The King of Christmas Music, and my role model in everything except parenting: Bing “If You Hit ‘Em With A Bag Of Oranges It Doesn’t Leave A Mark” Crosby
#10. “Merry Christmas, Baby.” Possibly because of their gospel roots, R&B singers seem to love Christmas music, and there are several worthy compilation albums out there that bring together some of the best R&B takes on classic Christmas music. (Sadly, there are also compilations that bring together some of the worst, so buyer beware.) In addition to R&B renditions of the traditional carols, there’s also a huge array of original R&B holiday songs, from Charles Brown’s heart-breaker “Please Come Home For Christmas” (also covered in a hit version by — yeeesh — The Eagles) to Louis Armstrong’s goofy “‘Zat You, Santa Claus?” But the grandaddy of them all is “Merry Christmas, Baby,” originally recorded in 1947 by Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers, and covered by everyone from Chuck Berry to Christina Aguilera. BEST VERSION: Otis Redding. Recorded at his peak with the powerhouse Stax-Volt house band, Redding schools them all. You can find another version on Elvis Presley’s second Christmas album, 1971’s Elvis Sings The Wonderful World of Christmas, which can’t hold a candle to his first. Elvis sounds tired and jaded, and probably has one eye on the gingerbread at this point, but it does contain a version of “Merry Christmas, Baby” that’s worth hearing. If you can get past the quasi-blues musical arrangement that probably sounded fine in ’71, but today sounds exactly like a Cialis commercial, you’ll be treated to a casual and funny version of the song, something that sounds like the band warming up in the studio prior to recording whatever they were supposed to recording. It also sounds like the band thought song was going to be faded out for its ending, but the take that made it onto the album goes way past that point, with Elvis (whose pharmaceutical assistance is quite audible) tossing out increasingly bizarre asides to the musicians, and attempting to scat between verses.
#9. “Christmas Must Be Tonight.” Apologies to Creedence Clearwater Revival, but there simply was no better (North) American band from 1968 to 1971 than The Band. Which I guess is a moot point here, as “Christmas Must Be Tonight” dates from their less-consistent later years. Originally intended to be a special, non-album single release for Christmas 1975, it was dumped at the last minute, and ultimately included on their patchwork final release, Islands, in 1977. Good thing, too, as the dire Islands needs a lift, and “Christmas Must Be Tonight” re-visits the strengths of the Band’s glory days — Rick Danko’s soulful vocals, Garth Hudson’s mystical organ, and a rural, rustic arrangement that hearkens back to an era (music writer Greil Marcus calls it the “old, weird America”) that none of the Band members could possibly be old enough to remember — half-history, half-fantasy, it all comes from chief songwriter Robbie Robertson’s fertile imagination. BEST VERSION: The Band. My research indicates Hall & Oates also took a stab at it, and there’s an iTunes-only version by Band heir-apparents My Morning Jacket that just came out a few weeks ago.
#8. “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).” At this point, we should discuss the merits of Christmas albums. There’s always a few new ones each year, generally by flash-in-the-pan mediocrities (most often from competition TV shows) hurriedly shoved out as a cynical cash-grab to pad out their sales figures, which will soon go into steep decline when the American public, with its squirrel-monkey attention span, moves on to the next TV-endorsed mediocrity. When it gets right down to it, the best Christmas albums all came out between 1945 and 1965. I feel that way not because I’m necessarily the world’s biggest Andy Williams or Gene Autry fan, but because by comparison, the newer ones sound kind of vapid and overly slick. Working beyond this Golden Age, your best bet is compilations — collections of songs by various artists. And even during the Golden Age, one of the best Christmas albums was a compilation. Well, sort of. All of the various artists were on the same label (Philles Records), all of the songs were recorded at the same time for the same record, and the whole project had a single producer: Phil Spector, the label’s co-founder. The future convicted murderer gathered together his top four artists — The Ronettes, The Crystals, Darlene Love, and, uh…Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans (how did that happen?), put together amped-up versions of some Christmas favorites featuring his big, booming Wall Of Sound production technique, and let loose this gleeful explosion of holiday bliss — on November 22, 1963. Understandably, it kind of fizzled at the time. But A Christmas Gift For You From Philles Records (later pressings of the record replaced “Philles Records” with “Phil Spector”) had staying power, and now it stands proudly atop the Christmas album heap. BEST VERSION: When that creepy cat lady Susan Boyle is deservedly long-forgotten, Darlene Love and her “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” will continue to have eternal life. (Two or three Christmases ago, Boyle was a household name, but just for a moment there, you thought to yourself, “Susan who?” didn’t you? See? It’s already happening. And what Christmas song did she do definitively, for all time? Exactly. Not a damn one.) Continue reading
Holy Bee of Ephesus 