Christmas Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Soul Christmas songs

What Christmas Means To Me

Some soul Christmas songs, most NOT from the album pictured.

Louisiana Christmas Day – Aaron Neville, from Aaron Neville’s Soulful Christmas (1993)

Merry Christmas, Baby – Charles Brown (1968).

Little Drummer Boy – Lou Rawls (1967).

Silver Bells – Earl Grant (1969). This needs more airplay.

You’re All I Want For Christmas – Brook Benton (1963)

Mary’s Boy Child – Harry Belafonte, #12 in 1956. The remarkable Jester Hairston, who had a fascinating life as a composer and actor, wrote the song.

‘Zat You, Santa Claus? – Louis Armstrong, The Commanders

Every Valley Shall Be Exalted – Lizz Lee & Chris Willis & Mike E. from Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration (1992)

Little Drummer Boy (African Tribal Version) – Alex Boye’ ft. Genesis Choir

A Very Special Christmas

There were several of these collections to help the Special Olympics.

Do You Hear What I Hear? – Whitney Houston (1987)

Christmas in Hollis – Run-D.M.C. (1987) The last time I took the Long Island Railroad, I noticed the Hollis, Queens stop.

Merry Christmas, Baby – Charles Brown, Bonnie Raitt. Bonnie had both Charles Brown and Ruth Brown on her subsequent tour. (1992)

Motown

Several Motown artists released Christmas albums: the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, the Jackson Five, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, and the Temptations. They appeared on a couple of compilations, one of which I own on vinyl.

Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer—The Temptations (1971).

What Christmas Means To Me – Stevie Wonder (1967). One of my top five favorite seasonal songs.

Stax

I think I favored the Stax Christmas music over Motown because it was less familiar. All of these I found on one of my STAX/Volt box sets.

Jingle Bells – Booker T. & The MGs (1967)

Winter Snow -Booker T. & The MGs. (c 1967) Isaac Hayes wrote this melancholy tune.

Who Took The Merry Out Of Christmas – The Staple Singers (1973). . Besides the vocals, it’s a bit melancholy, which is why I like it.

The Mistletoe and Me – Issac Hayes (1970)

Every Day Will Be Like A Holiday – William Bell (1967). It was a minor RB hit

How Christmas Songs Have Evolved

nostalgic, joyous, and even romantic

Over a decade ago, Alice Zhao wrote, How Christmas Songs Have Evolved Over Time. More recently, I saw a chart that said essentially the same thing: most popular Christmas songs were written before 1980, Mariah Carey notwithstanding.

Cole Haddon wrote in his 5AM StoryTalk: “I have zero mathematical evidence to support this, but I’d wager 99% of the Christmas songs we listen to every season were composed between 1800 and 1970. What happened to kill the Christmas song? Was it the death of the big band era and the songwriters who fueled it, and the musicals centered around its superstar performers? Was it the death of relentless optimism in the West that succeeded World War II? “

He wanted his readers to muse on the prompt: What makes a great Christmas song anymore?

These songs are from the last season or two:

Merry Christmas Darling – Rebecca Jade. I’ve seen her sing live a half dozen times!

Christmas In The City – Pentatonix

Merry Christmas – Ed Sheeran & Elton John, which I didn’t know about until Haddon referenced it. It “manages to be nostalgic, joyous, and even romantic as it subtly calls for us to come together and be grateful for surviving a global pandemic. I adore it.”

Winter Wonderland – Ellen, Charlotte, and Melisa. Ellen, the bass player, has a YouTube channel showcasing her skills, dating back to when she was nine.

The rest are earlier.

The Holly and the Ivy – Steeleye Span. I bought a Span box set during COVID.

Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy – Bing Crosby/David Bowie. Unless you’re of a certain age, you might not realize how bizarre this 1977 pairing was. And by the time the program aired, Bing had been deceased for over a month.

O Tannebaum – Nat King Cole. My mother’s favorite singer, singing in German!

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas – Tony Bennett. Tony was one of the great comeback stories.

Sleigh Ride – Ella Fitzgerald. I have a CD with this song

O Come, O Come Emmanuel – Whitney Houston. Backed by a one-man group (Mervyn Warren from Take 6)

We Need A Little Christmas – Angela Landsbury, from the Broadway musical Mame.

Children, Go Where I Send Thee – Natalie Merchant

What Child Is This – Vanessa Williams

The Coventry Carol – Alison Moyet. The last three songs are from A Very Special Christmas, Vol. 3 (1997), Vol. 2 (1992), and Vol. 1 (1987), respectively.

Check out Kelly’s A Daily Dose of Christmas and Coverville 1561: A Very Coverville Christmas Volume 21

Also, Mark Evanier has seasonal content most every day this month, starting with My Simple Christmas Wish by Christine Pedi.

Holiday tradition

Playing Santa Does Strange Things to a Man. What It Did to Bob Rutan Was Even Stranger.

Damn it, Chevrolet, you’re not supposed to make me cry … again …

Sixty Years Ago, When Instruments Were Played in Space for the First Time, It Was ‘Jingle Bells’ All the Way. Astronauts Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra delighted mission control with their rendition of the Christmas classic.

The CPKC Holiday Train 2025 crossing at the Cohoes-Waterford Bridge

Frank Sinatra and Christmas

Rat Pack

Ever since I bought The Complete Capitol Singles Collection, “a compact disc box set, released on Capitol Records in 1996,” I’ve associated Frank Sinatra and Christmas.

In December, I’d play my Sinatra albums interspersed with my holiday CDs. The set includes two pairs of singles, including White Christmas (Irving Berlin), which is different from his Columbia version; two different takes of The Christmas Waltz (Cahn, Styne); and Mistletoe and Holly (Hank Sanicola, Sinatra, Stanford).

Here’s Frank’s A Jolly Christmas album, a 1957 Capitol album that went to #18 on the pop charts and then charted on the Christmas charts from 1962 through 1967.

And here’s a Columbia album from around 1948, though the playlist doesn’t match my reference sources.

There’s a Christmas with the Rat Pack album with Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., released in 2002, though the recordings are from 1954-1970. Some of the recordings are live.

This Frank Sinatra Christmas Songs playlist 2024 runs for two hours and almost certainly has some overlap. You will find Sinatra’s seasonal music repackaged frequently.

Kelly links to some Frank: Love’s Been Good to Me, plus some other items that are not currently available, unfortunately.

Centennial plus ten

This is the 110th anniversary of Frank Sinatra’s birth. I had a late friend who shared his birthday but hated the singer for some reason, probably because of his Chairman of the Board persona rather than the music. I grew to appreciate him over time.

In addition to the Capitol box set, I have a couple of his Columbia V-discs, a box set on his Warner Brothers imprint on Reprise Records, two duet albums, and a couple of other collections, most recently Watertown.

Xmas songs on non-seasonal albums

Getting Ready

One can find several Xmas songs on non-seasonal albums, so this is hardly a complete list. Of course, what a Christmas song is has baffled many for decades.

Is Baby, It’s Cold Outside a holiday song? It shows up on a number of both seasonal and non-seasonal albums. Ditto My Favorite Things from The Sound Of Music; Kelly says YES.

I assert that River, from Joni Mitchell’s legendary 1971 album Blue, qualifies: It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas – James Taylor, the last song on his 2001 album October Road.

There are at least a couple Lyle Lovett tracks. Christmas Morning is from his 1996 album, The Road to Ensenada, and The Girl With The Holiday Smile is from his 2012 album, Release Me.

2000 Miles by The Pretenders is from their 1983 album Learning to Crawl. Wikipedia: “It was most popular in the UK, where it peaked at No. 15 on the UK Singles Chart in December 1983. In the US, it was released as the B-side of both the 7-inch single and 12-inch single remix of the band’s hit “Middle of the Road”.

My father had, and I currently own, the LP Negro Folks for Young People, sung by Leadbelly. It included the very short Christmas Is a Comin’.

Christmas Tree Farm by Taylor Swift was included on her deluxe edition of Lover and the 2020 album evermore.

Child of Winter was a late 1974 Beach Boys track that I have on the 1975 Loss Leaders album The Works.

Same Old Lang Syne by Dan Fogelberg was released as a single in 1980 and included on his 1981 album The Innocent Age.

A fave rave

Tom Petty’s Christmas All Over Again appears on A Very Special Christmas 2 (1992) but is also included on a CD in the Tom Petty box set. This is one of my favorite holiday songs.

Likewise, Jackson 5’s Christmas Album was released in 1970, but two of the songs contained therein, Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town and the somewhat treacly Christmas Won’t Be The Same This Year, appear in their box set.

Links to Simon & Garfunkel Christmas include a couple of early album cuts, plus Star Carol & Comfort and Joy from their box set. It also contains a couple of Amy Grant/Garfunkel songs. It ends with the bawdy Steve Martin piece, What Christmas Means to Me, with Simon and Billy Joel singing Silver Bells. But it does NOT include Getting Ready for Christmas Day from Paul Simon’s 2011 album, So Beautiful Or So What.

Finally, a video from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Merry Christmas And Happy Chanukah From “Weird Al” Yankovic

A Beatles Christmas again

War is Over, if you want it

I thought I would do A Beatles Christmas again, as I did in 2016. This year is Ringo Starr’s 85th birthday, and would have been John Lennon’s as well. It’s also the 45th anniversary of John’s death this month.

As some may know, the group “sent out spoken and musical messages on flexi disc to members of their official fan clubs in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) each Christmas between 1963 and 1969. An LP compilation of all seven was sent out in 1970, entitled From Then to You in the UK and The Beatles Christmas Album in the US.” I have said US LP; of course, I do.

From here: “The Fan Club Christmas Messages is more about the wit and humor the Beatles shared than actual musical quality. This is more about the ‘funny four’ than the ‘fab four.’ In the middle years (‘65-‘67), these Christmas Messages might be compared to ‘You Know My Name (Look Up The Number).'”

Unsurprisingly, some of the links from nine years ago don’t work. Moreover, there are no available replacements for some songs, but several YouTube tracks are mislabelled. Some are Beatles outtakes, but a chunk are misrepresented as being by the Beatles when they are purported soundalikes.

The songs

Beatles Christmas Records from 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1969.

Christmas Time Is Here Again is a song from the Free As A Bird single (1995), copped from the 1967 Christmas record that I can’t find. Here’s an extended snippet.

Happy Xmas (War Is Over) – John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Harlem Community Choir (1971). This made me cry every time I heard it in 1980.

Ding Dong – George Harrison (1974). More of a New Year’s tune.

Wonderful Christmastime – Paul McCartney and Wings (1979). Quite the hated tune.

Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reggae – Paul McCartney and Wings (1979). Though the B-side, the song is from 1975

I Wanna Be Santa Claus – Ringo Starr (1999)

The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) – Paul McCartney with Diana Krall (2012)

Wonderful Christmastime – Straight No Chaser feat. Paul McCartney (2013)

So what else do we have?

All I Want For Christmas Is A Beatle – Dora Bryan with an accompaniment directed by Johnny Gregory (1963)

Jingle Bells – Fab Four