Year-round Yuletide oddities
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.)
Russ Crowley duoed up with Kenny Hausmann in ’09. They have gone onto form In2it, and are a bit more rock. And i feel the rock here, but this is toe tapping’ finger snapping’ bubble gum. Tell me you love me!
Tommy James was plucked from obscurity when DJs started playing his ‘Hanky Panky.’ He went on to produce, like the Shondells (‘I Think We’re Alone Now’).
But he couldn’t stop. In the ’70s he tried country (didn’t everyone?). In 2008 he tried a comeback with the surviving members of the Shondells. The album was I Love Christmas. And our less than listenable tune here is “I Love Christmas.” Sometimes the love of the season is amor qua amor.
One aspect of love in the New Testament affection, wherein Baby J embodies The Holy Head-Guy’s love for all us’n. Christmas is thus the introduction of perfect love. Amen.
“Love Came Gently,” penned by Marty Funderbark only a dozen years ago (from aught i can tell), poetically plays out this personification through the Nativity. It’s pretty.
Many a congregational choir has comforted seekers with this balm/psalm. My fave-o is the hold-it… hold-it… hold-that-note rendition by Christmas Blessing (featuring the Salvation Army Band).
You can ‘tube the other soloists to compare nuances… they are all cut from the same orchestration machination to me. I’ll encore with Mrs. Ricky Skaggs. That family gives good Christmas album. So here’s Sharon White Skaggs with “Love Came Gently.”
I dunno.
This is on an Air Supply Christmas album… the slideshow makes it look like Christianity delivered… the sentiment is right.
Enh, count it as oddly a Christmas song.
“Love is All” by Air Supply. It’s slow dance time for your winter formal 1979.
Jars of Clay is a TN alt rock from a while ago. Not a follower, but gotta give them props for an early hit (“Rudolph Smells Like Teen Spirit“). It’s the old carol, y’see… but it’s sung to a goth rock… It made my nice list.
They also reinterpret the 1885 “Love Came Down at Christmas” which has been a minor holiday sensation, not yet a classic. Theirs is only one of the tunes the holy poem has been set to over the centuries. (For a classic version of the song, check out the Choir of King’s College at Cambridge.)
Valerie Capers is the first blind musician to graduate Julliard. She pairs well with Marian McPartland here singing “Christmas is Love.”
Never fade away… live fast, die young… angry looks foolish on the old.
I mean, when should the punk icons of back in the day just knock it off?
The MTV star of the ’80s (‘Rebel Yell,’ ‘White Wedding,’ James Marsters’s character in Buffy) helped mainstream screaming with piercings rather than hair. But, apart from a “comeback” album in ’05, Mr. Broad hasn’t been much of anything for twenty years. Here is his “Christmas Love” frumpy country growling from ’07. It’s easier to love him without an up-to-date jpeg, by the by.