music Archives - Page 33 of 258 - Ramblin' with Roger

More Early Pop Chart Xmas Hits

Harry Stewart

Here are more early pop chart Xmas hits. There were no specific Billboard holiday charts until 1963.

Winter Wonderland – Johnny Mercer and The Pied Pipers, #4 in 1947. Issued on the 78 flipside of the Mercer hit “A Gal In Calico.” Orchestra conducted by Paul Weston. I think of Mercer more as a songwriter and producer than a performer. He “co-founded Capitol Records with music industry businessmen Buddy DeSylva and Glenn E. Wallichs.”

I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas – Yogi Yorgesson, #4 in 1949,with The Johnny Duffy Trio, and the B-side of Yingle Bells. It’s a parody of ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas. Who IS this guy? He’s “the creation of Harry Stewart, who delighted audiences in the 1940s and 50s with parody songs” in a Swedish accent. He was born Harry Skarbo, the son of a Norwegian immigrant father and a second-generation Norwegian-American mother.

White Christmas – Frank Sinatra, orchestra and chorus conducted by Axel Stordahl, #5 in 1945. The song is from Holiday Inn, written by Irving Berlin. I’ll have to remember to play a LOT of Frank at Christmastime in 2025 when he would have been 110.

Jingle Bells – Glenn Miller, with vocals by Tex Beneke, Ernie Caceres & The Modernaires, #5 in 1941.

Frosty the Snow Man – Gene Autry and the Cass County Boys, orchestra conducted by Carl Cotner, #7 in 1950. Like many of my generation, I’m more familiar with the Jimmy Durante version from the 1969 animated film.

Not the same

Silent Night – Bing Crosby with Victor Young and his orchestra, #7 in 1935. This is a “markedly different arrangement from his much more familiar Decca re-makes of 1942 and 1947.”

Christmas Island– The Andrews Sisters, Guy Lombardo, and His Royal Canadians, #7 in 1946. I loved the Sisters. I have several seasonal cuts with them and Bing.

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! – Woody Herman, #7 in 1946. Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne wrote it. I got a Herman album from my late FIL’s collection.

Yingle Bells – Yogi Yorgesson, #7 in 1949.

Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer – Spike Jones, #7 in 1950.

Chevy

Chuck Miller recently posted three long-form (four to six-minute) Chevrolet commercials for the holidays from the past three years. It was touching stuff.

November rambling: we’re in trouble

notable books

A great cover illustration by Walter Molino, repurposed by Jan Strnad, and used with Jan’s permission

Democracy and the Press: We’re in Trouble

Revisiting the fascism question

Liz Cheney’s new book blasts GOP as ‘enablers and collaborators’ of djt

Why Georgia Republicans Are Protecting the D.A. Who Indicted Trump

In the wake of the Voting Rights Act ruling, North Dakota to appeal the decision that protected tribes’ rights

ProPublica reviewed 12 of the nation’s strictest abortion bans. Few changed in 2023, as state lawmakers caved to pressure from anti-abortion groups opposing exceptions for rape, incest and health risks.

Dollar Stores: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

The Remarkable Biden Economy

You Cannot Rely on the Government to Protect You From Bad Charities

FTC Authorizes Compulsory Process for AI-related Products and Services

Rosalynn Carter, Outspoken Former First Lady, Dies at 96

Chuck Miller: A big toe named Elise Stefanik

NYPL service was impacted due to City budget cuts, including ending Sunday service at the vast majority of locations that currently offer it.

About 8.2 Million People Moved Between States in 2022

Of special interest to me

Finally — a PROFESSIONAL Comics Magazine! COMICS SCENE 1, January 1982. At this point in the video, there is a discussion about a FantaCo ad. Tom Skulan noted that the ad wasn’t particularly successful, whereas the ads for horror items in Fangoria magazine were much more profitable.

New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2023, one of which was written by an author I actually know

Obit for Bob Maye, who grew up not far from my house in Binghamton, NY

Consumer Value Stores

Boston Globe: CVS pharmacists are at a breaking point, imperiling the company’s reinvention plans. The link may be behind a paywall, but basically: “There are not enough pharmacists in the pipeline, and the ones the company employs are reaching a breaking point. The company… has spent billions remaking itself into a sophisticated healthcare conglomerate. A key goal is turning its thousands of stores into community clinics where pharmacists, doctors, and nurses work together to improve patient health. But none of this works if the company can’t hire or retain its pharmacists. ‘Pharmacists are burned out,’ said a former CVS executive.”

Plans

Warner Bros. Reverses Course on ‘Coyote vs. Acme‘ After Filmmakers Rebel. I don’t understand how a studio makes money scrapping a film it’s completed.

The people who ruined the internet

The Boy Who Captured JFK From His Parents’ Basement

John Oliver – Finding a Place for Satire & Immigration as a Comedian | The Daily Show

Do You Want to Build a Movie? An Oral History of Frozen

How TMZ Became Hollywood’s Grim Reaper

Frances Sternhagen, a two-time Tony winner and television and movie actor, Died at 93. I’ve seen her on The Closer, ER, Sex and the City, Cheers, and the movie Misery, among many other roles.

What Is the Value of a Scenic View?

Medical Malpractice On Law & Order, episode 1, Ft. Legal Eagle

Mark Evanier bankrupted his grandmother in Monopoly, and in life

Greg’s long, strange trip of collecting comic books

There is no such place as Wyoming

Now I Know

How Fake Fish May Save Coral Reefs (And You Can Help!) and Cops of Coffee and The Very Expensive (and Not Very Nice) Surprise Party and The Man Who Bought (And Returned?) Stonehenge and

The Hole in a Swiss Citizenship Application

MUSIC

Peter Sprague Plays Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You featuring Rebecca Jade

Tray Wellington: Crooked Mind

Mr. Big Stuff – Jean Knight, who died recently at 80

The Highwomen: Crowded Table

Jake Blount: Didn’t It Rain

Rhiannon Giddens: You’re The One

Coverville 1465: The XTC Cover Story II and 1466: The 20th Annual All-Beatles Thanksgiving Cover Story

Amythyst Kiah: Hangover Blues

Our Native Daughters: Black Myself

On The Beautiful Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II

Rina Sawayama : Chosen Family

Kara Jackson: Pawnshop

Rossini: L’italiana in Algeri – Overture

Michael Pollack accompanies Billy Joel on “New York State of Mind”

You Were Meant For Me – Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds

Notation Must Die: The Battle For How We Read Music, which starts with ten minutes about chess notation

Early Pop Chart Hits of Christmas

Does Daddy know who Mommy is kissing?

The early pop chart hits that we consider Christmas songs were in competition with non-seasonal songs. There were no specific Billboard holiday charts until 1963.

Five songs reached #1 between 1934 and 1954, and a few more came close. Most of them you will know. A few you may dislike.

White Christmas – Bing Crosby, #1 for 14 weeks. The first year was in 1942. It spent 56 weeks on the charts, and that’s just in those 21 years, though the ’47 version replaced the ’42 take. “John Scott Trotter’s drummer on the ’42 ‘White Christmas’ was none other than Lindley ‘Spike’ Jones.”

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! – Vaughn Monroe, #1 for 5 weeks. The first year was in 1945. It spent a total of 14 weeks on the charts.

All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth) – Spike Jones, #1 for 3 weeks. The first year was in 1948. It spent a total of 9 weeks on the charts. Jones is #10 on the Christmas charts in terms of chart action.

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus – Jimmy Boyd, #1 for 2 weeks. The first year was in 1952. It spent a total of 5 weeks on the charts. Jimmy Boyd was 13 when he recorded the song. He married Yvonne Craig, later TV’s Batgirl, in 1960, but they were divorced in 1962.

Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer– Gene Autry, #1 for 1 week. The first year was in 1949. It spent a total of 20 weeks on the charts. Autry is considered the #2 most successful Christmas crooner in chart action after Bing.

More hits

Winter Wonderland – Guy Lombardo, #2 for 1 week. The first year was in 1934. It spent a total of 9 weeks on the charts. Lombardo is a fine example of a generational star. I often used to watch him on New Years Eve, while my daughter has never heard of him.

I’ll Be Home For Christmas (If Only In My Dreams) – Bing Crosby, #3 for 2 weeks. The first year was in 1943. It spent a total of 6 weeks on the charts. I find this one of the saddest songs of the season.

The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You) – Nat “King” Cole, #3 for 1 week. The first year was in 1946. It spent a total of 12 weeks on the charts. Nat is #4 on the Christmas charts. Here’s Mark Evanier’s annual story about Mel Torme, who, with Bob Wells, wrote, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”

Santa Baby – Eartha Kitt, #4 for 1 week. The first year was in 1953. It spent a total of 5 weeks on the charts. I heard Madonna’s 1987 version first.

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus – Spike Jones, #4 for 1 week. The first year was in 1952. It spent a total of 3 weeks on the charts. The second apearance of both the song and artist.

More music from 1966/1967

Song referencing Long Island

Here’s more of my mixed CD for 1966/1967.

Somebody To Love – Jefferson Airplane. Surrealistic Pillow was the first Airplane album with Grace Slick.

I’m Ready For Love – Martha and the Vandellas—a Holland-Dozier-Holland song. On my greatest hits CD, “I’m ready” in the bridge repeats, then “right now” does the same. It’s a failure of the pressing process, not a skip; it’s too precise.

I Second That Emotion – Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Smokey explains that the title line was a mistake. Some of the guys were in a store deciding something, and one wanted to say, “I that that motion,” but misspoke.

Mercy, Mercy, Mercy – the Buckinghams. I heard the Cannonball Adderly version much later.

(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher – Jackie Wilson. Some of the Funk Brothers, who played on the Motown hits, went to Chicago to play on this track to make more money.

My Baby Must Be A Magician – the Marvelettes. The first voice you hear is Melvin Franklin from The Temptations. This song was written and produced by Smokey Robinson.

Wang Dang Doodle – Koko Taylor. It’s a Willie Dixon song.

Big Noise From Speonk – the Lovin’ Spoonful. This is the final cut on the group’s Daydream album, which I got from the Capitol Record Club when I failed to return the postcard in time. I love the collection. Speonk is a hamlet in Southampton, Suffolk County, NY.

(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – Otis Redding. A cover of a British band’s song.

19th Nervous Breakdown – the Rolling Stones

Obscure Motown

No More Water In The Well – the Temptations. Written by Warren Moore, Bobby Rogers, and Smokey from the Miracles. From my all-time favorite Temps album, The Temptations With A Lot o’ Soul

Love’s Gone Bad – Chris Clark. I found this Holland-Dozier-Holland song on two Motown compilation albums I own. Here’s her IMDb page.

The Mission: Impossible television theme. This was one of my father’s favorite shows at the time. I have at least seven albums with TV theme songs.

Five O’Clock World– the Vogues. This was the theme for the second season of The Drew Carey Show.

Boris The Spider – the Who. Because I like to say, “Boris, the Spider.”

At The Zoo – Simon and Garfunkel. I wrote a blog post about it.

The Mixed CD cavalcade

“new” music

The Mixed CD cavalcade solves two of life’s little problems for me. But first, what IS it?

In 2005, when I first started blogging, I went to my friend Fred Hembeck’s roster of links. I visited several of my fellow bloggers, often leaving comments.

One of them, Lefty Brown, organized a mixed CD swap with a bunch of us, including Fred, Eddie Mitchell, SamuraiFrog, Mike Sterling, and even Greg “living in a desert” Burgas. I reviewed some of these collections back then in my blog. We almost always created a list of the enclosed songs.

Fred and I also had our private exchange of music. Several of Fred’s involved Beatles covers, so I reciprocated.

Then, I got so into curating music that I started making mixed CDs for myself. Oddly, though, I never included a playlist. So I have about 30 discs, and I have no idea what’s on them other than the title. (1966/67, War, Troublemakers)

Also, I need “new” music to augment the playing of albums tied to the artists’ birthdays. So I’ll play some of these, and they’ll become blog content. And when I run out of mine, I’ll play those discs from Fred and probably the others. Some of them are very good. Some are weird. These are not mutually exclusive terms.

One reality is that I have no computer with a disc drive presently, so I can’t make more of these. I suppose it could make me sad. Instead, I’m grateful for the ones I already created. Call it a smidgen of musical nostalgia.

1966/67

If I had to play only one year of music, it would be 1966. It was the year I turned 13. When I used to listen to an oldies station in the early 1980s that played songs from 1955 to approximately 1974, about 30% of my favorites were from 1966. I’m not saying the music was better, but it did resonate more for me.

Here are the first ten, with the remaining 16 coming up soon—all of them I still own on CD.

Cool Jerk – the Capitols. I wrote a whole post about this track. My, I love this song. Incidentally, Grammarly wanted to change Cool to Fantastic.

Keep On Running– The Spencer Davis Davis Group. This song has long been in my head. This is the first song of an unauthorized collection called Winwood, which I bought in a store then.

Along Comes Mary– the Association

One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer – John Lee Hooker

Till The End Of The Day – the Kinks

I Feel Good – James Brown

Got To Get You Into My Life – The Beatles. It’s probably my second favorite Fab Four song.

Hold On, I’m Coming – Sam and Dave

Everlasting Love – Robert Knight. This song by Jamie Dornan was one of the best things in the movie Belfast.

Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart – the Supremes. This is my favorite Supremes song, and I never understood why it only went #9 pop, #7 RB on the Billboard charts. I have this extended version from a Supremes anthology.