Year-round Yuletide oddities
Somewhere between Mariah Carey and Mary J. Blige comes the street R+B of Kelly Price. She rose through the backup ranks in the ’90s and had a hit ‘Friend of Mine’ in ’98. Since then she’s been featured in soundtracks (THAT kind of sound).
“In Love at Christmas” is a simple tale of a boy and a girl and a heavy backbeat.
I don’t mean to hopscotch from awesome to awful and sometimes to inbetween so much… but i find better odd holiday tunes that way.
Sandi Patty has been a Christian staple for so long: practically an album a year since 1978 (including 7 Xmas albums, and exclusives for Target, Hallmark and Walmart). She does power gospel ballads. You’ve gotta respect the range… although i do lose my place at times (what was she singing about again? oh, yeah, God!). The last minute of “Merry Christmas with Love” is a whole ‘nother song (‘Have Yourself etc.’ –turns out that old chestnut is better shorter).
I listen to country regular-like (from the wife’s influence), and i like honest country: Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn… but something happened near the ’80s. Pop music (including elements of disco) invaded and it just wasn’t country any more.
It was bad.
This 1996 Bellamy Brothers Christmas cash cow is just such awfulness. Listen to “Our Love is Like Christmas” all (including the wooden, cutesie couple banter intro AND outro) if… you… dare.
Here’s something odd. That last song has nothing to do with this song with the same title.
Marva Wright, the Blues Queen of New Orleans, adds her special gospel touch to her blues. This entry “Stocking Full of Love” is heartbreakingly, desperately, hopefully full of love.
’80s Pittsburgh R+B smoove daddy pranksters The Flashcats put out fan club Christmas special singles for decades. Since the ’80s got over somewhere around 2001 and their bassist passed 2013, they are aught but legends now.
Hop a sock to their 1985 extra “Stocking Full of Love.” That’s the sax o’ love!
Some songs earworm you into submission.
I can’t tell you much about the alt rock band Big People. I know this song appears on a great collection entitled Yuletunes: A Collection of Alternative Pop Christmas Songs (love it). Oddly it also appears on Trailer Trash Christmas, and Redneck Christmas Party (say whu–?)
I can tell you it’s about wanting more than peace on Earth, more than a new bike, more than a mistletoe mwah… but this sadly earnest complaint (“Piece on Earth“) bypasses the creep factor (barely) with its catchy whininess (and the dogs acting out the bits from Lulu’s Christmas Pudding).
Now that Valentine’s is past us, let’s get weird.
Matthew Meadows (wow, that name takes me back to those George R.R. Martin 1990s twisted superhero story collections Wild Cards… but that was Mark Meadows… until you see this guy and go–yeash, like that) is a self described ‘bipolar polymath.’ He also moonlights as blues wailer, Rango the Dog. Guy can’t pick a key and stay with it, but his heart’s in his voice.
Try out his “Ticket for Two (A Christmas Romance).” Love’s hard, at Xmas or anytime. But especially when you’re all poetically worked up like this. Scratch your heart, but hold onto hope.
After WWII young men began to take nothing for granted, but find their own way… you know the greatest or next to generation or sumpin. Doo wop grew out of this pushiness. Jazz and blues came together in perfect harmony, keeping time on the downbeat. It’s a leader of musical styles, the grampa of R&B.
I’d tell you more about the Ebonaires if i could. Their song “Love for Christmas” will speak for them. It’s from the early ’50s.
Well, it’s a major holiday in my household, Oregon Statehood Day.
Kidding, we live on love here, my babies. And the little woman likes the candles lit, the clothes a bit formal, the cuisine impeccable, and the music mysteriously sensual. (She calls it ‘belly rubbing music.’ That’s a slow dance reference, y’all.)
So here, to set your mood aflame, is Pamela Hines with “Christmas Love.”
Eleanora Fagan was a teenager smack in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance. Her friends called her ‘Lady Day,’ but we loved her as Billie Holiday. She was a jazz icon of the XX Century. If you don’t know who she was (you may even mistake her for Diana Ross) or her sadly typical fate, shame on you.
Here is a Christmas classic, though hardly a carol: “I”ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.” Everybody does this. Kay Starr has a weird remix, Ella powers it, Frank snoozes through it, Dean-o copies that, Tony B. mugs it, Doris D. vamps it (really!), Judy G. stomps on it, Bette M. sounds more like Billie, and the Mills Brothers croon it. Sure there’re more. Who cares? I’ve got my Billie to keep me warm.
(There’s a better Billie Holiday hi fidelity recording from 1955, but this 1937 torch burning gives you a better hint of her siren’s power.)