Category: jazz

Time to cut out the nonsense and get Great Music in accord with Santa’s Elves.

Let’s go jazz band cool with Frank Moody doing Martin Carlberg’s “Santa’s Little Helpers.” I need to jitterbug and i need to do it now.

NO-EL VIS!

Sorry, but we’re not going through the dozens of covers, interps, and re-imaginings of that old thing (Elvis was NOT THE FIRST, by the way). No. No, no no. Not even if some of them are pretty damn amusing, like Seymour Swine and Benny Grunch.

Not that we’ll miss out on the sentimental mush: Kaitlyn Maher sings “My Blue Christmas” in a clip from that holiday classic Santa Paws 2. Go ahead and cry.

Yes, it’s mostly sad when you’re blue, but it doesn’t have to be! Blue skies, true blue, blue-eyes… even the dichotomy of blue blood/blue collar happens more often than once in a blue moon!

Blue can mean cold. (Well, i’ve already shared my favorite “Blue and Cold” Christmas tune by Versus the World last 4/11/16.) She’s dead, man.

And sometimes it’s just a color–a sports team color, that is! Jeremiah Rufini cheers “Make My Blue Christmas Green” about his hockey team. No, hang on, that still means blue = sad, Dammit.

Squidbillies’ own Stuart Daniels Baker, better known as Unknown Hinson, puts a darkly comic edge on classic country, viz. his “Black and Blue Christmas” which is about classic domestic violence. Go ahead and not laugh.

“Red, White, and Blue Christmas” by George Pardo and J. Gale Kilgore should be getting us pumped and patritoic, but the creepy children’s electric organ and tambourine make me down as down can be.

Jamie Rickers, a UK TV personality, has concocted a “Blue Santa” in order to challenge our limited view of the jolly old elf’s sartorial selections. Sadly, this gem of an idea leads nowhere.

Well, we best embrace the drear. Rheal LeBlanc goes country depressed after some kind of break up with his “Blue Christmas Tree.” Ole.

Buck Owens country croons “Blue Christmas Lights” competing with the steel guitar for longest held note, or the best imitation of weeping.

Also extending the color by tearing open the wrapper a bit is Wayne Newton with “Blue Snow at Christmas.” He’s lonely, danke very much.

This tinkly thoughtful honky tonker is not to confused with the country crooner “Blue Snowfall” which was made into a commercial recording by George Morgan, but i prefer the pretty pairing of Johnny Mathis and Lorrie Morgan. It soars and swoops and begs to be made into a montage.

Fighting the blues, Natalie Cole answers back with “No More Blue Christmas.” She’s gonna stand up and be empowered with her ’70s soul, you doubters! Represent.

In fact, let’s leave The Blues (and Bluegrass for that matter) to their respective genres and explore them more later.

And yet, Miles Davis beats the nik out of “Blue Xmas (To Whom It May Concern),” a frosty jazz rap from the ’50s full of vitamin hep and what’s cool for ya.

 

Christmas is based on love, so the holiday’s for lovers, dig. Or the converse. (These songs all appeared on Christmas albums.)

Breakups are rough in the cold. Something Corporate is desperate to hold onto love, but wants you to “Forget December.”

Ready to throw in the old love towel, The Matches are convinced “December is for Cynics.” You might pogo out your soul to their message.

Merle Haggard, oddly, has a tale of the hard times and unemployment tearing up the family. “If We Make it Through December.” Way to break the mood, Merle.

Kay Starr takes us back with “December.” Romantic nights when they’re longer, eh?

Mu330’s “December” is decidedly more modern, but still about that special love who is ‘better than crack.’ Dance, ska buddy!

Trying on the Motown, The Sisterhood’s American song-poem wants you warm ’cause “Baby, It’s a Cold Night in December.” Chicka-bow-wow.

Quiet as a blanket of winter snow, Club 8 sings about being close, connected, and cold in “Love in December.” Feels like a holiday.

Norah Jones’s voice gets more of a workout than that piddly guitar during her ode to love “December.”

Bugs anthropomorphize poorly, despite Aesop and Pixar. So why write noels ’bout them?

Because kids like them! You know: to eat, to kill, to stuff down friends’ shirts….

Many an elementary school Winter Festival has had a tiny person version of bugs celebrating in their buzzy ways from a musical by John Higgins and John Jacobsen. “A Bugz Christmas” is guaranteed to make you itch! Hee hee hee. (Schools don’t as often preform “The 12 Bugz of Christmas” or the termite rock number “We’re Hongry“–cause they’re pretty awful.)

To be honest, kids’ music is all about the backbeat and the catchy rhymes. It just might kill kids’ songwriters to make sense. Hence “Cicada Christmas” by Ian Ross Williams. Big Hunh?

And then–hey, not even a proper bug–there’s the itsy bitsy spider. Reworked by Matt Thompson’s The Ghost Script (how is that a fun kids’ source of music?) “The Itsy Bitsy Spider (Christmas Version)” delivers on rollickin’ adventures for Santa and that nasty black thing with all those legs. Enjoy kids!

Larvally speaking, take that lounge hit from the ’50s ‘Glow Worm,’ Christmastify it, then trowell on the class with the Velvet Fog himself, Mel Torme, and you get “Glow Worm (The Christmas Version).” It’s smoother than a virgin eggnog (with all the calories)!

1959 begins with Communism taking over Cuba, so we make Alaska and (then later) Hawaii states. The Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, and Buddy Holly go down in flames, so we launch the first successful ICBM. This is the year of the first Barbie doll, the first plain paper (Xerox) copier, the first man-made object landing (crashing) on the moon, the first living things returning from space alive (monkeys), and pantyhose. The biggest hits in music are ‘Mack the Knife,’ ‘The Battle of New Orleans,’ and ‘Personality.’ As busy as the world is getting with progress, the music is all over the place. It’s a madhouse.

R&B almost legend Jesse Blevins cowrote ‘Earth Angel’ (shh, it’s a lawsuit!). His gentle ballad “I Want You with Me, Christmas” comes from his only album Guess Who? as he was killed in a car wreck shortly after. The day lots of the music died, i guess.

Give the ladies a chance. And, i mean, Lady. All around icon, Pearl Bailey, strutted her stuff radio, stage, screen, TV, and record album from the ’30s into the 70’s gracefully. Her wow-factor is never more apparent than in “Five Pound Box of Money:” a fine gift no matter how you wrap it.

The Anita Kerr Singers’ “Christmas is the Day” is a little tiajuana brassy, but even more a snoozey stew of lazy harmony. We will have easy listening with us always.

Dinah Washington makes the story of “Ole Santa” a sad ole ‘cuz-Mama-sez lecture to dumb kids who don’t know what’s coming Christmas Eve. It’s scary how square she is.

Gracie Fields sings “Little Donkey” like she’s pep-talking those dumb manger mutts into getting into character for their screen test with the Savior Bairn. So kinda funny.

Yet another Bing Crosby musical for the holidays (‘Say One for Me’) dropped “The Secret of Christmas” without making the splash past numbers had–it sounds like your square dad so much that square dads didn’t buy it. Check out Mina’s version with the cool jazz combo behind her faux Judy Garland sirening. Oh yeah, and there’s Ella Fitzgerald adding a shivering amount of soul to her rendition.

Ray Conniff made the glee sound out of the big band sound. His first album (this year) went platinum and earned him a grammy. So, out pops a Christmas disk by The Ray Conniff Singers with this creepy, stalker-y bit of whimsy: “Christmas Bride.” Please, don’t play this at your wedding.

Brooke Benton, another Nat King Cole clone, hit hard on the R&B chart with ‘It’s Just a Matter of time’ (last year) and ‘Baby(You’ve got what It Takes)’ (this year).  “This Time of the Year” showcases his elegant, non-threatening pretty vocals, allowing black men to sing the soundtrack of romance.

Adult music this year is starting to get good and weird. So check out the early electronica lounge music of Esquivel! and his “Jingle Bells.” The future is here and it’s STRANGE!

 

 

What else does death on Xmas put us in the mind for? Oh yeah, tree sacrifice!

Naturally, Bob Rivers lyrically plays out this deforestational dirge with his instrumental (a chainsaw solo!) “O Christmas Tree.” Message much, Bobby boy?

I’ve already referenced the more expose-styled “Kill a Tree for Christ” last Christmas Day. But the subject of whimsically cut down trees live on in Screaming Headless Torsos’ “Dead Christmas Trees.” (We’ll cover The holy symbol of the evergreen another time–it’s just their deaths concern us for now.)

SHT just dropped their odd new album a year ago, but this 2011 single marked an end to the five-year drought of releases for this south of the border touring group. It’s good stuff (and the video is branches of fun), but is it jazz?