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IN DULCI JUBILO

In Dulci Jubilo, as sung by the York Minster Choir (1995), is the theme of this year’s Christmas issue, as per its English literal translation,  ‘In sweet rejoicing/now sing and be glad!’

One night in 1328, the German mystic and Dominican monk Henrich Suso (or Seuse) had a vision in which he joined angels dancing as the angels sang to him Nun singet und seid froh or In Dulci Jubilo. In Suso's biography (or perhaps autobiography), it was written:

Now this same angel came up to the Servant [Suso] brightly, and said that God had sent him down to him, to bring him heavenly joys amid his sufferings; adding that he must cast off all his sorrows from his mind and bear them company, and that he must also dance with them in heavenly fashion. Then they drew the Servant by the hand into the dance, and the youth began a joyous song about the infant Jesus, which runs thus: 'In dulci jubilo', etc.1

In Dulci Jubilo is among the oldest and most famous of the "macaronic" songs, which combine Latin and a vernacular language such as English or German.  Five hundred years later, this carol became the inspiration for the 1853 English paraphrase by John Mason Neale, ‘Good Christian Men, Rejoice’.

 

You know somethin', sweetheart? Christmas is, well, it's about the best time of the whole year. You walk down the streets, even for weeks before Christmas comes, and there's lights hanging up, green ones, and red ones, sometimes there's snow. And everybody's hustling some place. But they don't hustle around Christmas time like they usually do. Y'know, they're a little more friendlier; they bump into you, they laugh and say 'Pardon me' and 'Merry Christmas.' Especially when it gets real close to Christmas night. Everybody's walkin' home, you can hardly hear a sound. Bells are ringin', kids are singin', snow is comin' down. And boy what a pleasure it is to think that you got some place to go to, and the place that you're going to has somebody in it that you really love...someone you're nuts about. Merry Christmas.’

(Ralph Kramden reflecting on the Yuletide, from The Honeymooners' Christmas episode, ‘'Twas The Night Before Christmas,’’ December 24, 1955)

‘Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,’ cried the phantom, ‘not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed! Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness! Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!’

‘But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,’ faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

‘Business!’ cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. ‘Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!’

(Charles Dickens, ‘A Christmas Carol,’ published on December 19, 1843; the above scene is from the 1984 made-for-television adaptation directed by Clive Donner and starring George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge. Frank Finlay has a star turn as Marley’s ghost.)

In Praise of Christmas Songs

CHRISTMAS WITH KIRI TE KANAWA
CAROLS FROM COVENTRY CATHEDRAL
Teldec

When we sing these songs, whether we voice them aloud or whisper them in our hearts, we entwine our souls with the powerful parade of humanity that has walked this planet from the time many of the tunes were first appropriated from the Finnish medieval text, Piae Cantiones, in the 17th Century.

"Coventry Carol" molds tragedy into beauty in the wistfulness of its ancient melody and the maternal shelter its lyrics promise, which indeed are the words of mothers singing their babes to sleep, while awaiting the imminent arrival of Herod's soldiers to carry out the King's cruel decree to slay the town's firstborn males. The 20th Century carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem" is even more stirring in light of it being written by an English cleric whose inspiration for the song came from standing in the field outside Bethlehem in which angels were said to have visited the shepherds tending their flocks by night. "O little one sweet" is built around a captivating chorale harmonization composed by J.S. Bach; "Joy to the World" uses a rich melody composed by Handel; the popular version of "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" sets lyrics by Charles Wesley to a melody by Felix Mendelssohn; and the haunting "In the bleak midwinter" comes courtesy the composer Gustav Holst (best known for "Planets") who transformed Christina Rossetti's lament over the end of a love affair into one of the most reverent and transcendently beautiful expositions of the Christmas story. We are indebted to the enterprising and nameless citizens of the 17th Century who responded to the Calvinists' and Puritans' bans of all non-religious texts by salvaging them through door-to-door caroling; these folks' unquenchable spirit ultimately spurred the writing of carols, including the beloved "We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” customized to fit a new tradition, We are indebted to Queen Victoria's consort Prince Albert, who in the 1840s championed the revival of all Yuletide festivities and traditions, thus inaugurating what is now recognized as the modern Christmas season; concurrently, two English clerics rediscovered the Piae Cantiones, and among the reconfigured tunes that emerged from this find was a cheery tale of charity and redemption on a night when "the frost was cruel." Based on the reign of King Vaclav the Good of Bohemia, the message in the song "Good King Wenceslas" presumes an innate goodness in humankind's collective heart that breaches class distinctions in service to the downtrodden among us.

Dame Kiri, in spectacular voice, cedes the spotlight frequently, allowing baritone Michael George and the choirs of Coventry and Lichfield Cathedrals, accompanied by the keening, triumphant trumpet solos of Jouko Harjanne and the redoubtable BBC Philharmonic conducted by Robin Stapleton, ample room to make powerful statements in their own right. But in the end this disc is not about Dame Kiri or any of her estimable collaborators. It is, in fact, about us, the men and women, girls and boys, who make of this mortal coil a place called home, and what we wish it could be were the better angels of our nature to rule the day. It's Christmas, a time for believing in things you can't see.

Happy Holidays and peace to all. —David McGee

LOUIS ARMSTRONG reads 'THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS'

Recorded on February 26, 1971, in Armstrong’s home, this recording, Pops's last, was distributed as a single by the Lorillard Company. Two weeks after this session he had another heart attack and was in intensive care until May 5, when he insisted on going home. On July 5 he announced he was ready to perform again and requested his band convene for rehearsal. He passed away at 5:30 the next morning, July 6.

AMAZING PEACE--A CHRISTMAS POEM
By Maya Angelou
Read by the poet at the lighting of the National Christmas Tree at the White House on December 1, 2005, Maya Angelou’s celebration of the ‘Glad Season’ is a radiant affirmation of the goodness of life and a beautiful holiday gift for people of all faiths.

FRANK SINATRA: THE YULETIDE REPORT FROM THE CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD
By David McGee
Bing Crosby popularized secular Christmas music, and then some, with his 1942 (later re-recorded in 1947 in the version most often heard today) recording of Irving Berlin’s ‘White Christmas.’ But it was FRANK SINATRA who made an art form of Christmas music, sacred and secular alike. The producers-arrangers-conductors who helped him shape this art, and what he brought to it on his own, are the subjects of this definitive appraisal of the Sinatra Christmas outpourings.

FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO APPALACHIA
TheBluegrassSpecial.com Interview with MARSHA GENENSKY
By David McGee
Now in their 26th year together, the women of ANONYMOUS 4 have made Christmas music from olden times a constant in their distinguished career, most recently in 2010 with The Cherry Tree Carol, their fifth such Christmas-oriented long-player but the first of those five to break out of purely medieval fare and blend in modern songs—although the title tune is ages old, MARSHA GENENSKY (second from left, above) performs it solo on the album in an arrangement dating from Kentucky, 1917. In an abridged version of our December 2010 cover story, Ms. Genensky discusses the process by which she and her colleagues assembled The Cherry Tree Carol and the particular challenges of bringing medieval repertoire to life.

SEASON’S GREETINGS FROM SERENA MATTHEWS
Exclusive to TheBluegrassSpecial.com
Only in this issue will you find a free download of the Christmas EP recorded by the enigmatic singer-songwriter SERENA MATTHEWS, the most famous musical artist to emerge from Byrdstown, Tennessee, since Sierra Hull. These utterly charming vocal and guitar performances are uniquely Serena, and we’re honored she has decided to offer them to our readers. Selections include: “Christmas Eve Last Year,” “Jolly Old St. Nicholas,” “O Christmas Tree," "Away In a Manger," "In the Sweet By and By" and “Silent Night.” Listen, download or both.

IN OUR CHRISTMAS STOCKING: LISA MILLS
Alabama-based, Mississippi-born blues-country-soul-gospel chanteuse LISA MILLS recently sent us a pair of seasonal songs she’s recorded but never released on CD. One is a nice, tender vocal-and-guitar take on “Silent Night,” the other is an original song written by Leslie Brenner and Rick Hirsch, “Red, Green and Blue,” a decidedly blue Christmas meditation that Mills turns into a Christmas torch song, so beautiful but so delectably sad.

CHRISTMAS PICKS 2012

DONNA ULISSE, All the Way to Bethlehem-- From the first brisk, fingerpicked acoustic guitar notes on the album opening hosanna, “I See the Light of the World,” to the near-identical melody and spirit summoned by the fiddle, mandolin and pennywhistle on the closing exaltation, “Morning In Bethlehem,” and the vignettes and music that fall in between these bookends, Donna Ulisse’s song cycle All the Way to Bethlehem is not merely close to perfection, it’s a work of art.

THE EDIE ADAMS CHRISTMAS ALBUM with ERNIE KOVACS— Edie Adams also did a great service for historians in paying a transcription service to record the Ernie Kovacs TV show’s audio so she could review her musical performances with an eye towards improving her presentations on future shows. From these surviving transcriptions, Adams’s son, Josh Mills, has compiled a delightful collection of Yuletide songs his mother sang on the Kovacs show in its early years. Warm, intimate and memorable, this pieced-together Christmas album not only shines a well-deserved spotlight on Adams’s vocal artistry, but its songs and uplifting spirit give it a cozy, homey feel. What better recommendation for a seasonal outing?

THE JAY UNGAR & MOLLY MASON FAMILY BAND, A Fiddler’s Holiday-- A thing of beauty is a joy forever, so it’s said, and what Jay, Molly and their offspring have fashioned here has the timeless feel of deeply personal music that will continue to reveal itself as the years wear on.

HEY ROSETTA, A Cup of Kindness—This is the Newfoundland band’sholiday treat for 2012, a four-song EP not of traditional carols (save “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” which in this band’s hands rises from a deeply interior, subdued opening into a howling, fuzzed out attack, but of striking, original numbers. Not always merry and bright, A Cup of Kindness is always intriguing, thanks to songwriter-lead vocalist-guitarist Tim Baker’s compelling vision.

LOS ROMEROS, Christmas with Los Romeros-- In a world whose centrifugal globalizing powers are stretching the fibers of closely-knit tribal units to breaking point, the final days of December don't just mark a time of stability, but of unity: Having mostly sacrificed its religious meaning in favor of commerce, Christmas, to most, has retained its significance by remaining a family ritual. So it should seem only consequential that Los Romeros should finally record their first Christmas album after half a century at the pole position of the guitar quartet, a genre they have made their own like few others.

DALLAS WIND SYMPHONY, Horns for the Holidays-- If you are a lover of Christmas music—carols, popular songs, and all manner of medleys and clever arrangements of such—and you miss this extraordinary recording by the first-rate Dallas Wind Symphony, then your holiday listening stands to be just a bit more dull, less festive, and more ordinary than it could have been. This is a terrific program, in exemplary sound, that not only celebrates the Christmas music tradition but exemplifies the best of the wind ensemble genre.

HEREFORD CATHEDRAL CHOIR, Christmas from Hereford—A lovely and unusual disc, this cozy, gentle and varied collection of Christmas music from Hereford Cathedral is broken into three sections: Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. The music ranges from the 14th-century Resonemus laudibus, a joyous piece arranged with a fanciful organ part by David Willcocks to offset the rigidity of the medieval melody, to a work by John Tavener (his glorious—and only—brief masterpiece, The Lamb), with stops in between, in each of the three sections, for one of Mendelssohn’s short but imposing Op. 79 motets.

CHRISTMAS THE MOUNTAIN WAY (Various Artists)—A CD/DVD combo from a show earlier this year in Pineville, Kentucky, featuring some of the top names in traditional bluegrass celebrating the true meaning of Christmas in familiar carols and a couple of new tunes written especially for this occasion. DALE ANN BRADLEY, STEVE GULLEY, MARTY RAYBON, COMMON STRINGS, CUMBERLAND RIVER, MIKE SCOTT and DEBBIE GULLEY are among the impressive roster of top-tier bluegrassers who make this an essential Christmas offering from the Rural Rhythm label.

CHRISTMAS IN DEEPEST BLUE HUES—A new collection from Legacy Recordings, Death Might Be Your Santa Claus, anthologizes recordings largely from the ‘20s and ‘30s by blues artists (and preachers) both familiar and obscure, most of whom have a decidedly dyspeptic take on the holiday season—dyspeptic, but captivating all the same. VICTORIA SPIVEY, LONNIE JOHNSON, BO CARTER, THE REV. J.M. GATES, BUTTERBEANS AND SUSIE are a few of the stars of this irresistible entry into the annals of seasonal fare. Two earlier releases from Document Records, Blues, Blues Christmas 1925-1955 and Blues, Blues Christmas 1926-1958, offer several of the same tracks as Death Might Be Your Santa Claus plus a whole lot more, but are altogether more swinging and light hearted than the new kid on the block.

BORDER CROSSINGS

Christmas in Wales
Where Christmas Past Informs Christmas Present
By Karen Mueller
Scotland is an especially rich source of New Year festivity and folklore. In Wales today it's not unusual to find Christmas trees, Christmas cards, and the Welsh equivalent of St. Nicholas, Siôn Corn, heralding the festive season, much the same as elsewhere in Christendom. Yet alongside these relative newcomers remain other symbols of Christmas--or Nadolig, as it is called in Welsh--that recall an earlier age.

THE ORIGIN OF SANTA CLAUS
The modern Santa can best be described as the creative offspring of innumerable artists and cultures, which each put their own spin on a real-life person, St. Nicholas of Myra. Plus: A Bit O’ Tree Trivia.

SUBLIME AND SWINGIN’
By David McGee
VINCE GUARALDI’s score for A Charlie Brown Christmas endures as a masterpiece within a masterpiece. Here’s how it all came to be.

‘DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?’: A CHRISTMAS CLASSIC FOR A NUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON
“Do You Hear What I Hear?”, one of the few Christmas songs written after 1960 to become a true seasonal standard on a par with classics such as “White Christmas,” was the product of an interfaith couple’s mutual concern for the fate of the world during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. That listeners and critics often missed its true intent was an oversight that gnawed at the songwriters.

HOW WENCESLAS BECAME THE GOOD KING
‘Good King Wenceslas’ tells a story of Good King Wenceslas braving harsh winter weather to give alms to a poor peasant on the Feast of Stephen (the second day of Christmas, December 26). During the journey, his page is about to give up the struggle against the cold weather, but is enabled to continue by following the king's footprints, step for step, through the deep snow. The legend is based on the life of the historical Saint Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia (907–935). Writing circa 1119, Cosmas of Prague describes the King’s transformative experience, exactly how he earned his regency and how he became the subject of a beloved Christmas carol written in 1835 by English hymn writer John Mason Neal and his music editor, Thomas Helmore.

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM WALT DISNEY

SIX 20TH CENTURY ANIMATED YULETIDE CLASSICS
Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, Chip ‘n’ Dale, Pluto, Scrooge McDuck--the whole gang and more is here in a quintet of wonderful animated Christmas tales. The feature attractions are: ‘Once Upon a Wintertime’ (1948, with the singing voice of FRANCES LANGFORD); ‘Santa’s Workshop’ (a 1932 Silly Symphony featuring FRANZ SCHUBERT’s ‘March Militaire’ on the soundtrack; ‘The Night Before Christmas,’ the 1933 sequel to ‘Santa’s Workshop’; ‘On Ice’ (1935, featuring Mickey in his early incarnation when he still had a tail; ‘Pluto’s Christmas Tree’--see the woebegone canine mocked by two impish chipmunks; and, from 1931, the black-and-white Mickey’s Orphans, which finds Mickey and Minnie besieged by an enormous litter of bratty orphan cats.

TALES OF TWO CAROLS: 'ANGELS WE HAVE HEARD ON HIGH' and 'IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER'
The history of two beloved Yuletide carols, ‘Angels We Have Heard On High,’ which has its origins in 18th Century France, and ‘In The Bleak Midwinter,’ based on a Christina Rossetti poem written before 1872, published in 1904 and set to Gustva Holst’s ‘Cranham’ in 1906.

 
Corrine May, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’
Singapore-born Corrine May’s 2006 Christmas album, The Gift, featured the song ‘The Answer,’ with lyrics by Ms. May, set to Gustav Holst's ‘Jupiter’ from the composer's ‘The Planets’ suite. Holst’s music has an illustrious history in the realm of Christmas carols, as his ‘Cranham’ is the music accompanying Christina Rossi's poem, ‘In The Bleak Midwinter.’ Ms. May’s performance of ‘In The Bleak Midwinter’ was filmed at Pete's Coffee & Tea in Tarzana, CA.

THE STORY OF ‘SILENT NIGHT’
By Dr. David Nelson
The words for the Christmas carol we know as "Silent Night" were first set down on paper in 1816 in the tiny Alpine village of Mariapfarr, Austria, by Fr. Joseph Mohr. Two years later, music was added by Franz Xaver Guber and the song was performed for the first time in the Alpine village of Oberndorf, Austria, on Christmas Day, 1818. The fame of this composition spread throughout the world and 181 years later, people are still touched by both the simplicity and the strength of its message. In a five-part opus, Dr. David Nelson recounts the fascinating history behind the creation of ‘Silent Night’ and also uncovers Franz Gruber’s personal statement explaining the song’s origins.

RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER: ‘YOU’LL GO DOWN IN HISTORY’—AND HOW
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen… But do you know the real-life tragedy that spurred ROBERT MAY to write a poem for his four-year-old daughter that became a cultural and multimedia phenomenon, especially after his brother-in-law JOHNNY MARKS turned it into a song? Rudolph, with his nose so bright, takes flight.

WHY ‘A CHRISTMAS CAROL’ SINGS
By Michael Bruner
What makes “A Christmas Carol” sing, particularly in America? Two things: the art of storytelling, of which Dickens is a master, and which allows the story to transcend culture; and the particular echoes of the story that ring in American ears, allowing us to reexamine our notions of what it means to be American. The author, an adjunct professor of English and religion at Azusa Pacific University, ponders the larger import and continuing relevance of a Christmas story written 168 years ago.

WHAT CHRISTMAS IS AS WE GROW OLDER
By Charles Dickens
Time was, with most of us, when Christmas Day, encircling all our limited world like a magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound together all our home enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped everything and every one around the Christmas fire; and made the little picture shining in our bright young eyes complete.

And is our life here, at the best, so constituted that, pausing as we advance at such a noticeable milestone in the track as this great birthday, we look back on the things that never were, as naturally and full as gravely as on the things that have been and are gone, or have been and still are? If it be so, and so it seems to be, must we come to the conclusion that life is little better than a dream, and little worth the loves and strivings that we crowd into it?

MARVIN GAYE SINGS A CHRISTMAS SONG
by Forest Hairston
Songwriter FOREST HAIRSTON and his friend Marvin Gaye are credited as co-writers of ‘I Want To Come Home For Christmas,’ a song Gaye recorded in 1972 around the time he was working on his Trouble Man album. The song was supposed to be released as a Tamla single that year, but was withheld and did not see the light of day until 1990’s four-CD box set, The Marvin Gaye Collection. How the song came to be, what Marvin did with it, and its bittersweet aftermath are the focus of Hairston’s warm reminiscence.

YES, VIRGINIA, THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS
In the September 21, 1897 edition of the New York Sun, editor FRANCIS PHARCELLUS CHURCH responded to eight-year-old VIRGINIA O’HANLON’s query ‘Is there a Santa Claus’ with what became the most famous newspaper editorial in American history. Herein the complete Church response plus additional background on the dramatis personae, with illustrations and a video of the elderly Virginia O’Hanlon reading Mr. Church’s response to her query to a group of children.

CHRISTMAS IN THE CIVIL WAR
*OUGHT IT NOT BE A MERRY CHRISTMAS?
For a nation torn by civil war, Christmas in the 1860s was observed with conflicting emotions. Nineteenth-century Americans embraced Christmas with all the Victorian trappings that had moved the holiday from the private and religious realm to a public celebration. Christmas cards were in vogue, carol singing was common in public venues, and greenery festooned communities north and south. Christmas trees stood in places of honor in many homes, and a mirthful poem about the jolly old elf who delivered toys to well-behaved children captivated Americans on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.

But Christmas also made the heartache for lost loved ones more acute. As the Civil War dragged on, deprivation replaced bounteous repasts and familiar faces were missing from the family dinner table. Soldiers used to "bringing in the tree" and caroling in church were instead scavenging for firewood and singing drinking songs around the campfire. And so the holiday celebration most associated with family and home was a contradiction. It was a joyful, sad, religious, boisterous, and subdued event.

A year-by-year chronicle of how the observance of Christmas changed along with the fortunes of the warring armies, evolving before a shot was fired at Fort Sumpter and flowering again following the events of 1865, notably the passage of the 13th Amendment on December 18, which abolished slavery, when ‘soldiers and civilians alike were ready to reunite with their families and again embrace Victorian holiday customs.’ Profusely illustrated with period drawings, most by Thomas Nast, from Harper’s Weekly.

*‘I HEARD THE BELLS ON CHRISTMAS DAY’
‘HOW INEXPRESSIBLY SAD ARE ALL HOLIDAYS’ describes how HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, reeling from the death of his wife by fire and the wounding of his son in the Civil War, composed a poem in which its author's doubt of God's existence is expunged by the message pealing from Yuletide bells. Herewith the true story of the events animating Longfellow's agonizing verses and the text of the complete poem, including two stanzas directly referencing the horrors of the Civil War that were omitted in 1872 when John Baptiste Calkin arranged Longfellow's verses into the seasonal classic expressing the triumph of good over evil in the world, 'I Heard The Bells on Christmas Day.'

A HANNUKAH CELEBRATION!

HOLIDAYS: HISTORY SHARED
By Laura Berman Fortgang
Something that people have been doing and observing for thousands of years at the same time every year connects us across time and barriers. It anchors us to each other and to the spirit of what it means to stop, appreciate, celebrate and for many, worship. An insightful essay by the best selling author, personal coaching pioneer, perennial go-to authority on the top morning and afternoon TV talk shows, and Huffington Post blogger.

CHRISTMAS FICTION

*PAPA PANOV'S SPECIAL DAY
By Leo Tolstoy
Old Papa Panov, the village shoemaker, stepped outside his shop to take one last look around. The sounds of happiness, the bright lights and the faint but delicious smells of Christmas cooking reminded him of past Christmas times when his wife had still been alive and his own children little. Now they had gone. His usually cheerful face, with the little laughter wrinkles behind the round steel spectacles, looked sad now. But he went back indoors with a firm step, put up the shutters and set a pot of coffee to heat on the charcoal stove. Then, with a sigh, he settled in his big armchair.

*THE SNOWDROP
By Hans Christian Andersen
It was winter-time; the air was cold, the wind was sharp, but within the closed doors it was warm and comfortable, and within the closed door lay the flower; it lay in the bulb under the snow-covered earth.

One day rain fell. The drops penetrated through the snowy covering down into the earth, and touched the flower-bulb, and talked of the bright world above. Soon the Sunbeam pierced its way through the snow to the root, and within the root there was a stirring.

"Come in," said the flower.

CHRISTMAS IN VERSE

Seven touching poems about Christmas and not a one of them ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’! Our featured Yuletide poets are: ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON, BEN JONSON, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI, GEORGE WITHER, HENRY VAUGHAN and WALTER SCOTT. Accompanying music by ALFRED DELLER (performing an adaptation of Shakespeare’s ‘Heigh Ho, The Holly’ titled ‘Hey, Ho, The Wind and The Rain’); the CHOIR OF KING’S COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE, ‘In The Bleak Midwinter’; and FRANK SINATRA waxing poetic on ‘An Old-Fashioned Christmas,’ by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen.

THE GOSPEL SET

*'GLORY, GLORY TO THE NEW BORN KING'
Gospel at Christmastime
By Bob Marovich
When did the tradition of gospel artists recording Christmas carols begin? One is inclined to answer that Mahalia Jackson set the standard in 1950 with her Apollo recording of "Silent Night," but the tradition goes back much further, more than two decades before the release of Mahalia's disc. In truth, Christmas recordings by African American sacred artists predate gospel by several years. Our gospel editor Bob Marovich, of the Black Gospel Blog, takes a look at the history of Christmas-oriented gospel music in America.

*In THE TWELVE CLASSIC GOSPEL SONGS OF CHRISTMAS, Bob Marovich selects his favorite dozen Yuletide gospel songs.

CHRISTMAS CLASSICS ON DVD

*‘GOD FORGIVE ME FOR THE TIME I’VE WASTED’
In Clive Donner’s 1984 TV adaptation of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, GEORGE C. SCOTT offers a definitive Ebenezer Scrooge in a production solid from beginning to end, with an evocative score by the brothers Bicat.

*FROM THE INKWELL: AN ANIMATED CHRISTMAS:Reviews of four essential animated Christmas shorts: A Charlie Brown Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, Disney Animation 7: Mickey’s Christmas Carol, The Snowman(above)

CHRISTMAS ESSENTIALS

By David McGee (unless otherwise noted)

CLASSIC BENNETT, CLASSIC CHRISTMAS: The Season Brings Out The Best In Tony
Eighty-six years old as of August 3, and still swinging and crooning with impeccable stylishness and über-coolness, TONY BENNETT is making a run at his buddy Frank Sinatra’s heretofore-unchallenged supremacy in both the quantity and the quality of Christmas recordings in their respective catalogues. This year’s brings a splendid new anthology of the classic crooner’s Yuletide outpourings, The Classic Christmas Album, which we consider along with a seasonal classic of a different name, 1968’s reissued Snowfall.

MICHAEL BUBLÉ, Christmas--Winning takes on familiar fare; a sense of history informing some of the tunes; empathetic duet partners; and thoroughly engaged vocalizing, not perfect but perfect in its intent and evincing in its many moods a sensitivity to seasonal textures: the Canadian crooner’s Christmas was Number One for a reason.

LEROY ANDERSON, JOHN FAHEY: NO WORDS NECESSARY
If you were to select only two all-instrumental albums of holiday music, you could hardly do better than the two disparate titles here: A Leroy Anderson Christmas, and The New Possibility: John Fahey’s Guitar Soli Christmas Album/Christmas With John Fahey, Vol. II. Composer/conductor Leroy Anderson and guitarist John Fahey come at their seasonal musings from quite different perspectives, but both wind up in a place of joyous reverence for the magnificence and timelessness of Christmas carols and hymns.

THE CELTS, Christmas With The Celts--Conceptually taut and flawlessly executed with all hearts on deck, Christmas With the Celts at times stretches the boundaries of seasonal music but never loses sight of seasonal verities. It will endure.

 

IF IT’S CHRISTMAS, IT MUST BE THE SKAGGS FAMILY, TWICE OVER
Seven years after the release of the first Skaggs Family Christmas album, a tasty collection of a dozen sacred and secular carols, the whole clan returned last year with Volume Two of A Skaggs Family Christmas, an impressive triple-gatefold package containing a 10-song CD of studio and live performances plus an accompanying two hour-twenty minute DVD of the entire Skaggs Family Christmas Show, recorded live in Nashville.

THE GATHERING--It has a certain magic about it, this music, in the seeming ease of its instrumental virtuosity coupled to a spirit of friendship and common cause—there is not a moment on The Gathering that doesn’t sound free and impassioned, musicians having a great time playing with each other and giving their hearts to the task at hand. A memorable Christmas moment by way of the gathered artistry of Laurelyn Dossett; the Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Rhiannon Giddens; the John Hartford and Nashville Bluegrass Bands’ Mike Compton; multi-instrumentalist Joe Newberry; and double-bassist Jason Sypher.

CHRISTMAS IN ANTIQUITY, EXQUISITELY RENDERED
As related by THE BALTIMORE CONSORT in Bright Day Star, and ANONYMOUS 4 in Wolcum Yule.

 

MANDY BARNETT, Winter Wonderland--Despite a boatload of critical acclaim over the years, the expected breakthrough commercial smash has eluded Mandy Barnett. It’s unlikely a Christmas album will do what her two studio albums from the ‘90s could not do, but if one could, Winter Wonderland would be it. It is, quite simply, a virtuoso performance of sensitive, nuanced vocalizing, as good as it gets, in service and bringing fresh energy to a clutch of beloved seasonal standards.

RAY CHARLES: The Spirit of Christmas
Brother Ray does Christmas pretty much as you would expect—in his own way, and with some surprises to boot.

 

 

NAT KING COLE: The Christmas Song, Like No Other Christmas Song
Christmas is illegal without Nat King Cole, right? Surely it would violate the laws of this land for a season to pass without the reassuring tones of the man with the smoky grey voice blessing us with a comforting "Merry Christmas...to you," his annual benediction reaffirming warm tidings of home, family and seasonal traditions, unsullied by cynicism, untouched by post-modern angst.

A MERRY CHRISTMAS WITH BING CROSBY & THE ANDREWS SISTERS-- Few male-female vocal pairings of a holiday nature summoned the festive and the reflective spirit of the season alike with more grace and conviction than that of Bing Crosby and Andrews Sisters Patty, LaVerne and Maxene. This 20-track collection contains all six of the wonderful Crosby-Andrews Sisters pairings on record, a couple from 1950, the others from the ‘40s, dating back to 1943’s double-sided gold-certified hit single, “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” b/w “Jingle Bells.”

KATHLEEN BATTLE and CHRISTOPHER PARKENING: Angels’ Glory
To the energy and intellect the marked his playing in his early professional career, Christopher Parkening has over time (notably since returning from a self-imposed retirement in the early ‘80s, during which he became a devout Christian) added restraint as another essential ingredient to his approach. He uses it as effectively as the late film director Stanley Kubrick used silence, making it an identifiable element of his art, a near-sensuous presence as a defining feature of the soundscapes he constructs with strings. It is one of the many compelling aspects of his exceptional pairing with the temperamental lyric soprano Kathleen Battle on the seasonal fare comprising Angels’ Glory.

BING CROSBY and LOUIS ARMSTRONG: a Yule without Der Bingle or Satchmo would be comparable to finding a lump of coal in the stocking on Christmas morn.

 

 

DORIS DAY, Complete Christmas Collection--Wonderful technique is at work in all of Day’s recordings, but what she wrought in her Christmas material is something beyond technique, something abiding in the exalted realm of the heart, where pure feeling produces the peace that passes all understanding. This is beautiful.

BOB DYLAN, Christmas From the Heart
By Billy Altman
I think it's safe to say that, were he so inclined, Bob Dylan would probably be having himself a merry little "Ho ho ho" surveying all the furrowed-brow commentary surrounding the "meaning" of his Christmas In The Heart. The CD finds Dylan delivering disarmingly straightforward renditions of fifteen Yuletide tunes, all of which have been part of our collective consciousness since everyone's childhood. As he's periodically demonstrated throughout his near half-century in the public eye, Dylan is an artist who at his core really does understand and respect the value of tradition.

ELLA FITZGERALD: And A Swinging Christmas To You, Too
Remastered and reissued in 2002, the First Lady of Song's only album-length collection of secular Christmas songs ranks with the finest efforts of her gifted peers, including those of her staunch fan and supporter Frank Sinatra.

ARETHA FRANKLIN: Making Believers Of Us All
Whether live or in the studio on Joy To The World, Aretha Franklin is never far from the gospel highway--the church infuses everything she does here. So mark this one a seasonal keeper, by the sheer force of Aretha's unassailable artistry and bountiful spirit. She'll make a believer of you, in many ways.

MERLE HAGGARD: Making a Stand for Things That Matter
The world of 1973 wasn't in nearly as bad a shape as it is now when Hag penned his devastating chronicle of a family on the edge of financial collapse, "If We Make It Through December," but if ever a sentiment was appropriate for December 2011, with unemployment seeming intractable, and the economy at home and even more so abroad still staggering, it is this. The song was chilling enough back then, but now it seems eerily, unfortunately prescient—Hag saw it all coming.

JACKSON 5: ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS COLLECTION—The original Jackson 5 Christmas Album, though less introspective and minus the spirituality of Yuletide long players by labelmates Smokey Robinson & the Miracles and Stevie Wonder, is a classic Christmas album nonetheless simply for doing what the Jacksons were doing so well back then—speaking to their audience with a lot of heart and abundant, infectious energy. The original 11-song LP is remembered for its high spirits and hard charging performances; the Ultimate version of the J5 Christmas album is fleshed out with spoken Season’s Greetings from four of the five brothers (including Michael), and six other musical tracks. The original album, though, remastered and reissued on CD in 1993, will do just fine for those on a budget or preferring an undiluted Jackson 5 holiday bonanza.

ALAN JACKSON: Right At Home For Christmas
Two very different approaches to Christmas music are defined in Alan Jackson's Yuletide long players. Honky Tonk Christmas, released in 1993, came near the beginning of Jackson's hit-filled career, and it emphasizes his reverence not only for the season but for the style of country music he prefers and has made his trademark when other artists of his generation and younger are recycling '80s arena rock riffs. Let It Be Christmas, from 2002, is from an artist at the top of his game, assured enough to broaden out his basic band with orchestra, strings and a large background chorus, adopting a soft, dreamy pop ambience in stark contrast to the stripped down approach of its holiday predecessor.

A SOUL EVER MORE GRATEFUL FOR WHAT IT KNOWS OF LOVE
The interesting fact about B.B. KING's first Christmas album is how the sum of the parts adds up to something greater than what went down in Maurice, Louisiana's Dockside Studios in June 2001. Taken individually, the performances on the album are warm and ingratiating enough, appropriate to the season, some treated in a lighthearted manner, a couple of blues getting down into the depths of feeling; but when it's all over, a spell lingers. There's something special about the imprint B.B. puts on these songs--the conviction in his voice, the personality he projects throughout, Lucille's sunny tone—and when that's coupled to his road band's high spirited accompaniment the end result is a model Yuletide blues album that sneaks up on a listener.

SUFFUSED WITH BEAUTY
NANCY LAMOTT and beauty were on intimate terms. It radiated from her warm personality, resonated in her tender vocals, and suffused the recordings she made before succumbing to cancer in 1995 at age 43. Disc jockey Jonathan Schwartz declared Lamott the finest cabaret singer since the Chairman of the Board, praise well earned by Lamott and thoughtfully dispensed by Schwartz. Like Sinatra, Lamott sought out literate songs with a folksy quality--the settings may have been urbane, but the feelings were universal. The Great American Songbook has rarely had so effective an advocate as Nancy Lamott. Her lone Christmas album, Just In Time for Christmas, is a crash course in all that was remarkable about this gifted artist.

GOOD TIDINGS FROM LITTLE MISS DYNAMITE: Brenda Lee Makes Christmas Memorable
From “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” to “Papa Noel” to “Christmas Time Is Near,” the 18 tracks comprising The Best of Brenda Lee: The Christmas Collection, so unassuming in its design, assay a wide range of feelings, and illustrates anew the great synergy between producer Owen Bradley and artist BRENDA LEE. All those enduring pop and country hits were no accident, and the performances herein, though less well known, are standing the test of time quite well, too, thank you.

OF SOUL, AS AN AFFIRMATION OF OUR COMMON HUMANITY: THE ULTIMATE MOTOWN CHRISTMAS COLLECTION—The best reason to buy all the classic ‘60s Christmas albums from legendary Motown artists such as the Supremes, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, and the Temptations, among others, is because those albums are so good in and of themselves. However, the two-CD, 51-track The Ultimate Motown Christmas Collection is pretty great on its own, too, in that it serves up some of the finest performances from Motown greats along with some worthy installments by good artists who followed the label’s Golden Era. Make no mistake, though—the big names carry this double-disc set, and they alone elevate it to the rank of Yuletide essentials.

MICHAEL MARTIN MURPHEY, Acoustic Christmas Carols: Cowboy Christmas II--What can you say? At every step Murph makes all the right moves and delivers a Christmas message in a style all his own, as intimate in its concept and execution as it is expansive in its larger meaning. This is a big-time album, in a quiet way.

MARK O’CONNOR, An Appalachian Christmas—Comprised largely of superb, previously released performances, An Appalachian Christmas is, says O’Connor, in “the spirit” of the mountain region he sometimes calls home. Purists may indeed agree with an Amazon reviewer who can’t spell Appalachia but decries this as being Appalachian in stock cover photo only; but even taking such objections into account, what’s right here is the spirit invested by some of today’s finest musical artists in lending virtuosity, heart and soul to these proceedings. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

THEN, NOW, ALWAYS PATTI PAGE
Considering a consummate stylist’s two fine Christmas albums, released almost fifty years apart, 1955’s Christmas With Patti Page and 2002’s Sweet Sounds of Christmas, on which she reduces age to irrelevance.

 

THE PERSUASIONS: IN ALL WEATHERS, GLAD TIDINGS
Given how fundamental the church has been to just about everything the Persuasions have sung in their long career, it’s rather amazing that it took this incomparable a cappella quintet until 1997 to get around to a Christmas album. What’s important, though, is that they did get around to it, because it’s everything you would expect of a Persuasions Christmas album and more.

ELVIS PRESLEY: The King Keeps Christmas Well
Despite reports of Elvis's blasé attitude going into those 1957 and 1971 sessions, however, a listener would be hard pressed to hear anything on the finished products but warm, committed vocalizing on the traditional carols and spirituals and feisty, carefree spirit on the rock 'n' roll and blues numbers.

‘ZAT YOU, SANTA CLAUS?
Brian Setzer puts his cat clothes on and rocks the Yule, again
Christmas 2009 brings another Brian Setzer Orchestra Yuletide blast in Ultimate Christmas Collection, a compilation boasting some of the swingin’est tunes from his two holiday long players in a collection further sweetened by a DVD, Christmas Extravaganza, featuring no less than 25 songs from a near-two-hour performance.

SOLACE AND LAUGHTER IN A VALLEY OF TEARS
Originally released at the end of a tumultuous 1968, Atlantic's SOUL CHRISTMAS collection, featuring southern soul greats such as Otis Redding, William Bell, Carla Thomas, Clarence Carter, Booker T. & the MG's, and others, came along with a message of love, conciliation and reconciliation, delivered with conviction, warmth, inclusiveness and a dollop of humor. It was recorded by black and white musicians in studios in New York and Nashville, but mostly in Memphis, not far from the Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. King lost his life. Soul Christmas abounded in hope without ignoring reality, offered solace and laughter in a valley of tears. It still does; you just have to work a little harder to get there.

THE MYTHIC WEIGHT OF PHIL SPECTOR'S CHRISTMAS GIFT
By Billy Altman
Few holiday albums carry the mythic weight of 1963's A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector, wherein Spector sought to put his personal stamp on Christmas music by "treating" a batch of well-worn Yuletide classics to his signature "Wall of Sound" production style. Here's what happened next, when tragic history intruded on the young producer-titan's dream project.

JO STAFFORD: Season’s Greetings Of A Singular Nature
Assessing the essential holiday recordings by one of the greatest of all American pop singers. Quoth Lester Young: ‘I hear her voice and the sound and the way and the way she puts things on. Enough said.’

CENTURIES OF SENTIMENT AND CELEBRATION
By Christopher Hill
STING, If On A Winter’s Night; SUSAN MCKEOWN & LINDSEY HOMER, Through the Bitter Frost and Snow
Every once in a while, an artist happens down the Christmas trail through whose senses we can feel the season freshly; combine that with centuries of festive associations, and you can really have something.

WINTERBLOOM, Traditions Rearranged—It’s unclear at this point exactly how down with Father Christmas the four impressive gals of Winterbloom really are, but they sure have made their holiday EP a memorable event, acerbic and reverent all at once.

 

TRISHA YEARWOOD, The Sweetest Gift--For her first holiday album, one of country's great singers eschewed the safety of seasonal favorites for a 50-50 mix, with half of the songs being newly penned by contemporary songwriters. Despite being no stranger to huge, soaring ballads, Yearwood here opts mostly for a low-key approach, and by and large keeps it country; in the end the sweetest gift is quietude.

(from our archives, other recommended recent and vintage Christmas music)

DEANA CARTER, Father Christmas

CHERISH THE LADIES, A Star in the East

A CHRISTMAS CELTIC SOJOURN LIVE

JOHN COWAN, Comfort &Joy

CHARLIE DANIELS, A Merry Christmas To All

ENYA, And Winter Came

ETTA JAMES, 12 Songs of Christmas

TOBY KEITH, A Classic Christmas, Vols. One and Two

PATTY LOVELESS, Bluegrass & White Snow

DEAN MARTIN, Christmas With Dino

KATHY MATTEA, Joy For Christmas Day

REBA MCENTIRE, The Best Of Reba: The Christmas Collection

JANE MONHEIT, The Season

NEW GRANGE, Christmas Heritage

JOE NICHOLS, A Traditional Christmas

BRAD PAISLEY, A Brad Paisley Christmas

SHEDAISY, Brand New Year

MINDY SMITH, My Holiday

JAMES TAYLOR, At Christmas

PAM TILLIS, Just In Time For Christmas

CHRISTMAS COOKIES (Various Artists)

O CHRISTMAS TREE: A BLUEGRASS COLLECTION FOR THE HOLIDAYS (Various Artists)

SHIMMY DOWN THE CHIMNEY: A COUNTRY CHRISTMAS (Various Artists)

WONDERLAND: COOL DECEMBER (Various Artists)

WONDERLAND: UNDER THE MISTLETOE (Various Artists)

WONDERLAND: YULESVILLE (Various Artists)

THE VENTURES, The Ventures’ Christmas Album

WYNONNA, A Classic Christmas

VIDEO FILE

CHRISTMAS WITH JOHNNY CASH
The Christmas episode of The Johnny Cash Show, originally aired December 23, 1970. Guests include the Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, Ike Everly, Mother Maybelle Carter, Vince Matthews joining hosts JOHNNY CASH and JUNE CARTER CASH.