between now and Santa's arrival going through the tracks together. The weather may be cold and frightful, but the fire's going to be delightful. Be sure to buy a big enough turkey for this Thursday's dinner, and don't forget the cranberry sauce!
It's a beautiful day in Los Angeles and throughout much of the country today with mid-summer temperatures and just the slightest hint of fall. But once October begins we all know the holiday season is close at hand. In fact, just as Halloween displays are now mounted each August, some stores have already started mounting their Christmas promotions. I mean to enjoy autumn on its own terms, myself. But I understand the pull of the holiday season. In fact, I will freely confess that my 2023 holiday mix is already completed and ready to go — a personal best for being ahead of schedule! I've also got two special-themed bonus mixes I've been working on and they're nearly ready as well, so 2023 might offer a lot more nonsense from me than usual. Lord knows I'm not the only nonsense generator out there this year, and I aim to do my part.
Watch this blog for all the details, and have a wonderful October wherever you are!
I'm not sure how this day snuck up on us so quickly, but Thanksgiving's always been one of my favorite holidays and I hope each of you is enjoying yours. Tomorrow begins the annual march toward Christmas, and we'll be celebrating here with the unveiling of my latest holiday mix. Over the following month I'll be posting notes about each of the 42 tracks on this year's compilation. I suspect there will also be random thoughts about holiday music and the holidays in general — roughly the same as in previous years. I suggest you enjoy a wonderful dinner today, give heartfelt thanks and get a good night's sleep. I'll be back in the morning with some novel sounds of the holiday.
My holiday music website is where I post copies of all my previous holiday mixes and I've just given it a new look in anticipation of the upcoming holiday season. You can check it out anytime at https://www.marksholidaymixcds.net/#. I'm still testing the individual entries and links to make sure they're fully functional, so please let me know if you have trouble accessing any of the features.
I've been circulating a new holiday mix each year since 2005 and can't say for sure just how many new mixes I'm going to want to prepare. Maybe it's time for me to find something new to do for the holidays? A number of friends get into baking at Christmas, and that sounds like a promising activity. We'll see how I feel. But if I make another mix this December, you can bet it will be posted on the website!
I hope everyone's enjoying a pleasant summer and look forward to posting more after the cold weather arrives.
My 14th annual holiday mix CD is now ready and available for your listening pleasure on my Mark's Holiday Mix CDs website. It's titled My Christmas Time Philosophy, it contains 32 tracks and it runs for just under 80 minutes. If you've listened to any of my previous mixes you'll no doubt recognize a few old friends who've made this latest ride, including such unmistakable talents as Red Sovine, William Hung and Johnny "Bowtie" Barstow who are responsible for "That Night in Bethlehem," "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Silent Night," respectively. (What, nothing by Wing this year?!)
Over the next six weeks or so I'm going to try to offer a little background on all 32 tracks, as has been our custom. This will include music from Blondie, the BoDeans, Dick Van Dyke and Jane Lynch, and The Weather Girls, so be sure to check back from time to time between now and New Year's Day. In the meantime you can download a copy of the complete track list and listen to the entire mix over at my holiday music website. Let's hope this will be a happy holiday season for all.
To paraphrase the late great Red Sovine, "Well, here it is Black Friday." Bad enough to be channeling poor ol' Red on the day after Thanksgiving, but my twisted little mind has to conjure up another holiday lyric fragment without missing a beat:
And what have you done? Another year older, and a new one just begun.
Welcome, dear friends, to another holiday season – crazier and more frantic than ever, and playing out against the backdrop of a slow-moving coup being engineered by a frightening gang of selfish and brutish bigots with no appreciation of the values that made our country great. But, hey – it's Christmas, and I'm going to try to keep the focus on that. All are welcome here, regardless of how misguided your politics may be. The primary purpose of this blog is to offer a wee bit of background about the individual tracks I include in my annual holiday mix, a collection of songs and other noises that I've been assembling and mailing to family and friends dating back to at least 2005. In days of old I typically finished each year's project by mid-November and started distributing the finished CDs on Black Friday. Everything seems to take longer now – largely because I've got so much more to do these days. True confession: I've barely started this year's mix, and I've yet to complete the blog notes for last year's mix. But we'll get there – honest. Things may not be awfully polished, and there's bound to be a little less of everything. But we can get by with less, and that just makes each contribution that much more valuable.
Let's start by setting the right mood. I ran across this video earlier this morning on the Huffington Post, and although it was only released this past Sunday, it's already been seen by nearly 200,000 viewers and touched people from across the globe. It's a short video by British filmmaker Phil Beastall in which a quiet single man counts down the days for the final installment of a very personal holiday tradition:
This is the spirit by which this blog rolls, and the crazier things get in today's real world. the tighter we'll cling to it.
For those who may need or want an extra helping of holiday spirit, I direct you to the Religion pages of the Huffington Post, where you'll find a collection of holiday commercials, mostly British, that will repair whatever was lost or damages by your ill-advised Black Friday shopping run. Watch this year's Huffington Post Holiday Ad Clip Collection
A warm season's greetings to you and yours -- or, better yet, as our esteemed former President and his fellow travelers frequently exclaimed during what must currently be described as the Golden Era of American Democracy: "Merry Christmas!" It's great have you with us as we throw a couple of logs on the fire and begin to string up the festive holiday lights for another year. It's always nice to see the warm faces of good friends during the holidays, even as we remember those we've lost during this most discouraging of years.
I want to start with a heartfelt apology to anyone who's looked this way in vain for news about my latest holiday CD, as I'm at least several weeks late in opening up the store this year. The truth is that until last Sunday I wasn't planning to open up at all. I've been exceedingly busy the past couple of months and expect that to continue for the next couple of months or more, and I've been finding it difficult to scare up the old Christmas spirit of late. Moreover, for the first time ever I've been having trouble finding the kind of material I like to use in my annual compilations. The combination of these various factors led me to regretfully conclude that I wouldn't be able to create a Christmas mix this year.
Toward the end of the recent Thanksgiving weekend, however -- right around 2:00 on Sunday afternoon -- I was overcome by feelings of guilt and inspiration in roughly equal measure and found myself starting to poke around in my files to see whether there was anything there I might be able to use. Perhaps I could throw together an EP, I thought. Even a few tracks would be better than nothing.
Well, within an hour or so I started to feel some of the old magic returning, and before I knew it I'd assembled the rough outline of another full CD. While it usually takes me a month or more to assemble each annual mix, I actually created this year's mix in a single, albeit extremely late evening and I'm pleased to report that my 2017 mix, titled "It's Christmas Time Again" is now complete and ready to go!
Over the next several weeks I will try to follow the model I've used in previous seasons -- that is offering a few words about each of the tracks included on this year's CD. There are 34 tracks in all, so I'll be lucky to finish the project in time for Santa's arrival on Christmas Eve. But I'm going to try, even if I have to cheat a little bit and clean up a post or two after the fact.
I'll be on the road sporadically throughout these next several weeks -- tonight I'm in Exton, Pennsylvania, where it's drizzling and in the upper 40s. Today's news brought little cheer or solace as our nation's elected leader retweeted a series of anti-Muslim videos and continued to promote legislation that would slash the taxes of many of our wealthiest citizens at the expense of million of middle class and working Americans who are going to have trouble buying holiday gifts this year. Several more once-respected public figures have been exposed as sexual predators, and North Korea has successfully launched another intercontinental missile test. And to top it off, another beloved celebrity has died. Against that background, I'm mighty glad to have something nice to throw into the mix. There's an awful lot of good still out there. I'm hoping we can salvage something better from this year's holidays and begin to set things on a better and more uplifting course -- after all, whatever else is going on, It's Christmas Time Again!
This year's holiday mix is ready and now available for streaming on my holiday music website under the tab titled "LATEST MIX." I posted it last evening along with a quickly written rant about the state of our nation and so forth, but don't worry. You can skip over all of that and simply stream the mix using thge button at the bottom of the page.
I'll be traveling for work for most of the next several weeks and will therefore have little time to post right away. But I'll do what I can and try to stay focused on the tunes that appear on this year's collection.
Stay strong, festive and hopeful, friends. There's lots of cheerful music to keep us going, and it's only a couple of quick clicks away!
This coming Thursday is Thanksgiving, which over the past few years has become the day I've posted my latest annual holiday mix. Well, the new one's not ready yet. Far from it. And after prematurely closing down the discussion of last year's selections without so much as a word of explanation, I figured I ought to post a quick something to let folks know that all is well at this address, and – oh yeah – another mix is on the way. I'm not sure exactly when it will be done, but hopefully on or about December 1. We'll try to follow the same procedures as usual, and I'm hoping to find a few good tunes to help create at least some small measure of holiday cheer. As crazy as things have become in recent days, we all could use it!
I'm pleased to report that my latest holiday mix is now complete and ready for you to enjoy. Titled "Deck Those Halls," it contains 42 songs and other audio clips and runs for around 78 minutes. This is the 11th consecutive year that I've put together a CD-length mix for Christmas, and the 15th regular holiday mix I've created. Like most of my previous mixes, "Deck the Halls" includes a little something for everyone, and at least several tracks that will likely turn out to be for nobody at all! The oldest track in the mix was recorded in 1958, and the most recent is from 2014. Among the songs, there's rock, soul, swing, traditional, electronica, and nonsense. We've got greetings from a range of notable folk, a few short comedy bits and a recording of a rather amazing Christmas Eve call from an unbelievably obsequious vice president to his president's Texas ranch. I can absolutely guarantee there will be at least one track on this one that you haven't heard before. As usual, I'm planning to post a little background on each of the tracks that make up this year's mix. I expect to have significantly less time for posting this month than in previous years, so there may be a little less tinsel on the tree this season. But I really enjoy sharing whatever information I can about the tracks I select, so I'll do my best. I typically post about two or three tracks at a time working my way from the front to the back. The tracks in each day's post are presented in reverse order so that the final list, if assembled chronologically as daily posting clusters, would yield a list in true reverse order. Please don't ask me to explain why that's important or what it means because if I ever knew at all, I certainly don't today. Ho, ho, ho and away we go . . . Track 3 Christmas Is Starting Now, by Big Bad Voodoo Daddy (2009)
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
Not having had any little ones running around the house in recent years, it's not always easy to keep up with many of life's most important issues, like boy bands, video games and Disney movies. I've heard this song a bunch of times before and quickly realized how well it would work to kick-off one of my holiday mixes, but it took me awhile to figure out whose song it was and when it was first released. You see, when I first looked up the title, it seemed to have been recorded by the band Phineas and Ferb. It took me awhile to figure out that Phineas and Ferb wasn't so much a band as a Disney cartoon series, and that the song itself was written and recorded by the popular swing band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, which must have licensed the song to Disney. (I'm still not confident I've got this right.) So far as I can tell, the song first appeared in a special holiday episode of the series titled "Phineas and Ferb Christmas Vacation," which aired in 2009. Here's a short clip:
I've never been too keen on swing, which is probably why I know so little about Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, although I know more now than I did a month ago. I know the band was formed in 1989 in Ventura, California. I know the primary founder of the band is a guy named Scotty Morris. I know the band's name comes from the language blues legend Albert Collins used when signing a poster for Morris around the time the band was formed. I know they played the Super Bowl half-time show. And, finally, I know they've recorded three Christmas albums: What'chu Want for Christmas (1997), Everything You Want for Christmas (2004), and It Feels Like Christmas Time (2013). From everything I've heard, they're chock full of fun holiday tunes. That's all I need to know!
Track 2 It's Christmas Time, by Wayne Champion (1967)
I discovered this song and another one by the same artist back in 2008 on a now defunct holiday music blog called The Twelve Months of Christmas. Written by a Kansas City resident known as The Tone King, the blog was created "to bring you Christmas music all year long that is not often (if ever) heard on the radio." By that measure, there's little doubt that Wayne Champion qualified for coverage. Back when Champion's two holiday songs were posted on that wonderful blog, The Tone King couldn't find so much as a whisper about the man or his music on the internet or elsewhere. We're just fortunate he was able to find and post the two songs: "It's Christmas Time," the second track on this year's mix, and "Merry Yuletide Day," which I featured on my 2009 mix, "I Just Can't Wait 'til Christmas!" According to The Tone King, the songs were from a double-sided 45 RPM he found the previous summer at a yard sale, but other than Champion's name and the titles of the two songs there was nothing else to report.
I'm proud to confirm that over the past year I did some digging of my own and I have news. It seems Mr. Champion, an Illinois native, graduated from Evanston High School and and studied music before enlisting in the army. While serving in Germany, after World War II, he played in a jazz combo, and after returning to this country he toured the midwest for a while with a group called The Playboys. But the music business is tough, and few musicians can support themselves by their music alone. Eventually, Wayne took a job with Office Reproduction Materials (ORM) in Chicago, and in 1967, he and some friends managed to line-up some studio time and cut these two beautiful tunes. Wayne was popular at ORM, and when the company's executives heard about Wayne's music, they volunteered to bankroll the effort by printing a small run of the record to circulate as a holiday gift to their customers. Sounds to me like that's one business with a lot of class.
But that's not all I discovered. Wayne Champion, it seems, continued to perform publicly, and excerpts from several of his recent gigs have been posted on YouTube. Here are a couple of them:
Now, unfortunately, I've got some bad news: Wayne Champion passed away in 2012. Several of his fellow musicians and friends put together a memorial service for him at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, where had performed numerous times over the years. Here's a video of part of that event:
Of course, I never met Wayne Champion and I know very little about the man, but it was a little strange to spend such a long time trying to find out about him only to learn that he recently died. The two Christmas songs that The Tone King discovered are wonderful tunes that seem to be infused with a deep love for the holidays and for life. The several video clips I found make it exceptionally clear that the artist who sang those songs was more than just a talented musician, but a fine human being. Here's to you, Wayne. May God bless and keep you.
Track 1 Introduction, by the Jack Coyle Chevrolet Company
This year’s collection opens with another voice from long ago
and far away – an announcer introducing customers of the Jack Coyle Chevrolet Company to the dealership's "Free Records and Gasoline program. I can't tell you much more about this short clip, other than the fact I found it on one of the many fine holiday mixes available on Soundcloud. The version below is a little longer than what's in the mix, so check it out. Oh, by the way . . . I'm not giving away either free records or gasoline this year, despite what this guy has to say.
Season's Greetings, friends! It hardly seems possible, but another holiday season is nearly upon us. That means it's time to slowly shake off the cobwebs and prepare for another round of fun and frivolity.
I started this blog four years ago as a means of sharing additional information about the contents of my annual holiday mix CDs. I've been putting these things together for over a dozen years now to share with family and friends each Christmas in celebration of the season. You can access and read more about my various CDs on my Holiday Music Website. This year's CD is pretty much completed, and while I'll probably tinker around with it a little more over the next week or so, I'm planning to post it on the website sometime around 12 noon on Thanksgiving Day. That will give you something to listen to as you return from the mall.
I hope your year has been a pleasant one and that you're looking forward to an especially memorable holiday season. With the unspeakable horror of last week's terrorist attacks still echoing in and around Paris and the numerous other atrocities taking place throughout our weary world, we could all use a little Christmas cheer right about now. Welcome to our fifth holiday season at the Bells Will Be Ringing holiday music blog!
Well, another holiday season has now come and gone, and I hope it was a jolly and memorable one for you. Today, we begin our annual post-holiday hiatus, which I expect to last until sometime in November. I hope we'll be able to meet here again then to share more holiday cheer. In the meantime, I'd like to say "so long for now" with an awesome video from djBC that seems to really capture the fun and joy of Christmas.* Until next time, keep a smile on your face, good tunes in your head and plenty of holiday spirit in your heart.
_______
*Can anyone recognize the classic film in which many of the non-animated shots from this video first appeared? You might check out our first Boxing Day Holiday Horror Show (if you dare).
Effective immediately, you can now stream any of my holiday mixes on Mixcloud, an online music service that offers a terrific variety of mixes, compilations and other creative audio programming. I've uploaded all 17 of my holiday mixes to the Mixcloud site, and because each one has an embedded track list, you can follow along with each individual track that's played. The site doesn't allow downloading for copyright reasons, but you can listen to whichever mix you fancy anytime.
One of the side benefits of the posting process is that it forced me to take a fresh look at each of the 450+ tracks I've included in previous mixes. Not surprisingly, I found a number of errors in the descriptions attached to various tracks. I've now corrected whatever mistakes I spotted, so I'm hoping my track lists are more accurate than they had been. Thanks for your patience and kind attention.
I make it a strict policy to stay close to home and hearth on the day after Thanksgiving. You won't catch me within five miles of a “Black Friday” event — especially since this madness now seems to go on for a week or more each year. Moreover, there's a special reason to think twice about dashing from mall to mall today. A group of concerned citizens is urging people to boycott Black Friday as a way of protesting the failure on Monday of a Missouri grand jury to indict the police officer who shot and killed black teenager Michael Brown last August. I can't speak to the correctness of that decision as I wasn't on the grand jury and am unfamiliar with the evidence that was presented. But this holiday season will be a lot less jolly in far too many homes as the result of racism and race-based hatred and violence, and I'm ready to back nearly any non-violent means of calling attention to this scourge and demanding equal justice regardless of race. I trust all good people are in agreement on this one, so let's make that fact clear. Thanks for listening. Back now to our regular program, already in progress.
I’ll be using this blog once
again this year to share some personal thoughts and background about each of the
various tracks on my latest holiday CD. As in previous years, I'm hoping to look at two or three tracks
at a time, starting today with the first three tracks and continuing to the last one sometime just before Christmas. I’ll probably post on other topics from time to
time throughout the period, and I don’t plan to post every day, but by the time
Santa arrives we should have shared a little something about all 39 tracks.
I’ll cover the tracks in reverse order within each post so that the final list
will appear in true reverse order.
With all that out of the way,
what do you say we get started?
Track 3
Holiday Greetings, by Smokey
Robinson (2009)
This was Alonso's crackerjack kitchen crew, with Smith
in front, and me in back wearing the red T-shirt.
I went to college in Baltimore
many years ago, and to help cover expenses I worked as a cook several nights a
week at a popular neighborhood restaurant called Alonso’s in Roland Park. It wasn't fancy, but they served great food at reasonable prices, so we did a brisk business. It wasn't always easy juggling classes and work, but I was glad for the opportunity to leave campus life behind to spend time with local people, and the free meals helped, too. The kitchen was run by a crusty middle-aged black woman who was known
to everyone simply as “Smith.” Raised in the Deep South, Smith was a straight-laced tyrant who ran a tight ship
and brooked no nonsense from anyone. She specialized in the sort of home-style
fare I’ve always enjoyed, and her soft-shell crabs and crab cakes helped put
Alonso’s on the map. What I remember best about Smith, however, was that she
was absolutely crazy in love with Smokey Robinson. Whenever one of his songs
came on the radio, she’d not only whoop and swoon, but literally start to shake
like a parishioner who’d caught the Holy Spirit. I’m not sure, but I think she was occasionally even talking in tongues. It’s been years since I’ve seen
her, of course, but whenever someone mentions Smokey Robinson or I hear one of
his songs, I instantly think of Smith. I miss those days, and I wouldn’t have
traded them for anything.
Track 2 Rock Around the Christmas Tree, by Daniel Johnston (2006)
Daniel Johnston
My taste in music isn't easily categorized, and I've always had a thing for the offbeat and esoteric — much of which would today be called "outsider music." Definitions of this style vary, but "outsider music" is generally said to include material written and performed by artists from outside the established music industry whose work ignores typical conventions either due to the artist's lack of formal training or as an intentional comment on mainstream sensibilities. I've included offbeat music on previous holiday mixes by such outsider artists as Johnny "Bowtie" Barstow, Wing and Wesley Willis, and I've usually done so for comedic effect. In some cases, I've seen nothing wrong with that. In Bowtie's case, for example, I'm pretty sure he works with his tongue in cheek — that is, he deliberately flouts accepted musical norms to be funny. I'd say Wing falls in that same category, as her own website compares her style to William Hung, '60s star Mrs. Miller, and Florence Foster Jenkins, three unconventional artists universally regarded as having little or no musical talent. In certain other cases, however, I'm more conflicted. Consider the late Wesley Willis, for example — and Daniel Johnston. Both of these two men were clearly blessed with a certain amount of innate musical talent. Sadly, however, they both also suffer from mental illness — in Johnston's case, reportedly, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. I'm not a clinician, but it seems evident to me that Johnston's music is colored by the effects of these disorders, which makes it difficult to know whether enjoying his songs for their offbeat style isn't in fact making a cruel joke of his disability. I've been following Johnston's career for years, ever since I first came across his song "Christmas in the Loony Bin." I was attracted at first by the title, which sounded sufficiently bizarre to fit in really well on one of my mixes. After listening to the song, however, I knew I couldn't use it. It wasn't funny in the least to me. Indeed, it was sung in a gut-wrenchingly honest voice that obviously understood the tragedy of spending one's holidays in a psychiatric ward, while at the same time falling sway to the redemptive power of the season and the promise of a better day. I've learned a good bit more about Johnston and his music since that initial listen, and I've developed a more balanced view of his work in the process. Raised in a fundamentalist West Virginia household, Johnston displayed a natural talent for music and art from a young age. He was something a loner as a child, and he spent long hours alone drawing, playing piano and writing music. After graduating high school, he enrolled in a Texas Christian college, but dropped out before the end of the first semester. From there he moved to Ohio where he started closses in music and art at Kent State University and began making homemade cassette recordings of his songs and music. In the early 1980s, Johnston moved to Austin, Texas, where he got a job at McDonald's and became known for distributing his homemade cassettes. In time, he attracted the attention of the local media and built a significant fan base by playing shows in local bars and clubs. In 1985 he was featured on the MTV program The Cutting Edge, and soon afterward arrangements were made for him to record a professionally engineered album in New York City. Unfortunately, this coincided with a worsening of his mental illness, and in 1990, he was committed to a mental hospital following an episode in a private plane his father was piloting. Apparently believing he was Casper the Friendly Ghost, Johnston removed the keys from the plane's ignition and threw them out the window. His father managed to successfully crash land the plane, but the incident sidelined Johnston's musical career just as it was beginning to take off. Johnston was eventually released from the hospital, and he's continued to write, perform and release CDs over the past two decades. "Rock Around the Christmas Tree" appears on his 2006 CD "Lost and Found," and while it's a little rough around the edges, I thought it would get this year's mix off to a boisterous and rowdy start. Johnston is a big fan of the Beatles and he loves rock and roll, so it's neat to hear him performing material like this. He's probably better known, however, for his slower, more introspective songs, which are striking for their honesty and lack of artifice. These qualities are evident in the Tiny Desk Concert performance Johnston did for NPR a couple of years ago, so while it doesn't have anything to do with Christmas exactly, I thought I'd add it as an introduction to his material: Visit Daniel Johnston's Website, "Hi, How Are You?" Watch the Documentary "The Devil and Daniel Johnston" for free on Cackle Watch Daniel Johnston at the Hollywood Bowl in September 2014 Listen to Daniel Johnston Sing "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" Shop for Holiday Cards Designed by Daniel Johnston Track 1 A Recorded Message, by Daniel Johnston (1988)
This short track appears on Johnston's album Merry Christmas, which was recorded during a period when his mental health was beginning to show signs of increasing instability. Despite the title, and the fact that it was released in December 1988, most of the material on the album has little or nothing to do with Christmas. I've always found this track fascinating for its endearing self-assurance ("Perhaps you can comfort one another about my absence by consoling each other about it and talking about how much you miss me.") and professed concern for its unnamed intended recipient(s). It certainly seems sincere, and what's wrong with starting things off with words like this:
And so I say unto you, Merry Christmas and a Happy, Happy New Year!
Incidentally, the incredibly talented Bomarr worked up a very special version of this track several years ago with a perfectly groovy musical backdrop featuring the one and only Johnny Largo on the Optigan. You can enjoy it HERE just as if it were 1973 all over again.
Finally, before leaving the subject of Daniel Johnston altogether, here's a short film he apparently made with some friends approximately 30 or more years ago. I like its message, too:
Back soon with information about Basil Marceaux, the former Tennessee gubernatorial candidate who really likes Christmas a lot but hates gold-fringed flags.
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