We've been looking at the tracks on my latest holiday mix, "I Wish It Was Christmas Today," and today I have a little background on the next three selections.
Track 7 Silent Night, He-5 (1969)
Quick: What's the most widely recorded Christmas song of all time?
Off the top of my head I probably would have guessed "Jingle Bells," but that's wrong. It's "Silent Night," which I understand has been recorded more than 130,000 times since it was first written in 1818.
I've featured seven different versions of the song myself on my previous holiday mixes. And of the seven, this version by the Korean psychedelic rock band He-5 may just be my new favorite.
I don't suppose many people know this right off, but psychedelic rock was all the rage in South Korea in the late '60s and early '70s, and the band He-5 was in the forefront of the craze. Led by rock guitarist Kim Hong Tak, He-5 enjoyed an impressive run and was best known for their energetic live performances. Sadly, this energy was missing from many of the band's studio records as their record company insisted they tone things down on their formal releases. The one exception was probably their 1969 album "Merry Christmas," which you can listen to below. "Silent Night" is the first track on the record.
Track 8 Christmas in Haight Ashbury, Dave Madden from Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In (1968)
Few television programs captured the freewheeling spirit of the late 1960s quite as well as Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, a lively and irreverent sketch comedy show that aired on NBC for six seasons beginning in January 1968. Hosted by Dan Rowan and Dick Martin, the show starred such comedy stars as Lily Tomlin, Goldie Hawn, Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson and JoAnn Worley. During its first several seasons, Laugh-In was one of the most popular shows on TV.
This short clip features Dave Madden, best known for portraying band manager Reuben Kincaid on the ABC series "The Partridge Family," offering a quip about San Francisco's Haight Asbury neighborhood.
The clip is teed up to start with Madden's joke, but it's part of a longer Laugh-In holiday retrospective called Past Christmas Present that NBC aired in 1993. You can watch the entire show by moving the video cursor all the way to the left (naturally). Enjoy!
Track 9 Sleigh Full of Toys, The '60s Invasion (2015)
With only nine days to go until Christmas, we're getting into the shank of the holiday season. I guess it's only fitting then to discuss several tracks that represent the kind of material I had in mind when I first started putting these mixes together during the first few years of the current millennium. My earliest collections were filled with the tackiest and most grating stuff I could find. Most of the evidence of those original efforts has been destroyed, thankfully, but they didn't include many tracks you'd willingly listen to twice. Over time, I've come to include a more balanced mix of material, but I still sprinkle a little dreck in each mix for flavor, and today we're going to look at three of the dreckiest cuts from Christmas Cheer.
I’ve written before about WFMU-FM, which for around ten years
offered a treasure trove of internet oddities on its wonderful Beware of
The Blog website. I discovered this tune via the first iteration of WFMU’s
365 Days Project, which offered up a unique and typically
bizarre aural track each day throughout 2003 It was sufficiently popular and
successful that they ran another series in 2007.
Longtime WFMU contributor Dancin’ Dave offered the following introduction to “Merry Christmas,
Elvis” back on December 23, 2003:
We all know that
Nashville is a music town and Nashville kids get into music early. They have
"been playin" since they’s babies, get work before they’re two.' For
singers, it seems to be about age nine when the urge to perform kicks in.
(Although it’s probably the parents who have the urge and not their kids.)
Yes, there’s nothing
they like better in Nashville than a tiny little girl who sings country music.
She doesn’t actually have to sing well. After all, she is only nine. But she
gets up there and sings her little heart out, God bless her.
I have collected a
half dozen singles by these "Little Girls From Nashville' and each one is
a crime against nature. (See also "Happy Birthday Jesus” by Little Cindy
on November 2nd, number 306, and anything you can find by Rita Faye.) The girls
don’t have good voices, the songs are sickeningly treacly, and the lyrics often
involve God or the Easter bunny. It all adds up to a perfectly insufferable
record.
The gem I present
for you now has been hand-picked as the worst offender, perhaps the awfullest
45 I own. Released in 1978 on the Safari label, just a year after the passing
of The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, this one has it all: Cloying sentiment, a message
to a recently deceased celebrity, and a holiday theme! All wrapped up in two
minutes and 31 seconds of pure joy.
You may be tempted
to listen to the first minute and say "Okay, I’ve heard enough.' But I
implore you, listen all the way to the end. There’s a spoken-word section that
sends the Cringe-O-Meter to 11.
Interestingly,
there’s a phone number listed on the label. Is it the number for Safari
Records? Or is it Michele Cody’s home number? I must admit, I looked it up.
It’s not listed as either. Besides, even if I could track down Michele she’d be
about 34, and she’s probably lost that adorable quality that you can only find
in only a talentless nine-year-old from Nashville.
Track 30 I Want Kristy for Christmas, Craig Malon (1979)
I’ve got
really mixed emotions about this track, friends — and I’m still conflicted
about whether I should have included it in this year’s mix. On the one hand,
it’s the kind of tacky period piece that I usually love. The first time I heard
it I felt like I’d been magically transported right back to 1979. I suddenly
wanted to flip on an ABC Afterschool Special or catch an episode of Battle of
the Network Stars. On the other hand, this song is creepy as hell. I have no
idea who Craig Malon is and while I don’t mean to sound judgmental, what kind
of man would actually record a song about having a crush on a teenage TV
actress? Sometimes it feels like today’s standards are going to hell, but I’m
guessing this song would raise an awful lot more concern today than it did back
then — and that’s a good thing. So far as I can tell, this is the only tune
Craig ever recorded, and that’s probably OK, too.
Kristy McNichol
For younger
readers who likely have no idea who she is, Kristy McNichol was a popular child
actress in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s best known for her work on the ABC
series Family. This show was intended to be an honest depiction of a typical
upper-middle-class, suburban family with realistic characters and relatable challenges
and struggles. McNichol played the family’s youngest daughter, Buddy, and she
earned strong reviews for her work. She won Emmy nominations for Best
Supporting Actress in a Drama Series three years in a row and won in 1977 and
1979. In 1980 she was nominated for an Emmy for Best Actress in a Drama Series.
She appeared in over 20 movies from 1978-93 and had roles in more than a dozen
other TV shows. As this song suggests, McNichol was also a favorite in the teen
and celebrity press.
During the
1990s, McNichol stepped away from acting a couple of different times amidst
reports that her busy schedule and career pressures had taken a toll on her.
She was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Sometime later she acknowledged
that a key cause of her difficulty was the stress associated with hiding her
sexuality. McNichol came out as a lesbian and said she hoped doing so would
help others who were afraid or being bullied. I suspect Craig Malon did not
celebrate McNichol’s announcement, but I wish her a very merry Christmas and
hope she’s finally comfortable being herself.
Track 31 I Want a Hee Haw Honey Under My Christmas Tree, Boxcar Willie (1978)
Finally, we’ve got one more track to share today that is — as a friend
of mine used to say — top-heavy with class. This one is something of an homage
to that classic down-home variety show Hee Haw, and while
there are a number of different versions of the song in circulation, I chose to
use the one by Boxcar Willie.
Minnie Pearl
I never really cared for Hee Haw much myself. I thought it was pretty
corny, the jokes seemed tired and I’ve never been all that crazy about most
country music. There was one thing about the show I did appreciate, and that
was the friendly sense of community and camaraderie found in the show. Co-hosts
Buck Owens and Roy Clark were as friendly and welcoming as they could be, and
the rest of the cast seemed to be relentlessly upbeat and gracious (if not
always funny). Minnie Pearl always stuck out most to me, no doubt because she
always seemed to wear a hat with the price tag still hanging from it.
I’m told the show was loosely based on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In,
only with a country slant. Even as a kid I preferred Laugh-In, which seemed a
lot more topical and relevant. Growing up outside of Boston, the cornfield of Hee
Haw seemed pretty remote and foreign to me, and the cast struck me as dull and
dowdy compared to the quick-witted and “with it” folks who did the Frug at the
crazy Laugh-In parties. I even had a poster in my room featuring Arte Johnson's
character, German soldier Wolfgang ("veeeeery eeenteresting!"). I
couldn’t see myself hanging a poster of Minnie Pearl anywhere in the house.
I guess the other common element that both shows had was pretty women.
Owens and Clark surrounded themselves with good looking younger woman on most
episodes of Hee Haw, which is really what this song is all about. This is
another song that really wouldn’t get too far today, as it’s out of fashion to think
of women as sex symbols. I don’t think women ought to be objectified myself,
but I can’t pretend that it doesn’t happen or that men used to openly celebrate
that it did. In other words, I think of this song as a period piece that
reflects the different sensibilities that were prevalent 30 or 40 years ago.
Network television in the 1950s and ‘60s looked a lot different than
what we’re used to seeing in many respects. One of the key lines of demarcation
came with the “rural purge” of the early ‘70s largely orchestrated by Fred
Silverman, who was in charge of programming at CBS at the time. Data showed
that viewers of the many country-style shows on CBS were less responsive to
advertising than viewers of more sophisticated programs based in urban and
suburban settings. In response, Silverman axed a bunch of successful rural
shows including Petticoat Junction, Mayberry RFD, The Beverly Hillbillies, The
Jim Nabors Hour, Green Acres — and Hee Haw. They were replaced with such shows
as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, The Bob Newhart Show and The
Carol Burnett Show, all of which worked more effectively for the sponsors.
-Smaller.jpg)
