The reason that these lists didn't start going up until this week is that I adhere to the rule that it is unacceptable to listen to Christmas music before Thanksgiving and after New Years Day. While I will occasionally bend this rule for a song in June, I usually do my best to stick to it. This year I listened to more Christmas music than ever in November in an effort to prepare this list. Mostly it was snippets of songs that I hadn't heard in a while.
Thankfully, now that it is past Thankgiving I am free to listen to all the Christmas music that I want to, and I did just that today. I hear a lot of complaints about Christmas music from people, but I have never understood them. If you don't like Christmas music, you are probably just listening to the wrong stuff.
Let's get back to more of the right stuff.
Song #45: Clarence Carter - Back Door Santa
The Blues are vastly underrepresented in popular music--at least in this humble blogger's opinion. For a genre that is so rich in history and so diverse in its modern incarnations, it is incredible to me that it is simply ignored by most. This extends to Christmas music as well, a genre that is really a collection of a wide range of styles--from Nat King Cole to Trans-Siberian Orchestra to Mariah Carey--all united by a few common themes. Christmas music, being a largely commercial enterprise that is confined to one short period each year, can be a tough one to delve into. Chances are your standard Christmas radio station will play 95% of the same popular tunes that you have heard every year for the past couple decades, slowly working in a few more bland adult contemporary covers of traditional songs. Is it any wonder some people hate Christmas music? I might too if I was forced to listen to the same garbage all the time.
The pop heavy landscape of the Christmas music culture doesn't make it easy to find new and more obscure takes on Christmas favorites, but occasionally you'll luck out, as was the case with me and the song Back Door Santa by Clarence Carter. A couple months back I started catching up on the first few seasons of How I Met Your Mother. I had heard good reviews of the show and was looking for something lighthearted after finishing three seasons of Breaking Bad. During the Christmas episode in the second season, one of the main characters helps a UPS delivery man delivery presents on Christmas Eve, with this song playing in the background.
A simple 12-bar blues song about a man bringing "joy" to all the women of the neighborhood using the back door not the chimney, this song is a great example of what can happen when great musicians take inspiration from the myriad of Christmas traditions and stories and make them their own.
Song #44: Bing Crosby and David Bowie - Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy
What an interesting paring of musicians. The old traditionalist himself, Bing Crosby and the king of glam rock, David Bowie. The Christmas spirit certainly works in magical ways.
What this duo lacks in any logical connection, it more than makes up for with one amazing version of Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy. Bowie wanders over to a neighbors house hoping to use the piano, in what is a contrived plot setup to put him in the same room as Bing. The two speak about their love Christmas time and the classics, then start into Little Drummer Boy. After a quick chorus of Little Drummer Boy, Bowie breaks into the achingly beautiful Peace on Earth while Crosby continues an understated harmony of "pa rum pa pum pum" underneath the glam rocker's surprisingly tender voice. The two singer's compliment each other wonderfully in what is a great arrangement written specifically for the two of them, and we are all better off with this song in the December rotation.
Song #43: Gayla Peevey - I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas
Christmas tends to draw out some strange musical contributions that gain mass appeal in the sheer novelty of the idea. Songs like Grandma Got Runover By a Reindeer (which you will not see on this countdown out of principle) are at the same time both lyrically strange and infuriatingly addicting. I would venture to guess that just the mention of the title has sparked a repeating chorus in your head right now.
I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas is one of these catchy but hard to forget novelty songs. Written in 1953 and performed by ten year old Gayla Peevey--who Wikipedia describes as a "regional child star" in the Oklahoma City area--this song is a staple of bubbly Christmas radio jockeys everywhere. Children, being the commercialized focus of Christmas, get much more leeway when it comes to nasally and annoying vocal tracks over trite or nonsensical lyrics--although Willow Smith is doing her damnedest to break down the barrier and carry these traits to the other eleven months of the year.
In this song little Gayla has her heart dead set on getting a Hippopotamus for Christmas. She offers up no concrete explanation as to why--although being pop music there is a certain amount of disbelief to suspend anyway--but seems to have thought through some of the logistical issues already (bring it in the front door and not the chimney, no worries of attacks as hippos are herbivores). While not the best product of the tried and true equation "cute kid + Christmas stereotype + lighthearted backing track = cash cow", I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas is catchy enough to get stuck in your head, and just good enough soyou don't mind (for a little while, anyway).
Song #42: The Royal Guardsmen - Snoopy's Christmas
On Christmas Eve 1914, German and British soldiers on the western front put aside their differences for a short time to celebrate the holiday that was sacred to both sides. This order did not come from the commanders, but was instead initiated by the men in the trenches. In some cases gifts of beer and tobacco were exchanged and games of football were played. Commanders did their best the next three Christmases to limit any overtures of peace for the day, but the spirit of Christmas had already proven to be a powerful force even in the face of the terribly destructive First World War.
In the early 60's, the Royal Guardsmen followed up their novelty hit Snoopy vs. The Red Baron--based on the Charles Schultz comic strips that showed Snoopy's dreamlife of being a fighter pilot--with Snoopy's Christmas, a tale of a aerial dogfight that took place on Christmas Eve between Snoopy and the Red Baron. The two skilled pilots fight bitterly until the Red Baron has Snoopy in his gunsights, but in the spirit of the Christmas Truce of 1914, the two pilots called off hostilities midway through the fight and went their separate ways.
The song is classic oldies arrangement with a touch of Christmas (sleigh bells jingling over the chorus, the constant pitter patter of a Little Drummer Boy-esque roll of the snare drum, and a quick interlude of Hark the Herald at the songs climax). The Royal Guardsmen's song, written in 1967, stands the test of time and is easily one of the more enjoyable rock and roll Christmas songs out there.
Song #41: Barry Gordon - Nuttin' For Christmas
If Gayla Peevey's hit outlines one of the prominent running jokes of Christmas--a child's outsized expectations for their gift--then Barry Gordon tale of a young menace getting his serving of coal for the year's misdeeds is the perfect counterweight.
Gordon recounts a whole laundry list of mischievous doings from the past year that range from tormenting teachers and classmates to low-tech counterfeiting (penny slug? somebody call the Treasury Department). While Gordon accepts his punishment, he seems overly concerned not with the morality of his pranks, but rather the fact that he got caught because of a "snitch", a great example set for the youth of America--don't get caught.
Nuttin' For Christmas is another one of those songs that tends to linger in your head for a while. Gordon's vocal inflection is deliberate and casts an air of annoyance at the whole situation, while Art Mooney & His Orchestra create the perfect mood for the tale of the hijinks of a seven year old. All in all this is another one of those songs that make you smile the first time you hear it during the Christmas season, but slowly wear you down by the time you are rushing to finish shopping two days before Christmas.
No comments:
Post a Comment