As a child of the '60s and '70s, I've always appreciated Nick at Nite and TV Land for celebrating the television fare I grew up with. I don't watch much TV of any type these days, and I didn't watch a whole lot after about the 10th grade. But I do enjoy the old shows, which take us back to a simpler time and provide a virtual escape from today's challenges.
A few years ago, TV Land put together its Top 10 Holiday Moments from the shows of the classic television era. Included in the list were moments from The Andy Griffith Show, Sanford and Son, Cheers and several TV specials including The Andy Williams Christmas Show and A Charlie Brown Christmas. The list also included an especially emotional episode of All in the Family, which featured a Christmas visit from a friend of Mike Stivic's who was dodging the draft in Canada:
It's worthwhile remembering that the deep divisions we see among Americans today are not wholly new. We've had divisions before. However, we seemed to have enough in common to overcome or at least overlook the divisions of the past. It seems different somehow, today. Perhaps we can look to the holiday spirit to put things in some perspective and agree that there still is much more that unites us than the things that divide us.
Christmas may indeed be over but we're only about half-way through the tracklist of my latest CD, "It's Christmas Time Again." Here are some observations on a few more tracks.
Track 23 Spending Christmas with the Blues, by Floyd Miles and Gregg Allman (1996)
Gregg Allman's life was rarely easy. Born in Nashville to a family of modest means, his father was shot and killed by a hitchhiker when Gregg was only two years old. His mother eventually put Gregg and his older brother, Duane, in a military academy in order to attend college and become a CPA. Gregg interpreted his mother's decision as a sign that she didn't love him, and he found the school to be incredibly difficult and unpleasant. Fortunately, Duane watched out for him and the two forged a tight bond that eventually expanded into a shared love of music. They founded the Allman Brothers Band in 1969, but just two years later, as they first began to experience real success, Duane was killed in a motorcycle accident. Raised in these circumstances, it's easy to imagine how Gregg developed an affinity for the blues.
Music is my life's blood. I love music, I love to play good music, and I love to play music for people who appreciate it. And when it's all said and done, I'll go to my grave and my brother will greet me, saying, "Nice work, little brother—you did all right." I must have said this a million times, but if I died today, I have had me a blast.
Track 22 What Lucy Really Wants for Christmas, by the Cast of Peanuts (1965)
If you grew up in the '60s, chances are you spent at least several nights in front of your TV each year during the lead-up to Christmas watching a litany of hard-to-forget holiday cartoon specials -- broadcasts that were as much a part of the Christmas holiday season as your Christmas stocking and the family advent calendar. You know the ones I'm talking about here -- they were on every year, you never missed a one of them, and they each featured a song or two that you can still sing today as easily as "Silent Night" or "Joy to the World." There was "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (1964), "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" (1966), "The Little Drummer Boy" (1968), "Frosty the Snowman" (1969), and perhaps the most beloved of them all, "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (1965). That's the broadcast this very short clip was taken from, and it remains a great favorite of mine to this day.
If you don't already own your own copy of this holiday classic, I recommend that you buy the 50th Anniversary Deluxe edition from amazon.com today, It's now available for less than ten bucks and it includes a feature titled "A Christmas Miracle: The Making of a Charlie Brown Christmas," which I found to be entertaining and chock full of interesting details.
Track 21 I've Got Some Presents for Santa, by Sarah Taylor and Bill Mumy (1994)
Bill Mumy (fifth from left) and the cast of Lost in Space (1966).
You know, I think it's true when they say that once you start to lower your standards it becomes easier and easier to continue in that same downward direction. Once I decided to let some adult content sneak through the back door in the form of the Drive-By Truckers' "Mrs. Claus's Kimono" it didn't seem like such a big deal to look the other way when this sexy little number climbed in through a basement window. At first listen, it's a pretty little tune about a young woman's hospitality as she offers a brief respite to Santa during his big package delivery runs every December. But upon closer inspection of the lyrics, the truth emerges. The plain truth is that while the tune may be pleasing, the lyrics are downright nasty! The only package this woman cares about is the one Santa carries back with him to the North Pole each year -- you know, the one most of us thought only Mrs. Claus was familiar with. I couldn't resist including this song in the mix -- not so much because of the naughty element, although that was surely a factor -- but rather because the song was written and performed by Sarah Taylor and Bill Mumy. If Mumy's name sounds familiar to you I'm not surprised. He was the star of one of my favorite TV shows growing up -- the '60s classic "Lost in Space," on which he played the pre-teen astronaut Will Robinson. He also played young Anthony Fremont in "It's a Good Life," one of the most memorable episodes of another cult classic, "The Twilight Zone." But in recent years, Mumy's been more of a musician than an actor, and once the kids are in bed, this isn't such a bad little song to stick on the Victrola. Give it a listen HERE. Watch Bill Mumy discuss the Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life" Listen to Bill Mumy Discuss His "Lost in Space" Castmates
Track 20 Hasmonean (A Hamilton Hanukkah), by The Maccabeats (2016)
The Maccabeats have done it again! Several years ago, this Orthodox Jewish a cappella group hit it big with the Hanukkah-themed "Candlelight," which was a take-off on the the Taio Cruz smash hit "Dynamite." This year, they've turned the score of the biggest Broadway show in years into yet another catchy celebration of December's most popular eight-night holiday. As with "Candlelight," "Hasmonean" is more than merely entertaining. There's a solid history lesson here, too – along with a heavy dose of the kind of special energy that's made Lynn Manuel Miranda's "Hamilton" such a runaway success.
We'll be back with additional commentary sometime soon.
We're now in the home stretch of my look at the 38 tracks on my latest holiday mix CD, Here Comes Santa Claus. We've already covered the first 33 tracks, and today we look at Tracks 34-36, each of which celebrates the life of a popular entertainer who passed away during 2012. That will leave just two final tracks to consider after today's post, and I'm looking to tackle them over the next several days– assuming our luck holds out and the world survives the predicted Mayan apocalypse.
Track 36
Happy New Year from Dick Clark (2000)
Dick Clark in Times Square on New Year's Eve
When radio and television personality Dick Clark died this past April at the age of 82, he left behind a rich legacy of cultural achievement. But during the holiday season, the contribution that stands out most is New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, the program Clark created and hosted for nearly 40 years. This track is made up of two parts – an excerpt from an interview in which Clark discusses the launch of the program in 1972, and an excerpt from his New Year’s Eve countdown from Times Square on December 31, 1999. ABC is scheduled to air a tribute to Clark on December 31 this year, and its New Year’s show will be called “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest.” But it won’t be quite the same without him.
Track 35
I’ll Be Home for Christmas, by
Donna Summer (1994)
Donna Summer
It’s not for nothing that the late Donna Summer was known as the “Queen of Disco.” While her career had its roots in gospel and musical theater and she ultimately explored a variety of different genres, she was one of the first recording artists to achieve commercial success with electronic dance music and she remains the only artist in history to top the Billboard album charts with three consecutive double album releases – the disco classics Live and More (1978), Bad Girls (1979) and On the Radio (1980). During the period from 1978-80, she had nine Top 5 singles, four of which (“MacArthur Park,” “Hot Stuff,” “Bad Girls,” and “No More Tears (Enough is Enough)”) made it all the way to #1. Summer died this past May at the age of 63, and her death brought tributes from a wide range of people within and outside of the music industry. This track is from her 1994 album Christmas Spirit, which includes a variety of traditional and popular holiday songs. (My original track list and the list inside this year’s CD list the date of this track as 2005, but that is incorrect. Although "Christmas Spirit" was reissued in 2005 as part of Universal’s 20th Century Masters line under the title "The Best of Donna Summer: The Christmas Collection," it was originally released in 1994.) The song was written by Kim Gannon and Walter Kent and originally recorded by Bing Crosby in 1943. It’s written from the point of view of an American serviceman writing home from overseas during World War II, and has subsequently been recorded by scores of other artists.
If you'd like to appreciate Donna Summer's version of the song that much more, listen to this alternate version that will make you wish the world was ending tonight: I'll Be Home for Christmas (Mayan Apocalypse Version).
Track 34
George Plays Santa, from the
Cast of “The Jeffersons,” featuring Sherman Hemsley (1981)
Hemsley (left) and Sean Garrett McFrazier in "All I Want for Christmas"
Best known for his portrayal of dry cleaning magnate George Jefferson
in the long-running CBS sitcom The Jeffersons, Sherman Hemsley passed away this
past July at the age of 74. An intensely private man, Hemsley rarely gave
interviews or spoke about his experiences. However, in 2003, he confided in a
rare interview for the Archive of American Television that playing George
Jefferson was difficult for him. I’ve only seen a limited number of reruns from the show
myself, but I get the sense that Hemsley is closer in temperament to the George Jefferson who appears in the 1981
episode “All I Want for Christmas” than the
brash and cocky character he typically portrayed in the series. This track was
taken from that episode, in which George Jefferson reluctantly agrees to play
Santa for a group of orphans at the Help Center where his wife Weezie
volunteers. One of the children, Mark, wants nothing to do with Santa, as he’s
never received the one thing he’s asked for from Santa in the past – a family
of his own. Unsure of how to respond, George notices that many of the younger
orphans look up to Mark and depend on him for guidance and support. Isn’t that
what a family’s really all about, asks George? The entire episode appears below, in two parts:
The Jeffersons was on the air for 11 years, which makes it one of the longest-running non-animated sitcoms in television history. Hemsley later starred in the NBC sitcom Amen, which ran for five seasons from 1986-91. It's worth noting that one of the three Christmas episodes that series produced, "The Twelve Songs of Christmas," includes a performance of Mary's Boy Child, a Christmas carol written in 1956 by one of the show's stars, Jester Hairston. The full episode is available on YouTube in three parts:
Sherman Hemsley brought a lot of laughter into this world, and the characters he created helped emphasize a variety of lessons about how to treat others and value what's most important. He'll be missed.
My
ongoing current assignment involves providing interesting background
information about the various tracks from my latest holiday mix CD, Here Comes Santa Claus. I’ve been examining a few tracks each day, more or less. I started
with Track 1, and the plan is to continue to the bitter end, which hopefully
means completing all 38 tracks. I’d hate to consider any alternative bitter
ends, thank you. Anyway, we’ve taken care of Tracks 1-16, so today it’s Tracks
17, 18 and 19.
Track
19
Honky
the Christmas Goose, Johnny Bower (1965)
The
name Johnny Bower should be familiar to many Americans and a larger number of
Canadians over the age of 60, but it’s not because of his musical talent. In
fact, “Honky the Christmas Goose” is the only record Bower ever recorded, for
which we can all be grateful. But when it comes to scrappy goaltending in the hockey
arena, there was a time when Bower had few rivals. Known as “The China Wall,” he
helped lead the Toronto Maple Leafs to three Stanley Cup championships during
his tenure with the team from 1958-69, and he was ultimately elected to the
Hockey Hall of Fame. How did he come to record the monstrosity I included in my
latest holiday mix? According to Bower, the story begins after a brutal
practice session in 1965, when a man named Chip Young talked his way into the
Maple Leafs’ locker room in the hope of convincing one of the players to record
a song he’d just written to benefit a local charity. All the other guys
showered, changed and headed for home pretty quickly that night, Bower recalls,
and he was the only player left by the time the songwriter made his approach.
As tough as he was on the ice, Bower must have been a soft touch for a charity
appeal, because he not only agreed to make the record, but even recruited his
9-year-old son and a group of neighborhood kids to appear with him. It wasn’t
long before “Honky the Christmas Goose” hit the Canadian airwaves, and while it
posed no real threat to the chart-topping singles of that holiday season –
including Turn, Turn, Turn by The Byrds; The Sound of Silence, by Simon &
Garfunkel and We Can Work it Out by some British group – it was a respectable
hit in Canada and apparently raised over $40,000 for a worthy local charity. Bower
says he had fun making the record, and he didn’t mind the heavy ribbing he took
from his teammates after the record came out. It was a little tougher to shrug
off the angry calls he received from parents whose kids were driving them crazy
by repeatedly playing the song, but Bower says he’d probably do it all over
again. It was, after all, made for a worthy cause.
You
can hear Johnny Bower himself tell the “Honky” story right HERE.
Track
18
O Holy Night, Ellis
Chadbourne (c. 1979)
This
one’s something special, something unique. I only wish I knew more about it. I
found it several years ago on a terrific blog by Bob Purse called The Wonderful and the Obscure, which he describes as “[a] look at some of the more
remarkable items found during my 30 years of collecting all manner of
recordings.” Bob and I seem to share some similar enthusiasms, including an
appreciation for song poems and so-called “outsider music.” He’s also big on
Christmas tunes. Several years ago, he wrote that his two favorite Christmas songs are “Silent Night,” and “O Holy Night.” The rest, he wrote, all lag far behind. In
support of his position, he offered two versions of the latter work – the
first, a rollicking arrangement by The Christmas Jug Band; and the second, the
version I’ve used in this year’s mix by the relatively obscure Ellis Chadbourne.
I hope Bob won’t mind if I reprint what he wrote about the song, because I really
like what he had to say about it:
In a completely different direction, I
offer up Ellis Chadbourne, a singer I was introduced to by my friend Citizen
Kafka, a man I have subsequently lost touch with. Also offering up rewritten
text, in this case significantly so, to remove all Christian references, Mr.
Chadbourne instead is seeking for a Holy Night in which the Bomb has been
banned, and peace reigns over the Earth.
This (and all of Mr. Chadbourne's
work) tends to be quite divisive – either you "get it" or you don't.…Yes,
some say he can't sing, and/or even that this is painful to listen to. I won't
disagree with anyone about taste, and I recognize that there is one howler of a
note here.
But
I will disagree (and have, quite forcefully) with those who have said there is
nothing to "get" –
there is a passion, a life-affirming spirit captured in Ellis Chadbourne's
records, particularly this one, which gives me chills. When he gets to "O
Night Divine", and seems at the very top of his range, it takes my breath
away – and yet then, I realize there is a higher note yet to come. Will he
make it? When he reaches that note, just at the end, I feel I am hearing a man
singing directly to God, and I rarely can hear this track without tearing up.
Well,
OK, Bob seems to have been a little more affected by this track than I was. But
only a little, for I, too, find it to be a powerful and moving statement by a
genuine individual who’s singing directly from the heart. Try as I might, I haven’t been able to learn
much more about Mr. Chadbourne, except that he also recorded a song called The Last Round-Up at some point, and possibly another called “Pagan Love Song” from
an album titled “Americana Volume I: Vox Populi.” I also found a series of
essays about America’s youth and the youth movement that were written by
someone named Ellis Chadbourne from New York City during the first several
years of the Great Depression – no idea if it’s the same guy.
Track
17
Preparing for the
Christmas Pageant, The Cast of “Frasier” (2005)
The Cast of "Frasier"
I
was watching TV with a wonderful friend one sweltering morning this past summer
when one of the several Christmas-themed episodes of Frasier came on. I’d just
added the Ellis Chadbourne version of "O Holy Night" to my mix list, and, wouldn’t
you know, one of the subplots of this episode involved that very song. Frasier’s
Dad, Martin, is performing in a local Christmas pageant and his part involves
singing this most difficult number before a sizeable audience. He works
throughout the show to prevent others from attending the performance,
especially Daphne. Frasier is one of my favorite shows. I especially like
Frasier’s producer, Roz Doyle, and his Dad, played by the very talented John Mahoney.
We're now half-way through the 38 tracks on my 2012 holiday mix, and I'll be back before you know it with some further commentary. In the meantime, click on the lovely lady below for another important reminder from the business community:
One of my very favorite holiday traditions is the annual appearance of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Darlene Love on the Late Show with David Letterman singing what is perhaps my very favorite holiday song of all time, "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)." This song was first released 48 years ago (can you believe it?) on what Rolling Stone has called "[h]ands down, the best holiday album in the history of pop music," A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector. Letterman first saw Love perform the song in 1986 in a show called Leader of the Pack, in which his band leader, Paul Shaffer, was also performing. Letterman told Shaffer he loved the song and asked him to arrange for Love to sing it on their show during the holidays that year. That performance must have been terrific, because Love's been invited back to perform "Christmas" on the final pre-holiday broadcast every year since. (There was no Late Show in 2007 due to a writers' strike, but even then CBS replayed an earlier Love appearance.) Well, folks, this year's final pre-Christmas Late Show is this Friday, December 23, so make plans to watch or set your DVR! Also appearing on Friday will be Jay Thomas, who, in another Late Show holiday tradition, will join Dave in a unique football-throwing contest and recount his famous Lone Ranger story. To help get you in the proper spirit, here's a mash-up of clips from Love's various performances over the past 24 years:
Many other artists have tried their hand at cover versions of "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home," but none have been able to approach the indescribable magnificence of a Darlene Love performance. No, not even Bruce Springsteen, who was joined by an all-star cast in a noble attempt at one of his Asbury Park benefit shows in 2001 (below).
As one particularly savvy YouTube commentator noted, "Nice try, but it comes off as souless. This belongs to Darlene Love and nobody else will ever get close." I expect Bruce himself would be the first to concede this point. Certainly, Bruce and E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt were among Love's biggest supporters when she was under consideration for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year. A number of years ago, Steve gave Love a holiday tune he authored, "All Alone on Christmas," which Love performed for the movie Home Alone 2:
There's a video out there somewhere of Love playing that one with the E Street Band and its Mighty Horns, but it's not currently available on YouTube. If you get a chance to see and hear it elsewhere, don't miss it! More on Springsteen and company tomorrow, when we look at Tracks 40 and 41 of my 2011 holiday CD.
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