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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.

November rambling: can we talk?

Apollo 13

per Bizarro.com – https://www.bizarro.com/faqs

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Astronaut Frank Borman was the commander of the Apollo 8 mission, humanity’s first mission around the Moon in 1968. He passed away at the age of 95.

Thomas K. Mattingly was originally part of the 1970 Apollo 13 mission but was bumped 72 hours before takeoff due to his possible exposure to rubella. He helped to guide the Apollo 13 crew as they returned to Earth after an explosion compromised their lunar mission, then flew on Apollo 16. He died at age 87.

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Now I Know: The Man Who Sued Himself (and the IRS) and Won and The Girl With Two Twin Sisters and New Jersey’s Fake Sister and The Problem With 500 Pounds of Pennies and The United States/North Korea Alliance of 2007 Am I happy about Christmas television ads starting on November 1st? I am not.

MUSIC

A friend wrote about Now and Then, “It’s a trap! It’ll get us marveling at how cool it is to hear The Beatles again and use that feeling to lull us into ‘AI complacency.’ I am deeply suspicious.” AI is so suddenly ubiquitous that I understand the confusion. I saw Tony Dokoupil raise similar concerns on CBS Mornings, with his co-anchors explaining the process, which you should see on the Beatles website. Rick Beato’s reaction to the recording is similar to mine: I’m glad it exists.

Now and Then – the MonaLisa Twins

Sweet Sounds of Heaven – The Rolling Stones & Lady Gaga (Live from Racket NYC)

Eve Was Black-Allison Russell

Quiet City by Aaron Copland

Cast Iron Skillet – Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit

Another Wasted Life – Rhiannon Giddens

El Dorado – Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway

Work Until My Days Are Done – Blind Boys of Alabama

De todas las flores – Natalia Lafourcade

K-Chuck Radio: The cheapest knockoffs.

Dymaxion – Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society

Woven Song – Ólafur Arnalds (Hania Rani Piano Rework)

Dracula OST by John Williams

What Now – Brittany Howard

Coverville 1463: The Johnny Marr Cover Story II and 1464: The Joni Mitchell Cover Story IV

18,000 strangers sing Africa by Toto

Jenny– The Mountain Goats

Goodnight, My Someone – Voctave from Meredith Willson’s The Music Man

Dumb Guitar – Mount Kimbie

Decimal – Tom Lehrer

When You Wish Upon A Star – Dave Koz

Songs about war and peace

“The latest things in clothes will be black.”

I made a series of mixed CDs from my CD collection in the first decade of the 21st century. (The whys I’ll write about next week.) They are songs about war and peace in honor of the Veterans Day weekend.

A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall – Bob Dylan. This is the Rolling Thunder Revue version from 1975.

Shades of Grey – Billy Joel. I was surprised I went with this song instead of his Goodnight Saigon.

The Ostrich – Steppenwolf. I’ve loved this song and the eponymous album it comes from for a long time.

The Call Up – the Clash. Here’s what the song from the triple album collection Sandinista! is about.

One More Parade – They Might Be Giants—the great Phil Ochs song.

The big fool says to push on.

Waist Deep In The Big Muddy – Dick Gaughan. This is from Where Have All The Flowers Gone: The Songs of Pete Seeger, a compilation double CD that I bought at the Old Songs Festival near Albany in the early aughts. For a time, Seeger was banned from singing it on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

War – the Temptations. Recorded first by the Tempts, Berry Gordy thought the song might be too controversial for one of Motown’s premiere artists. But Norman Whitfield was allowed to get Edwin Starr, a second-tier in the Motor City hierarchy, to release it as a single, which went to #1 pop for three weeks.

Wooden Ships – Jefferson Airplane. The song is credited to David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and the Airplane’s Paul Kantner. But on my CSN LP, it lists only Crosby and Stills.

If I Had A Rocket Launcher– Bruce Cockburn. I have a LOT of Cockburn on vinyl. Grammarly wants me to change the first word to Suppose.

The Unknown Soldier – the Doors. From the Waiting for the Sun album, the first Doors album I owned.

The War Is Over – Phil Ochs. I didn’t have my first Ochs album until after he died in 1976.

Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution – Living Colour, live at The Ritz. The great Tracy Chapman song. I have this on some compilation CD.

Business Goes On As Usual – Roberta Flack. It’s a great song on her Chapter Two album, written by Fred Hellerman of the Weavers and Fran Minkoff. It was recorded by The Chad Mitchell Trio; John Denver, David Boise & Michael Johnson; and others.

Give Peace A Chance – Louis Armstrong. And why not? (I didn’t pick Mitch Miller, thank your lucky stars.)