Hey! You! Get Off of My Roof! - Part 4

Here's some background on several more of the holiday tracks on my latest seasonal compilation, Hey! You! Get Off of My Roof!, which is available to hear or download on my holiday music website:

Track 11
Holiday Greetings, Peri Gilpin

I’m a longtime fan of the NBC sitcom Frasier, which ran for eleven seasons from September 1993 through April 2004. The show consisted of 264 episodes and won a record 37 primetime Emmy awards including five consecutive Emmys as outstanding comedy series. The program featured sharp writing, smart comedy and, best of all, a generous collection of offbeat and likeable characters. I especially liked Roz Doyle, who produced Frasier's call-in radio show. Actress Peri Gilpin played Roz for the show's entire 11-season run all eleven seasons and she did a terrific job of developing her multi-faceted character. Gilpin's short holiday greeting appears as Track 11 of this year’s mix.

Gilpin’s played a host of other roles in at least a dozen films and 50 or more television shows, including a major role as Kim Keeler on the ABC Family series Make It or Break It about the lives of teen gymnasts preparing and competing for the Olympic games. But she’ll always be best known for her work as the wisecracking, fun-loving Roz Doyle.

Frasier is said to be in development for a 10-episode reboot at Paramount+. Unfortunately, David Hyde Pierce has reportedly declined an invitation to return as Frasier’s brother, Niles, and John Mahoney, who played their father, Martin, died in 2018. We certainly hope that Roz will be included in whatever version of Frasier returns in the future.

Watch Clips of Roz Doyle's Funniest Moments on "Frasier"

Track 10
Santa's Got a Brand New Bag, Gary Walker (1965)

This year's mix includes three different novelty takes on James Brown's classic "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," which became the groundbreaking performer's first Top 10 hit in the late summer of 1965. This is hardly the first instance of a mainstream hit spawning one or more holiday knock-offs, but this song may hold the record for the greatest number of contemporaneous holiday novelty versions. Phil Milstein's pop culture website Probe Is Turning on the People cites six different versions that were released within 18 months of Brown's unforgettable original. While each version has its own unique style, all six assert that Santa, like Brown's "Papa," is updating his image. In the parlance of the time, a "brand new bag" referred to a new interest, style or way of doing things — specifically, in this context, an older man brave enough to strut his stuff on the dance floor and otherwise adopt the hip style of the younger generation. 

Of the three versions offered here, it's Gary Walker's that stays closest to Brown's original. Walker, originally known as Gary Leeds, recorded his version shortly after leaving The Standells, a Los Angeles-based band later known for their 1966 hit "Dirty Water." The following year, he moved to London and joined The Walker Brothers, who had a number of hits on both sides of the Atlantic including the Burt Bachrach song "Make It Easy on Yourself," which topped the British charts. The group disbanded in 1967 and while Gary continued to perform as a solo artist he failed to reach the charts again.

Listen to Gary Walker's version of "Santa's Got a Brand New Bag"

Listen to The Walker Brothers' hit "Make It Easy on Yourself"

Track 9
Santa's Got a Brand New Bag, Joey Reynolds (1966)

Joey Reynolds

This next version is another radio DJ novelty record, not unlike Jerry Worsham's version of the Rolling Stones' "Get Off of My Cloud" (see Track No. 7, above). Joey Reynolds has been on the radio since the late 1950s and has worked at well over 30 different stations over the course of his long and storied career. Reynolds is known particularly for his on-the-air pranks and publicity stunts; in fact, he's sometimes referred to as one of radio's original "shock jocks."

Reynolds first made a name for himself in the 1960s and '70s as a popular but fairly typical Top 40 DJ in Cleveland; Detroit; Hartford, Connecticut, and his hometown of Buffalo, New York. While working in Buffalo, he turned down an opportunity to bring the Beatles to that city immediately after their American TV debut because he thought the quoted fee of $3500 was too high for a Monday night show. He was working in Detroit when he recorded "Santa's Got a Brand New Bag." 

Over the next 30 years, Reynolds worked at stations across the country, including WQV in Pittsburgh; KMPC, KRTH and KMGG in Los Angeles; WFIL in Philadelphia; WSHE, WQAM and WIOD in Miami; WFLY in Albany, New York, and WNEW in New York City. His show gradually transitioned from primarily music to predominately talk until by the time he joined WOR in New York City in 1996 it was pretty much exclusively talk. Reynolds stayed with WOR until 2010 and enjoyed even wider coverage while there through syndication. More recently, he had a Sunday evening show on New York's WABC.

Reynolds released a couple of additional novelty records over the years, but this was his sole holiday tune. Our loss, to be sure.

Listen to Joey Reynolds' version of "Santa's Got a Brand New Bag"

Check out Joey Reynolds' Personal Website

Listen to the Joey Reynolds Show Theme by The Four Seasons

Check out Joey Reynolds' Demo Tape

I'll be back sometime soon with additional background on more of this year's selections including yet another version of "Santa's Got a Brand New Bag."

Here Comes Santa Claus, Part 7

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: