Author Archives: Kevin Hogan

25 Days, 25 Songs — Day 14: “Christmas Wrapping”

 

The Waitresses were one of the more interesting bands to emerge in the early 80’s. The hailed from Akron, OH and had hits with “I Know What Boys Like” and the theme to the short-lived TV show “Square Pegs,” along with their most iconic song “Christmas Wrapping.” Written by Chris Butler at their label ZE Records, request for Christmas songs from all its artists. It was released on the 1981 compilation album LP A Christmas Record, the next year it was reissued on the Waitresses’ EP I Could Rule the World if I Could only Get the Parts.

The title is a play on the vocal delivery style of Patty Donahue, imitating the burgeoning new style of music coming from New York’s 5 boroughs. The lyrics are a charming tale of a single woman’s struggles with the hustle, bustle of Christmas and her many attempts to go on a date with someone she had met early in the year. Through the course of the song her attitude goes from resolving to “miss this one this year””to a very happy ending” after running into the guy she wants to date on Christmas Eve at an all night convenience store.

Quirky, poppy and brought to life by a killer riff and bass line, this may be the most infectious Christmas song that lies outside the mainstream themes found in most Christmas songs.

 

25 Days, 25 Songs — Day 13: “Dominick the Donkey”

 

Lou Monte came out of left field with this quirky Ray Allen, Sam Saltzberg and Wandra Merrell composition in 1960. It is another in a long line of ‘transportation’ related Christmas songs. Legend has it that the recording time and record production was financed by the Gambino crime family, I don’t know how much stock I take in the story. It is also another example of a song becoming a Rankin – Bass TV special, this one being the impetuous for 1977’s Nestor, The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey. For sheer silliness this is a great song and one that my kids love to make donkey sounds along to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQrdxtWgHbE

 

25 Days, 25 Songs — Day 12: “The Christmas Song”

This Christmas classic, often called “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,” was written in 1944 by musician, composer, and vocalist Mel Tormé (aka The Velvet Fog), and Bob Wells. According to Tormé the song almost wrote itself, taking 40 minutes from inception to completion. Since, it has become the most recorded Christmas song ever. The earliest recording was in 1946 by the Nat King Cole Trio, he rerecorded it with strings later that year, then again in 1953 and 1961. The 1961 version, with orchestra conducted by Ralph Carmichael, is the version all others are compared to.

In 1978 The Carpenters released their album Christmas Portrait which included my favorite version of the Wells / Tormé classic. Often dismissed by critics, The Carpenters were a powerhouse in the 1970’s and recorded some of the most enduring pop songs of the decade. It always brings a small tear to my eye when Karen sings “And every mother’s child is gonna spy/To see if reindeer really know how to fly.” It brings back the wonder of Christmas I felt as a child and see in my kids eyes.

That’s All I Am Going To Say About That

I used to write poetry and woke with a fragment floating around the last remnants of a dream today. Like an old song, one that came through the static of a radio 30 years ago. It began “Belive it, hip sucks…” and ended with some notion about being crazy about illiviation. There was a butterfly slicing the air like paper to flesh, letting bad blood flow. It became the ink and asked what was the advantage of taking pen to paper. Poems, elegies, even a last thought are only for the living, to give us comfort or fading solace.

Even at 44 you were too young to die, but that was your choice. You let loose in the black ribbons of storm that have no gauge or alliance. I woke and rushed to write the poem, but each line I tried to put to paper faded like our youth, like the image of the trails that ran through Woodbridge Valley; each line failed to capture the truth of our lives.

There was a low stream that stumbled under a canopy of oaks, feeding on the eroding bank, muddying our feet as we ascended the other side. Perhaps it rushed by in ragtime, perhaps it was was where the silence I become lost in rose from.

I can not really remember where it began, perhaps on a dirt hill where the wind pulled the clouds down. I only know where it ends, where I will turn to stare back ‘why?’ and ‘convince me it was real.’

Perhaps I did not write you a poem because they tend to distract us from the flowers around the grassy knoll, the rivers bend, as much as they offer comfort or attempt to give form to our grief.

Yes, that stream became a river rushing by many trees before becoming the sea and returning as rain. If I look closely I can still see the rainbow at midnight hearing of your death gave birth to. If I look closely I can see your dark eyes peering into the cool blue pools of mine.

Yes, that brief glimpse of water in the forest could grow a spark to a flame, could in burning commanded a vision, the angry blind that only now lifts when we can’t look back.

If I knew last Tuesday, perhaps i would have picked up the phone, took your hand and walked with you from the forest toward a new horizon, one that we could forever see draped in the sunrise. Perhaps I wouldn’t need to write these words for you.

25 Days, 25 Songs — Day 11: “Happy Holiday (Beef Wellington Remix)”

25 Days, 25 Songs — Day 11: “Happy Holiday (Beef Wellington Remix)”

While not technically a Christmas song, the Irving Berlin composed, Bing Crosby sung, “Happy Holiday” is forever linked to Christmas because it is now most commonly associated with inclusive holiday greetings used during the Christmas and holiday season and because the numerous recordings of it on Christmas themed albums. It first appeared in the 1942 film Holiday Inn, and served as a theme song for the entertainment venue called “Holiday Inn” Bing Crosby’s character Jim Hardy has opened. The premise is that the ‘Inn’ will only be open for guests and shows on Holidays, that is why the lyrics wish for the listener is to have ‘the calendar keep bringing happy holidays to you’. Opening night is on New Years Eve and this is the song he sings. Also starring Fred Astaire, in 1943, the film received an Academy Award for Best Original Song (Irving Berlin for “White Christmas”).

In 2003 producer Brendan Wood, under his stage name Beef Wellington, remixed the original recording on Six Degrees Records Christmas remixed album. He adds a swinging beat and accentuates the horns for one of the most successful uses of the sub-genre of Christmas music, the remix (which is often just adding an electronic beat to a famous recording).

The accompanying video, using the famous scene where Happy Holiday is first sung, has Fred Astaire performing one of his most iconic dances. Ted Hanover, (Astaire’s character) is drunk because Lila Dixon (Virginia Dale), his dance partner and lover, has run off on New Years Eve. He drives up to his old friend Jim’s new club and madness ensues as he stumbles out on the dance floor. Pretending to be drunk, Fred still out dances 99.9% of people in the world and Linda Mason (Marjorie Reynolds) is no slouch herself.

Since I discovered this version of the holiday classic in 2008 it has been on heavy rotation each holiday season, a toe-tapping, head-bobbing good time and one of the few remixes that improves the original.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaeB4Yi06AY

25 Days, 25 Songs — Day 10: “Christmas Time Is Here”

Vince Guaraldi will forever be associated with the 1965 TV special A Charlie Brown Christmas. His song “Linus and Lucy” (often referred to a The Peanuts Theme song) has become a de facto Christmas song and his 1966 album, A Charlie Brown Christmas, a Christmas staple. Generations have thrilled to watching the Peanuts Christmas Special on TV as a kid and even as adults the hardest people have a hard time holding back a tear when Linus explains the true meaning of Christmas.

The song “Christmas Time Is Here” is found in two versions, an instrumental one by Vince Guaraldi, Colin Bailey and Monty Budwig (the Trio) and a vocal version as sung by the cast of the television special backed by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. This song works on so many levels for me, its lilting beauty and touch of melancholia subtly underpins the wonder of Christmas from a child’s eyes. It is gentle, warm and fuzzy, just hearing it makes memories of Christmases past come flooding back while helping to create new memories to be relived for years to come.

 

25 Days, 25 Songs — Day 9: “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”

Date line November 1934, the place Eddie Cantor’s radio show, the event “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” debuts. John
Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie had no idea this night and this song would change their lives. By Christmas of that year they had sold 400,000 copies of the sheet music for the song (100,000 ordered the night after it aired), making it an instant Christmas classic.

The earliest recorded version was by banjoist Harry Reser and his band with Tom Stacks on vocal in 1934 and followed the next year by Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra. In 1963 The Four Seasons charted with it and it has been recorded in Spanish by Luis Miguel. It is also another tune that Rankin – Bass made into a TV special, this time with Fred Astaire doing the singing and narrating the hour long special.

It is this special that introduced me, and probably many from my generation to the song, but it was the rock and roll version by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band that made it cool when I was a teenager. Recorded live in 1978 and released in 1985 as the b-side of “My Hometown,” it is one I look forward to breaking out each year.

 

25 Days, 25 Songs — Day 8: “A Holly Jolly Christmas”

When Rankin and Bass decided to make a half-hour stop-motion animated version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, they enlisted the song’s composer, Johnny Marks, to write the other songs for the show. The two he came up with, “Silver Bells” and “Holly Jolly Christmas” became instant classics and were recorded, along with the show’s namesake, the next year by the show’s star and narrator Burl Ives. They were released as singles and on the album Have a Holly Jolly Christmas on Decca/MCA Records in October 1965.

Originally envisioned as a song for the character of Yukon Cornelius to sing, when Ives was recruited they rewrote the script to have Sam the Snowman sing the song. The version that is known and loved is actually a re-recording of the original that is a little more ‘pop’, enhancing the happy, almost goofy, lyric that is delivered with such conviction and warmth by Mr. Ives. When I hear this it brings the memories of a simpler time when I waited each year for the chance to see all the classic Rankin – Bass shows in the days before Christmas.

25 Days, 25 Songs — Day 7: “What Christmas Means to Me”

An often covered R and B Christmas song by Anna Gaye, Anna Gordy, Allen Story and George Gordy, “What Christmas Means to Me” was first recorded by a 17 year old Stevie Wonder in 1967 on Someday at Christmas under the Tamla imprint.  Backed by the The Funk Brothers, this cut has that signature Motown Sound. The lyrics touch on all the things that make Christmas special to the singer while at the same time expressing his love for an unnamed person who he wants to spend a few minutes with under the mistletoe. Of all the versions this still stands as the best and provides a little toe tapping soul to the often over produced R and B Christmas lexicon.

Other notable versions:

  • Paul Young (1992) on A Very Special Christmas 2 
  • Hanson (1997) on Snowed In 
  • Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen with Sean Holt (1999) on Cool Yule: A Christmas Party With Friends 
  • En Vogue (2002) on The Gift of Christmas 
  • Holiday Express (2002) on Live 
  • Jessica Simpson (2004) on ReJoyce: The Christmas Album 

25 Days, 25 Songs — Day 6: “Here Comes Santa In A Red Canoe”

“Here Comes Santa In A Red Canoe” is another song focusing
on Santa’s mode of transportation, this time from Hawaii
courtesy of The Surfers from thier classic 1959 release
Christmas From Hawaii. It has an almost doo-wop feel and adds
a unique perspective to the Christmas lexicon. The LP is a mix
of traditional fare rotating between the religious (“Mary’s Boy
Child,” “Oh, Holy Night.”) and the secular ( “White Christmas,”
“Deck The Halls”) and songs focusing on Christmas where it
never snows (“Hawaiian Santa,” “Mele Kalikimaka”). The
Surfers were a pop vocal group, clean-cut with tight harmonies,
who were often backed by legendary steel guitarist Jules Ah See
and percussionist Harold Chang.