Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, pals and gals, here it is: your fifteenth annual buffet of audio holiday treats both sweet and savory. As with all buffets, not everything on the steam tables may be to your particular tastes, but feel free to take what you like and leave the rest for somebody else. And if you find yourself humming a fragment of one of these songs afterward... well, just think of that as a little burp after a good meal, a second chance to savor one of life's illusory and ephemeral pleasures. So open up those ears, dig in, say "hi," and have a merry Christmas in December, 2010!
1. An Important Message From Jack Webb and Your United States Postal Service
TV's Sgt. Joe Friday takes a break from hassling freaks and hippies on the Sunset Strip to remind radio listeners in 1970 to mail their parcels and cards on time. The tune is an adaptation of "Try to Remember," which was featured in the musical The Fantasticks. The song was already ten years old by the time Jack and the crew came up with this groovy-sounds-of-today version, but I guess there haven't been that many pop standards about the benefits of trying to remember stuff, so the USPS could be forgiven for adapting this one.
2. "Jingle Bells," Ella Fitzgerald & the Frank DeVol Orchestra
Doing these compilations for fifteen years has greatly broadened my cultural perspectives. For example, if you had asked me fifteen years ago to name the connection between Ella Fitzgerald and "The Brady Bunch," I might have been startled and asked who you were, depending on whether we had met yet or not. But of course, it is Frank DeVol, who not only worked with Ella, but also with Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughan, Tony Bennett, Dinah Shore, Doris Day, and Vic Damone. And then he wrote "The Brady Bunch" theme song. Just goes to show you, am I right?
3. "Jingle Bell Rock," Rubber Band
Longtime CiD listeners have heard a lot of the Rubber Band over the years. Denmark's foremost Beatles tribute band has been represented on several past compilations; and at the risk of killing the golden goose, I include their tribute to "Please Please Me" in recognition of the 30th anniversary of the death of John Lennon. I haven't crunched the numbers yet, but it seems like we've lost just about as many Beatles as we have Ramones, percentage-wise.
4. "Marshmallow World," Darlene Love
Speaking of Christmas albums I adore and can't hear enough of and consequently end up using pretty much every year: once again, here's a selection from A Christmas Gift to You From Phil Spector. At this point, even I am getting tired of me evangelizing about how great this record is; if you haven't checked it out on your own at this point, I'm not sure I can help you. You're on your own, skippy.
5. "Deck the Halls," Pomplamoose
Two kids on YouTube with a thousand instruments and a dream, Pomplamoose became moderately more famous this year through being featured in ads for cars, but I first got hip to them when I saw a link to their amazing version of "Single Ladies" on Facebook. Their Christmas EP is yours for fee, if you donate a book to the Richmond Book Drive.
6. "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy (Red Baron Remix)," The Berlin Symphony Orchestra
This is from an album called "Christmas Remixed 2," which I found whilst goofing around on iTunes. I've tended not to give much play to Christmas remixes, but I thought this one was a pretty nifty little number. Kind of "groovy," as the kids are saying these days. (Are people still saying "as the kids are saying these days," or is that an old joke?)
7. "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen," Jimmy Smith
One of the great minor-key Christmas songs, providing a little astringent to the usual overwhelming sweetness of the season. Jimmy Smith, whose "Jingle Bells" you may recall adorning CiD'08, absolutely nails this one with his masterful Hammond organ playing backed by a lethally swingin' jazz band. Both songs are from Christmas Cookin', Smith's only Christmas album.
8. "Santa Claus Is Surfin' to Town," Soupy Sales
It's your basic pro-forma Christmas novelty song; if I had been asked to write a song called "Santa Claus Is Surfin' to Town," this is pretty much what I would have come up with. Featured on Christmas a Go-Go, an album compiled by "Miami" Steve "Little Steven" Van "Silvio Dante" Zandt (a man with more nicknames than he perhaps needs). To be honest, I included this because I wanted to honor Soupy Sales, who I thought died in 2010, but it turns out he died in 2009, instead. Oops.
9. "Santa's Helper," Joe Poovey
I had never heard of "Groovy" Joe Poovey before I found this song, recorded in 1955 when Poovey was 15. Turns out that he's something of a rockabilly legend, at least among Dallas music fans. He was also known as "Jumping" Joe Poovey, "Texas" Joe Poovey, and Johnny Dallas, giving him almost as many nicknames as Steve Van Zandt. As far as the song goes, there's always room in my heart for another country-tinged "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" knock-off.
10. "Blue Christmas," Bob Atcher & the Dinning Sisters
The flip side of CiD favorite "Christmas Island." I was going to make a joke about how Bob got his stage name when somebody in his manager's office sneezed, but it turns out that Atcher is his real last name.
11. "(It's Gonna Be a) Lonely Christmas," The Orioles
Something very poignant about this 1948 record from The Orioles, a pioneering R&B vocal group. Maybe it's the lyric about feeling blue and lonely listening to the party across the hall. Which is a great detail if you think about it -- he could have sung "across the street," but "hall" places the song squarely in an urban context, a world of lonely apartment-dwellers, not happy homeowners. This record was re-released in 1949 paired with another CiD favorite, "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?"
12. "Who Took the Merry Out of Christmas," The Staple Singers
Usually, I'm like "Yeah, yeah, we get it; everybody's forgetting the real reason for the season, we're all going to hell in a handbasket; you don't have to scold me, Staple Singers. Please desist in harshing my holiday buzz!" But this year my foot started tapping and I started digging the vintage Stax groove, for which I am always a sucker.
13. "Presents for Christmas," Solomon Burke
R.I.P., Mr. Burke (1940-2010). This song is kind of a remake of "Christmas Presents," which he released very early in his career and which a bright-eyed young Christmas music fan included on an early version of a mix tape he made in December 1996. That tape sparked a tradition that has now reached its fifteenth iteration, the fruits of which you are enjoying right now! (The young Christmas music fan was me, by the way. Not sure if you caught that.)
14. "Santa Claus Is Coming," Hank Ballard & the Midnighters
It's a little surprising, given the legendary ribaldry of Hank Ballard's '50s R&B records, that this song's title is not a double entendre. And yet, it is not. Means just what it says; end of story and to all a good night. Still, those saxes sound like they're up to no good. Hank also wrote the song "The Twist" and invented the dance before anybody even heard of Chubby Checker.
15. "Donde Esta Santa Claus," Charo
How can you make this most awesome song -- which some consider the Citizen Kane of patronizing, possibly racist, Latin American kids' Christmas songs -- and make it even more awesome? By mixing in two other equally awesome things: (1) disco, and (2) Miss María del Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Gutiérrez de los Perales Santa Ana Romanguera y de la Hinojosa Rasten... better known, of course, as Charo. How the utter fabulousness of this song has escaped me for so long, I cannot begin to fathom; I can only apologize for my past ignorance and humbly offer it today to you -- if you believe you are worthy of it.
16. "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow," Ace Cannon
As I write this, the weather outside is, in fact, frightful. And the fire is so... frustrating. I'm living in a place with a fireplace for the first time in my adult life, and I'm learning that I'm not that great at making fires happen. I'm getting better, and will continue to get better, I'm sure, but right now the mysteries of what seems to be a pretty dang straightforward chemical reaction continue to vex and elude me. I mean, wood is flammable, right? So why won't the wood I toss into a fire stay on fire? Anyway, none of this is Ace Cannon's fault, so go ahead and enjoy the song.
17. "Twelve Days of Christmas," Ramsey Lewis
Since this is an instrumental, Ramsey here has the luxury of not actually having to go the usual "Twelve Days" route of heaving twelve verses at us, each one longer than the one before it, itemizing a litany of frankly bewildering gifts. No, he simply does a few jazz vamps on the main theme of the song, just to give us the taste, then he swings into gear and saunters along to where he always meant to go in the first place, probably enjoying a cocktail along the way. I mean, hey, if madrigals are your thing, then by all means knock yourself out with the classic 12-verse version -- but Ramsey and I, and probably you, don't have that kind of time. We got things to do, man.
18. "X-Mas Twist," The Twistin' Kings
"The Twistin' Kings," I came to find out, are basically The Funk Brothers, the classic Motown backing band that played on, like, all of their important hits of the 1960's. The documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown comes highly recommended by all of us at CiD World HQ.
19. "I Wanna Spend Christmas With Elvis," Marlene Paul
Well, who doesn't?
20. "Here Comes Santa Claus," The Mills Brothers
I've written before about how this song seems to want to hedge its bets, making numerous references to God while hailing the arrival of the figure representing the commercialization (and thus, arguably, the de-emphasis on Christianity; c.f. the Staple Singers, above) of this (putatively) Christian holiday. Does it all make more sense when we remember that Santa Claus is an actual canonized saint? Or does it somehow make less sense? Or both?
21. "Rudolph (You Don't Have to Put On the Red Light)," Mojochronic
I've been told this might not make sense without the video, so here it is. I'm actually more afraid that this won't make sense to anybody who wasn't hip to the Police back in the day. It's hard to imagine, but there are currently people driving automobiles, voting, getting shot at for our country, renting cars, and being elected to public office who weren't even born yet when Synchronicity was released, let alone Outlandos D'Amour. I'm sure they're all nice people and everything; all I'm saying is that they should be viewed with the utmost suspicion.
22. "The Little Drummer Boy (Der Trommelmann)," Marlene Dietrich
I'm not sure why this song delights me so much. Maybe because it sounds like Marlene is about to ask the children's choir to pour her a whiskey.
23. "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town," The Dave Brubeck Quartet
It's Dave Brubeck doing "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town." I mean, come on. If I have to tell you why this is cool, then maybe you or I are confused on the concept of what "cool" is in the first place.
24. "Auld Lang Syne," Brave Combo
The immortal, albeit incomprehensible, Scottish poem, proffered instrumentally for your listening pleasure by the only band cool enough to have been asked to play at David Byrne's wedding. Grab your sweetie for one last swing around the floor before we say "aloha" to 2010, and bid "aloha" to 2011.
25. "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," The Peanuts Gang
The Misters and Misses Brown, Van Pelt, Schroeder, et alia, bring the proceedings around here to their customary close. Anybody who's seen A Charlie Brown Christmas -- which, I presume, is every real American -- knows that there's hardly any better note to go out on. And so, once again, I bid to all a good night, leaving you with one final question: Is "Schroeder" his first name or last name?
