Okay, so here's the problem with this one: I am somehow missing the liner notes for songs 1 through 11 for CiD04. I don't know where they are, and I don't remember what I wrote way back four years ago, as I write this now in the year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Eight. But here, at least, is a list of the first few songs, to be followed by the liner notes proper:
1. "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," The Crystals
2. "Jingle Bells," The Joe Loco Quintet
3. "O, Christmas Tree," Brave Combo
4. "The Little Drummer Boy," Johnny Cash
5. "El Cha Cha de Navidad," Celia Cruz
6. "Donde Esta Santa Claus," Augie Rios
7. "White Christmas," Ernest Tubb and His Texas Troubadours
8. "Christmas Island," Bob Atcher and the Dinning Sisters
9. "Winter Wonderland," Arthur Lyman
10. "Baby, It's Cold Outside," Ray Charles and Betty Carter
11. "Sleigh Ride," Soulful Strings
12. Christmas Wrapping – The Waitresses
For the last few years, around CiD time, I’ve been aware of what Thoreau would call a “still, small voice,” asking: “Is this compilation really all it could be? Have you overlooked anything that might perfectly sum up the Christmas spirit as you and your friends might see it?” That voice belonged to Karen Doyle Martin of Charlotte, NC, who since 2000 has been bugging me to include this song. I had many reasons for not doing so. Well, actually, I had two reasons for not doing so: it’s pretty long, and it’s already on the radio a lot. This year I decided that I really like the song anyway, so screw it. The Waitresses deserve more attention, anyway. You may have also heard their ‘80s hit “I Know What Boys Like” or their theme song to the cult classic* TV show “Square Pegs.” Plus, once at a bowling alley I won a trivia contest by knowing the name of this song and the artist. So, there you go. 2004: the year Jerry caved and put “Christmas Wrapping” on the CD. If you dig it, thank Karen. If you don’t dig it, leave Karen alone. She means you no harm.
13. Good Morning Blues – Ella Fitzgerald
When you’re a student of Christmas music, you come to understand one unpleasant truth: Many artists use a Christmas album as a license to just phone in their performance. Case in point: the Beach Boys. Their Christmas songs are just awful. I’m sorry, but they are. I mean, “Little Saint Nick”? Sucks. Sucks. The melody is uninspired, the music is flaccid, and the Boys sound half-asleep. This may have been the song that drove Brian Wilson crazy. Such laziness does not afflict Ella Fitzgerald nor the Frank DeVol Orchestra. They came to play, and play they do. I have no idea why the song is called “Good Morning Blues,” since morning isn’t really mentioned in the lyrics, but the song is co-written by Count Basie, who can do pretty much whatever he wants as far as I’m concerned. Frank DeVol, by the way, is partially responsible for the “Brady Bunch” theme song, but he was also on “Fernwood 2-Nite” — so, what the hell, let’s call it even.
14. Carolina Christmas – Squirrel Nut Zippers
My family’s been in North Carolina for generations, and we’ve never spent Christmas “chillin’ in our underwear.” Maybe you’re family’s different, I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to know, quite frankly. Get that stocking out of your mouth!
15. Jingle Bell Rock — The Del Rubio Triplets
“Three gals, three guitars, one birthday” was their motto. Milly, Elena and Eadie (their real last name is Boyd) were a lounge act in the ‘50s and kitsch icons in the ‘80s and ‘90s, with their trademark go-go boots and platinum bouffant hairdos. You may have seen them on the “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special.” (I’ve actually never seen it myself. It’s on DVD now; if you’re going to watch it, give me a call and I’ll come over.) They were 70 when they recorded this in 1992. Sadly, two of the gals are no longer with us; Eadie died in 1996, Elena in 2001. Lot of dead people on this disc, I know, but don’t be sad. They wouldn’t want us to be sad.
16. Christmas Treat, Peppermint – The Sisterhood
Okay, you may like peppermint. But do you like peppermint enough to write a poem about it? More to the point, would you send that poem, along with a check, to an address you found in the back of a tabloid paper, for a bunch of underpaid hack studio musicians to hastily put music to and record sloppily in one take? Somebody did, and although his or her name is lost to history, his or her love of peppermint is now lovingly preserved in 1’s and 0’s for us and future generations to enjoy, at least until the machines revolt and the robots enslave us all. (When is that supposed to happen, anyway?) Wherever this peppermint-loving lyricist is, I hope he or she is enjoying his or her new fame as an object of ironic adulation by too-clever-for-their-own-good urban indie hipsters, as well as wannabe urban indie hipsters like myself.
17. Santa’s Laughing Song – Santa Claus and His Helpers
An animist fable, in which the macabre laughter of Saint Nicholas compels inanimate objects — a teddy bear, a piano — to rise, golem-like, and roam the floors of the midnight-darkened house, laughing in a grotesque parody of nature that no loving God ever intended. Not even the children of the house are safe, drawn into this nightmare by Santa, their supposed patron saint and protector. Note, however, that after “Christmas Treat, Peppermint,” these lyrics sound like freakin’ Gilbert and Sullivan. The already-wide field of contenders for “most annoying CiD song” just got a little wider. Joseph Spence, watch your back!
18. Winter Wonderland – Harry Connick, Jr.
I wrestled with the Harry Connick, Jr. issue, I don’t mind telling you. To my way of thinking, he’s dangerously close to Kenny G. or Michael Bolton territory — junk-food MOR crap passing as (and simultaneously slowly destroying) art. What redeems him is his obvious love for the music he’s ripping off. That, and the fact that he’s an outstanding stride pianist. As with “Christmas Wrapping” (see 12, above), my liking the song trumped all of my philosophical botherations. This is as close as we’re likely to get to Professor Longhair doing a Christmas song. And that, to paraphrase Cookie Monster, is good enough for me.
19. Swingle Jingle – Lionel Hampton
It’s hard, I imagine, to make “Jingle Bells” interesting musically. It’s a pretty monotonous, repetitive melody. Not much happens, really, in the song. Plus, everybody in the world already knows it by heart. (I have a theory — not very well thought-out and most likely wrong — that “Jingle Bells” is the ur-carol from which all other Christmas songs derive, stored in our collective memory as humans and perhaps programmed somehow into our genetic fabric. Which may account for why pieces of it pop up in so many other Christmas songs, in the intro or the denouement or just cropping up as a few bars amidst the musical background. Those few notes — “dee-dee-deee, dee-dee-deee, dee-DEE-dee-dee-deeeeee” — are like a shorthand way of announcing “This is a Christmas song, by the way.” Also, if you ask somebody to name the first Christmas carol he can think of, I’ll bet he’ll say “Jingle Bells.” It’s not just a Christmas song — in many ways, it’s the Christmas song, or at least it’s our idea of "the Christmas song.") So, anyway, it’s hard to make “Jingle Bells” interesting musically. And it’s debatable, I suppose, whether Lionel Hampton succeeds here. You know, you don’t have to listen with rapt attention to all of these songs. It’s okay to treat them as musical background. Get up, stretch your legs, grab a Fresca, greet your loved ones.
20. It Came Upon the Midnight Clear – Fisher
It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes I hear something so skull-meltingly beautiful I have to stop everything I’m doing and listen. And listen, and listen, again and again, trying to get my head around the whole of it. That happened when I heard this song. It’s something about the alto voice combined with the subtle string arrangement, but it’s definitely more than the sum of its parts, as with all transcendent art. I can’t even do it justice by writing about it. Just listen to it. Why are you even still reading this?
21. Auld Lang Syne – The Roy Kral-Jackie Cain Sextet
This is the first recording of “Auld Lang Syne” I’ve heard that honors its Scottish parentage, with that little highland-jig figure in the first few bars. As we all surely know, the lyrics are taken from a poem by Robert Burns (1759-96), the national bard of Scotland (although its authorship is sometimes disputed — ballads of previous centuries have similar lyrics — the poem is almost certainly of Scottish origin). Robert Burns also wrote a poem about a haggis.** It would be a very different world if we sang about haggis on New Years’ Eve.
22. Silent Night — Slim Whitman
The voice made famous for making the Martians’ heads explode in “Mars Attacks” wraps itself around this beloved sacred hymn, and the results are pretty much what you’d expect. Still, there’s something about this song that is well-served by a bizarre falsetto like Slim’s.
23. Hark, the Herald Angels Sing — The Peanuts Gang
The reason I always put this at the end of each CD should be fairly obvious, but here it is, anyway: this is what the gang sang at the end of the Peanuts Christmas special, as the credits rolled. Thus, it is a suitable coda to anything Christmas-related, at least for us television-raised, sensation-addled products of the ‘70s and ‘80s. God bless us, every one!
24. Bonus Track: Charlie Brown Cut-Up – Colossus
And what better way to honor our traditional holiday coda than by totally screwing around with it? The record label behind this song says they have “tirelessly built a strong foundation and reputation based on the idea of 'future music.'” Whatever you say, young fella! But I’ll take a megaphone crooner and my old wax cylinders any day.
Okay! That’s it! Hope you like it! Drop me a line sometime, won’t you?
* “Cult classic” in this case meaning “never watched by anyone.”
** You probably don’t really want to know.***
*** Oh, all right. It’s the lungs, heart and liver of a sheep, combined with ingredients like suet and nutmeg, and cooked inside the sheep’s stomach. Happy? I didn’t think so.
