(via Shutterstock)
I love music with unreserved devotion but especially at Christmas, and of course, given the timing of the post, Christmas in July which in Australia offers up the chilly accompaniment to the season that December manifestly does not.
There’s something about the warmth and cosiness of the characteristically retro sound of the season that makes you feel like all those magically ideas about the most wonderful time of the year might actually be true.
Of course, what we now christen retro, was simply the contemporary sounds of the season, and so it seems fitting ro feature five Christmas songs from five of the great artists of the era, all of whom made a significant contribution to the sound and feel of the season.
“Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” by Dean Martin
(courtesy YouTube)
An American singer, actor and comedian, Dean Martin was christened the “King of Cool” as he entertained the world on his way to becoming “one of the most popular entertainers of the mid-20th-century.
Gaining his big breakthrough with fellow comedian Jerry Lewis is 1946 (which lasted until an acrimonious split in 1956), Martin, born Dino Paul Crocetti, sold some 12 million records in the United States, and 50 million worldwide, including A Winter Romance.
One of two Christmas albums alongside 1966’s The Dean Martin Christmas Album, A Winter Romance featured a mix of general seasonal and festive tracks including “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” (which also appeared on the 1966 Reprise Records release), written by lyricist Sammy Cahn and composer Jule Styne and more commonly simply as “Let it Snow”.
The song first made an appearance, after being written rather ironically in the sunny climes of California in July 1945, as a single by Vaughn Monroe for whom it was a hit in Christmas of the year it was written.
Interestingly, as Wikipedia notes, the song doesn’t actually mention Christmas but “come to be regarded as a Christmas song worldwide due to its winter theme, and is often played on radio stations during the Christmas and holiday season”.
“Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by Ella Fitzgerald
(courtesy Verve Records)
Variously referred to as “First Lady of Song”, “Queen of Jazz”, and “Lady Ella”, Ella Jane Fitzgerald endured a troubled adolescence to emerge as a toweringly successful singer who worked with the likes of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and the Ink Spots.
Particularly known for her recordings on Verve Records where she was managed by Norman Granz, Fitzgerald’s evocative renditions of the mainstays of the Great American Songbook came alive thanks to, notes Wikipedia, “her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, absolute pitch, and a ‘horn-like’ improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.”
Her foray into festive music came with 1960’s Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas which featured wholly secular seasonal songs – her 1967 album, Ella Fitzgerald’s Christmas, by way of contrast, had a wholly religious tracklist – among them, “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”, which was an instant hit on its release in 1934.
Written by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie, the song was first recorded by Harry Reser and His Orchestra but it really came to public attention when Eddie Cantor covered it on radio show in November 1934, spurring sales of 500,000 copies of the sheet music and more than 30,000 recordings.
“The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas To You)” by Nat King Cole
(courtesy Spotify)
Born Nathaniel Adam Coles in Montgomery, Alabama, Nat King Cole, also billed as Nat “King” Cole, was a jazz and pop vocalist who found fame as an American singer and jazz pianist (he was also an actor) for some three decades after starting his career in the late 1930s with the King Cole Trio.
His work with the Trio became the model for the small jazz ensembles that later emerged, with the high popular group the only Black act on Capitl Records in the 1940s.
Known for a slew of highly memorable songs, Cole releases his festive album The Magic of Christmas aka The Christmas Song in 1960, with the LP remaining the top-selling Christmas album throughout the decade of its release.
Interestingly, “The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You)” did not appear on the original release, entering the public domain as a holiday single in 1946 before being re-recorded for the artist’s 1961 album, The Nat King Cole Story.
Written by Robert Wells and Mel Tormé in 1945, the song was first recorded by the Nat King Cole Trio, with a later recording that year, which added a small string section, becoming “a massive hit on both the pop and R&B charts”.
“White Christmas” by Bing Crosby
(courtesy Amazon)
Hailed as the first multimedia star, Bing Crosby moved effortlessly between the worlds of singing, comedy, entertaining and acting, becoming, notes Wikipedia, “one of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century worldwide.”
Sustaining a consistently successful career over some five decades from 1926 to 1977, when he died, Crosby made over 70 feature films and recorded in excess of 1,600 songs, with his music so prevalent that, says Wikipedia, “In 1948, Music Digest estimated that Crosby’s recordings filled more than half of the 80,000 weekly hours allocated to recorded radio music in America.”
It was the most wonderful time of the year that gave Crosby, no stranger to chart-topping songs, the biggest hit of an illustrious career when his recording of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” was introduced as part of a Christmas Day radio broadcast in 1941.
The song’s success got a major assist, though it hardly needed it, in when it featured in both 1942’s Holiday Inn and 1954’s White Christmas films, each of which starred, naturally enough, Crosby himself.
Charting a total of 16 times, “White Christmas” topped the charts over and over again, selling over 50 million copies making it the “bestselling single of all time”.
“Sleigh Ride” by The Ronettes
(courtesy Spotify)
While sisters Veronica (later Ronnie Spector) and Estelle and cousin Nedra Talley began their musical career as “The Darling Sisters”, the renamed themselves The Ronettes in 1963 when they signed to Phil Spector’s Philles Records.
Before they split up in 1967, The Ronettes enjoyed considerable success, charting nine times on the Billboard Hot 100, with six of those single entering the Top 40 including “Be My Baby” which made its way to the number two position (it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999).
While the trio did not release a Christmas album as such, they did record “Sleigh Ride” for the 1963 album, A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records (later renamed A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, also known as Phil Spector’s Christmas Album) along with “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” and “Frosty the Snowman”.
“Sleigh Ride”, a light orchestra standard composed by Leroy Anderson, with the idea of the decidedly winter-dependent track coming to him during a heatwave in 1946 though it wasn’t finished until February 1948 with its first performance taking place that same year by the Boston Pops Orchestra.