365 photo Project - Day 214 (From the Archives)

Taken: October 7, 2007
Location: Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, Ca.

Another image from the archives -- this one of the great Emmylou Harris that I shot at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2007, which if you haven't gone is worth checking out at least once (though be wary while it's free, it's really crowded). This year, in fact, is its 10th anniversary.  It's coming up the first week in October. I've always loved the clarity and color of this image. Knowing what I know about photo editing now, I might have cropped this one but I decided to leave it as I original edited it.

Christmas Music -- The Trimmings

Now that I've posted about my favorite sentimental classic Christmas music, I'm going to offer up some trimmings -- that is a few songs and cuts from my embarrassingly vast Christmas music collection. I chose to continue the traditional route -- next year I'll offer up some of the more wild and rare stuff. This year, I'm feeling especially sappy.

Fourth on my list of my favorite classic holiday songs is I'll Be Home for Christmas written by by Walter Kent and James "Kim" Gannon, and first recorded by Bing Crosby the year after he made White Christmas a big hit. It's a great song for a Christmas music sap like myself because like the others I dig, it counters the joy of the holiday season with a tinge of sadness. It's told from the point of view of someone who isn't spending Christmas with his loved ones, but will "in his dreams.'' Told you I'm a sap.

Like the others, it has been recorded numerous times by a fairly broad range of performers. My favorite is probably Rosemary Clooney's version, which is streaming here. No matter what anybody says, you don't get more classic than this. And like I've said in previous posts, I think she's among our greatest interpreters of Christmas music and this song is no exception. There are a few others I dig as well. And since this is the trimmings, I've stocked up the old Vox stash with a whole host of songs today. Here's a few choice cuts as we say goodbye to Christmas 2008.

Tony Bennett has recorded Christmas songs at various times in his long career. I mentioned my favorite of his -- White Christmas with Dexter Gordon -- in a previous post. But he made a record in the late 60s that I like a lot. Click on the song title to listen to his version of The Christmas Song and Winter Wonderland.

I had to drop ol' Blue Eyes on you, even though I'm not a huge fan of his versions of Christmas songs. Still, it's Frank Sinatra and his version of White Christmas was pretty popular in its day.

Speaking of White Christmas, here's a version you may not have heard -- that amazing voice should sound familiar -- it's opera star Placido Domnigo and it's beautifully arranged. Perfect for waltzing around the Christmas tree, I mean if that's something you do.

Here's a couple of soulful versions of The Christmas Song, one that works a lot better than the other. First is from Al Green who really does a nice job on it, even including the original lyrics. The second is James Brown who in this blogger's humble opinion, should've stuck to his comfort zone. The arrangement is god awful. Still you can't help but be happy he gave it a go.

I'm not a huge fan of Dean Martin's work but I am a big fan of some of his songs. His laid back, tipsy approach sometimes works unbelievably well -- and seems, to me anyway, perfectly suited to classic Christmas tunes. Here's two of his: I'll Be Home for Christmas and my all-time favorite Dean Martin Christmas song: Winter Wonderland. He totally makes it his own. Some serious rat pack swing cool here -- really, what is Christmas without Dino?

I'm not always up for a Christmas downer and when I need some pick-me-up, I put on Ella Fitzgerald's Christmas CDs. Here's her peppy version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas -- try not snapping your fingers and tapping your toes to it. I swear when you play it back-to-back with Judy Garland's or Etta James' version, it almost sounds like a whole new song. Gotta love Ella.

Chris Isaak is one of the more palatable of recent pop stars doing Christmas songs. I like his surfer vibe on Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

And speaking of recent, here's a couple of modern Christmas songs I like. Joni Mitchell's The River, done here by James Taylor and Richard Thompson's Happy Days & Auld Lang Syne.

Happy Holidays y'all!

A Sap's Guide to Christmas Music Part 3

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire
Jack Frost nipping at your nose

Yuletide carols being sung by a choir

And folks dressed up like Eskimos

And so begins the immortal holiday classic, The Christmas Song. Written by Mel Tormé (born Mel Torma in Chicago to Russian Jewish parents) and Bob Wells, it was first recorded by Nat King Cole.

There is a cool story behind the writing of this song which I was lucky enough to hear straight from Tormé's mouth back in the late 1980s. He was in town for a week-long appearance at a now defunct jazz club that was practically across the street from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The story goes that on a blistering hot day in Beverly Hills, Ca., Tormé dropped in on his buddy, the lyricist Bill Wells. It seems Wells was having trouble with the heat and on top of his piano he had written some phrases in a spiral notebook that all had to do with the cold and winter. Stuff like “Chestnuts roasting on a fire,” and “Jack Frost” and Eskimos and snowmen and such.

Wells hadn’t intended them to be lyrics; just his own way of trying to cool himself down (which most any writer would totally appreciate). Tormé saw the notebook and told his friend he was onto something and so the two of them went to work. Some 40 minutes later, they had The Christmas song or as it's also commonly called Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.

When Tormé told me the story, he added a second part on how Nat King Cole became the first person to record it. According to Tormé, he and Wells decided they had to hear someone sing the song that very moment and so they thought of Cole who lived nearby. They went over to his house and talked him into playing the song – Cole immediately loved it and got his label to let him record it.

It’s no secret that back in those days, the very best songs were almost always offered to other singers first – that is other white singers to be precise. As great a talent as Cole was, he was rarely offered first-rate songs first. However, this was one of the rare moments when he got first dibs on a really great song – and he did what any great singer does and made it his own.

Of course, I have to include one of Cole's versions in my Vox stash for today, Christmas Day. And here it is – I believe this is the third recording he made of it with Nelson Riddle’s orchestra.

Also, here's a youtube clip of Cole singing it in person. Gosh, I love youtube.

Tormé, who had his own successful singing career (he was called "The Velvet Fog"), eventually recorded the song himself in the mid-50s. It’s slightly less cheerful than Cole’s but I find I like them both. So you can check them out, I’m going traditional on y’all and including Tormé’s version too.

Incidentally, Tormé was quite the renaissance man and from all accounts a man of talent and immense intelligence. He not only was a successful songwriter (with something around 250 songs to his credit including many standards) but a talented multi-instrument musician, singer and actor (in his youth, he had a brief stint as a teen idol). His non-fiction account of his work with Judy Garland is considered one of the best books of its kind, a precurser of the so-called "tell-all" books, though his was critically praised for its seriousness. He also wrote a book about drummer Buddy Rich and a novel called Wynner in 1979.

A Sap's Guide to Christmas Music Part 2

Today's song is White Christmas.

It was written by Irving Berlin (yep, another Jew) and was first recorded by the silky smooth Bing Crosby in 1942 although that Decca recording's master was damaged and Crosby recorded another version in 1947. That one is said to be the most successful selling song of all-time until it was usurped by Elton John's Candle in the Wind although it may (already have retaken the lead since then). Yeah, I know: crazy. No single piece of popular music is more associated with modern Christmas and believe it or not, it's the most recorded song in history. Wow, right?

It first appeared in 1942's Holiday Inn and later in the movie White Christmas in 1954. NPR ranked White Christmas, the song, as one of the 100 most important songs of the 20th Century. There is even an entire book written about it, reviewed here in the New York Times back in 2002.

According to legend, when Berlin finished the song, he reportedly said, "Not only is it the best song I ever wrote, it's the best song anybody ever wrote.'' It's hard to argue with him. A beautifully constructed melody with a wonderful lyric. Seriously, who does not dream of snow on Christmas?

Since Crosby debuted the song, it's been recorded by a remarkably wide range of performers, from the usual suspects (Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams and Tony Bennett) to a strange mix of folks, Beach Boys, Al Green, Bob Marley and even Charlie Parker.

It was hard to narrow it down to just two versions of it, but I'll save the couple that didn't make the list for my post-Christmas day Christmas music blog.

I've posted two of my most favorite versions on my Vox stash. The first is in my view by Rosemary Clooney, who was actually in the film White Christmas. All due respect to Bing Crosby, Clooney's is the traditional version I most prefer. In fact, if I was forced to hear only one artist sing Christmas songs, I'd pick Clooney. With a few over-produced exceptions, she always seems to perfectly walk the line between sentimentality and melancholia, owning the song as much as inviting you to sing along with her.

She recorded many versions of the song (and I happen to have most of them) but my favorite are the ones she did later in her career. They were much more sparse and relied on her voice and phrasing as opposed to overwrought orchestrations. This one is one she recorded in the late 90s and again in the last few years before she died. I actually saw her sing the song in person -- she did it live on a sound stage for a TV show I worked for back in the late 1990s.

I know I said two, but just for fun, here's another version by Clooney that includes the rare first verse about Beverly Hills L.A. It's a very smaltzy orchestration -- not my favorite -- but you can get an idea of how good she was -- her voice easily cuts through the sugary sweetness.

Finally, this one pretty much speaks for itself, a soulfully jazzy version by Tony Bennett with a mournful yet sweet sax backup by Dexter Gordon, in what I believe is one of his final recordings. Bennett does what he does best -- relegate his ego to the song and then lets Dexter roll on out of there with his horn. One of the best arrangements of the song ever and believe it or not, you won't even find it on a Christmas record but on Bennett's tribute album to Irving Berlin's music called Bennett Berlin.

Tomorrow: The Christmas Song.

A Sap's Guide to Christmas Music Part I

Winter in Wine Country
I admit it.
I love Christmas music. It's true.
And I don't even celebrate Christmas.
But not just any Christmas music. Oh, I love the classical stuff -- give me Bach or Handel almost any day -- but the stuff I dig is the true Christmas classics. I'm talking "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire," shit. Gimme that groove any day of the year.
I blame it on my youth when, home sick from school, I would spend hours going through my parents' record collection. It was in those stacks where I discovered Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday, Oscar Levant, Dinah Washington and Judy Garland, Bobby Short, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme Tony Bennett and then a whole host of 1950s folk singers, from Leadbelly to Pete Seeger.
Those days taught me to love all kinds of music, but at heart I'm a big ol' dyed-in-the-jukebox sap and so the one happy place where I return is to American popular standards. I used to know all the words to the songbooks of Gershwin and Rogers & Hart, Berlin and Hoagy Carmichael, to the great songs sung by the great popular singers of our time.
I've tried to see as many of them as possible; among the performers I've seen live are Tony Bennett, Mel Torme, Sarah Vaugan, Etta James and Bobby Short. When I was a journalist, I interviewed both Bennett and Bobby Short, two of the nicest guys you'll ever meet.
For my money, some of the best American standards ever are Christmas songs. Three in particular are my personal favorites: White Christmas, The Christmas Song and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. They are more than just holiday tunes, but incredibly strong songs that have stood the test of time and thousands of interpretations from artists as different as Placido Domingo and James Brown.
Over the years, I've collected as many different versions of these songs as I could find and my collection numbers in the hundreds. I would say that the vast majority of them are awful, in particular most of the recent interpretations by pop singers.
Over the next week, I'd like to share some of my favorite renditions of these songs and a few other Christmas songs of note.
I'm going to start with Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, which was introduced by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis. The song was written by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane. Funny but true fact: this is the one song of the three I've listed here that wasn't written by a Jewish songwriter.
It is a lovely song and despite being a holiday standard, is also a very sad one. It is a big reason why I love it so much. Many interpretations of it are bright and airy but Garland's original stings with a deep longing melancholia that marks a number of other well-known versions.
I'm posting two of my favorites in my Vox stash that really hit the sentimental note hard. The first is the aforementioned version by Judy Garland from the Original Cast Album of Meet Me in St. Louis and the second by Etta James, whose sadly soulful take is perfect for a song about being far away from your loved ones for the holidays.
Tomorrow: White Christmas.