1952 begins with a new Queen for England and ends with a war hero for U.S. President. In-between are military coups for Cuba and Egypt. Although, we did beat the Russkis in the Helsinki Olympics (barely). George Jorgensen lost to Christine Jorgenson this year as well (if ya know whut ah mean).
The top o’ the charts also tells a battlesome tale. Consider this playlist as a searing love lorn plot: “You Belong to Me” “Here in My Heart;” “Why Don’t You Believe,” “Blue Tango,” “Cry,” “I Went to Your Wedding,” “Auf Wiederseh’n Sweetheart.” Those darn kids and their over-emotional tunes!
In Adult Town, where the real wars are made, we denially lounge to sweet, brisk, bouncy bands.
Spike Jones is still filling ballrooms. Here he is with his band and ‘Winter‘ (check out the cool Frisky Frolics cartoon with it!).
Okay, sometimes we had a couple too many and we get a little maudlin and we start singing too loudly about the past, like Don Cornell and orchestra with “Let’s Have an Old Fashioned Christmas.” Hic, hoo boy.
No no no, no more negativity. This is the Year of Norman Vincent Peale and Positive Thinking. We have to Swing and Sway with Sammy Kaye! Chins up! Toes pointed! Marching music, please, maestro! “All Around the Christmas Tree.”
Well, the baby boom is well under way now, so let’s unleash the flood of terrible children’s Christmas tunes. Sure this holiday is all about the wee ones, and we sing about The Baby… but it’s also about the chart toppers. And i know everyone grew up with some strange song continually looped through those long childish nights of list making and being good which means something special to each without meaning squat to anyone else–isn’t that what Christmas really is all about?
Trying to recapture his surprise sensation from 1949 (you know, dasher and dancer and prancer ad nauseum?) Gene Autry records a reindeer math equation: “32 Feet and 8 Little Tails of White.” Hey, where’s Rudolph?
Also hoping that silly kids’ stuff will buy him a new home Tennessee Ernie Ford chimes in with “Rootin’ Tootin’ Santa Claus.” TEF’s earthy baritone services the Lord a mite better than that merry old elf. (What did you think of his last note? yikes.)
Rosemary Clooney adds to the Winter canon of slightly-scary mythical figures with “Suzy Snowflake.” It’s not really Christmas, but that’s when it got sold.
Centaur Productions begins their truly disturbing stop-motion Christmas cartoon business this year with “The Three Little Dwarves,” more of Santa’s helpers (which are so much more Disney than elves, donchaknow). If you didn’t live in Chicago you might not have seen this every year. If you did then you might enjoy the awesome parody by TV Funhouse, “Tingles, The Christmas Tension.”
As we enter our decade of prosperity and white picket fences, we still cling to our golden past of victory and nationalism. The big band dance music continues, but feels a little more jazzy. Louis Jordan and his Orchestra bless us with “May Every Day be Christmas.” It’s a thick coating of brass with a cheap organ flourish.
The Four Aces, about to become teen idols, record “There’s a Christmas Tree in Heaven” an Eddy Howard and his orchestra number. It’s a criminal move by their manager.
We continue fighting with the future by sounding like the past with thoughts of our boys on the front lines in Korea. PFC Eddie Fisher sings from there “Christmas Eve in My Home Town” complete with radio show introduction by the crooner.
Cool Tommy (‘It’s All in the Game’) Edwards is keeping it white with “Christmas is for Children,” although i would not play this dreamy, greasy night club nostalgia for children.
The worst of the running-in-place problems is the nepotism of Bing Crosby’s son, Lindsay (no, it only sounds like a daughter), warbling at thirteen years old here with “Dear Mister Santa Claus.” He later went on to form The Crosby Boys with his brothers and play night clubs and drink heavily. These boys mostly committed suicide.
The Catcher in the Rye, ‘The King and I,’ I Love Lucy, the 22nd Amendment (Pres. term limit), color TV, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still,’ Truman fires MacArthur, Dennis the Menace, Perry Como and Tony Bennett….
Yes… music’s all over the place as much as the USA is. Les Paul and Mary Ford break into the top ten and country music gets a boost. That Hank Williams guy is hittin’ it with ‘Hey, Good Lookin” and ‘Cold, Cold Heart.’ It starts to sound a little raucous in fact, with ‘The Shotgun Boogie’ (Tennessee Ernie Ford) and ‘Hot Rod Race’ (placing in Billboard’s Country Top Ten by four different artists). Ernest Tubb continues his ‘Blue Christmas’ sales from last year (the song first came out in 1948–no Elvis version until 1957). But may i include the first recording of Benjamin ‘Tex’ Logan’s “Christmas Time’s A-Comin‘” by Bill Monroe in full High Lonesome mode?
Country music honored the po’ white folks. For black ‘uns, gotta have the blues. Jimmy Witherspoon really spells out the problems with being poor and not white in “I Really Hate to See Xmas Come Around.” Guy can’t even pawn a radio.
Alex Ford (Aleck Miller) piggybacked off John Lee Curtis Williams’s harmonica howling in Chicago back in the ’40s by taking the same stage name: Sonny Boy Williamson (no ASCAP helping out then). Our SBW survived into the ’50s and went on to back up The Yardbirds and The Animals in the ’60s. This is Sonny Boy Williamson II with “Sonny Boy’s Christmas Blues” (and the flipside ‘Pontiac Blues’ as well). Hey now.
Okay, my novelty search still loves to find the kooky and comedic and childish. 1950 is AFTER most of the Spike Jones holiday hoo-ha, and the sensation of Yogi Yorgesson and his Scandihoovian shenanigans. But it still sought out gleeful oddities.
Funnyman Jimmy Durante begins Act III of his career with his first TV show in 1950. But his “Christmas Wish” featured in a meh movie called The Great Rupert and run on his new show reminded us that vaudeville died kicking and screaming for the Ol’ Schnozzola.
The most popular girl group of the first half of the XXth Century were beloved but not taken too seriously. Laverne, Maxene, and Patty gave us ‘jump blues’ and iconic songs like ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.’ While The Andrews Sisters’ ‘I’d Like to Hitch a Ride with Santa Claus‘ is not a ha-ha novelty song, it’s a cute kiddie tune–okay maybe a bit melancholy.
Let’s arm twist the year to find something truly irreverent and comic! Oh–i know, Ella Fitzgerald! The First Lady of Song was one of those talent show winners who elbowed her way into the Apollo in the ’30s with her own vocal gifts. By the ’40s she was dropping her regular band with Chick Webb, going jazz, and even sang a song in an Abbott and Costello movie. Her 1950 song “Santa Claus Got Stuck in My Chimney” made little waves in her burgeoning career, but according to a fellow Xmas music blogger on hip christmas, it became a naughty anthem and re-releases may have been blocked by Lady Ella who didn’t see its sexuality when she first recorded it. (Although i find it more Clarence Carter anal, than Ertha Kitt missionary.) Explicate the imagery at your own prudish peril!
Now most of 1950 U.S. culture is whiter than white. The Oscar winner is “All About Eve.” The big B’way hit is “Guys and Dolls.” We do flirt with ‘others’ in Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. Overall white might seems uncontested as urban sprawl spawns the suburbs. Did you know this year debuts ‘Silver Bells’ (Bing Crosby and Carol Richards)? ‘As the shoppers rush home with their treasures.’ Caucasian says what?
But 1950 is not a snowstorm of whitiness. Sugar Ray has boxing day sewn up. Althea Gibson becomes the first person of color to compete in U.S. tennis championships. The Supreme Court begins striking down segregation laws. And a U.N. mediator, Ralph Bunche, becomes the first black allowed to win a Nobel Peace Prize.
You know, the ’50s is the crucibicular birthing of rock ‘n’ roll, so let’s follow that forbidden beat from its wild ethnic backrooms through the honkey tonks and into the juke boxes of our young, rebellious delinquencies. Bend an ear towards Mickey Champion and the Nic Nacs: “Gonna Have a Merry Xmas.” What you kids listenin’ at?
It’s May Day, which i prefer to mean you leave pulled up flowers on the neighbor’s doorstep, but actually is Codependence Day for Communists.
Speaking of which, i’m so bummed from the last two months of poop and corpses i gotta change it up here and find some Actual Music that’s not rude, crude, and dripping with irony. What better start than our own Happy Days Decade, the 1950s? Sure it’s The Cold War (from Korea to Cuba to space racing), but it’s also the slice of the century that gave us TV, rock ‘n’ roll, and me (man, i’m old!).
So let’s us try a few days of the month per year of the ’50s and dig out holiday tunes you may not have heard (tons of standards come from this decade from Bing, Dean, and Elvis; i may mention those overplayed muthas in order to put the years in perspective… but we are not playing that crap).
And, yesiknow, the ’50s actually begin with 1951 and end with 1960–but that’s not the high school text book approach. We’re going to start with 1950, whose Christmas playlist was largely run by kingpin Bing Crosby. ‘White Christmas’ was first released in ’41 and rerecorded in ’47 and played non-stop every Dec. since. 1950 features his continued money-makers ‘Silver Bells’ and ‘Mele Kalikimaka’ and family sing-a-longs and this juggernaut keeps chugging. But, forget that stuff.
So, Christmas ‘Fifty is just another year for crooners to get some sooner, like Pierino Como. Second stringer behind Bing and Frank, Mr. C left the club action and the Ted Weems orchestra in the early ’40s to settle in with family and become a radio and TV guy. He had hit singles through the ’40s and ’50s (‘Some Enchanted Evening,’ ‘Hot Diggity (Zog Diggity Boom),’ ‘Catch a Falling Star’). And he won countless awards including THREE stars on the Walk of Fame. But do you even hear his ‘Silver Bells’ or ‘The Christmas Song’ in the Broken Record Rotation 500 radio-played every year? Then try his “There’s No Christmas Like a Home Christmas” and it’s flipside “Christmas Symphony.” Please get comfortable first. Aahhh.
The ‘Fifties see the rise of the crooner, the star attraction, hand-in-hand with the demise of the big band ensemble. like Tommy Tucker’s orchestra. Schlepping the country playing clubs through the ’20s and ’30s, Tommy had hits like ‘I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire.’ He did appearances on radio shows and even played his own musical show briefly. Here’s his talent playing a lively December dance number recorded in 1950: “Jing A Ling, Jing A Ling.”
Not loads more zombie holiday music of any worth. (That i’ve found.)
A brief shout out to Emily Sofia Smith who blogs with goth-heart and seasonally lays down a parody melody of murderous merriment that’s worth a glance. Couple years ago it was for The Walking Dead. Last year it was for Hannibal and Bates Motel. Before all that it was fanning and fawning over Dexter. Cute and charnal. A good talent.
But to put a lid on death, let’s get real low budget. Gamer Meg got her (i’m guessing) high school buddies and made a video! “Let Them Come” is a fine parody of ‘Let It Snow’ and tells a story and–well, it only takes a minute.
While on the subject, I’m reminded of something Sam Kinison once said about Jesus being the only guy to come back from the dead and not want to eat your brains.
The seminal punk zombie/Christmas song comes from MxPx. Their classic “Christmas Night of the Living Dead” (not the title you’d expect when you hear it, but trademark blah blah blah) paints a picture of the undead end of the world… but it’s Christmas! Green (skin) and Red (blood)!
Santa must’ve had work-related accidents before now.
Ron and Tyler Goudreau from Canada muse over whether “Santa Claus was Bitten by a Zombie” and one time or another. They’re not terribly clever about it, but they do rock it in their family room.
