With Christmas coming up just two weeks from today (can you believe it?!?!), we thought this would be a great time to feature some Forgotten Christmas Gems ... as submitted by new reader Sam Ward ...
Hi there, Kent, and everyone else reading this blog as well.
It was fascinating to learn about Gilbert O'Sullivan's upcoming U.S. tour next year. This was never a hit for him, but in 1975, Gilbert O'Sullivan came out with a beautifully arranged and thought-provoking Christmas song called I'm Not Dreaming Of A White Christmas. I first heard the song during Steve Goddard's Gold, Christmas show for 1980.
Back then, he was working at KZZP in Mesa outside Phoenix, Arizona, and syndicated his Goddard's Gold show to radio stations in Tucson and Las Vegas. Since then, his syndication has widened considerably because in 2004, I heard his show on WMJI in Cleveland. Steve is one of the most knowledgeable disc jockeys about rare oldies that I have ever heard.
Anyway, I'm Not Dreaming Of A White Christmas is a really beautiful song.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Gilbert’s single … actually just titled simply “Christmas Song” when it charted in 1975, was a #12 Hit in The UK … not too shabby … and reached #92 here in The States in Record World. -kk]
Some other Forgotten Christmas Gems follow …
I'm sure that most of you have heard 12 year old Little Jimmy Boyd's Number 1 Christmas song from 1952, I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus. But many of you have probably never heard his holiday song from two years later amid the mambo dance craze, I Saw Mama Do The Mambo With You Know Who, unless you heard the song on Dr. Demento's Christmas shows. You can tell in this later song from 1954, that his voice is starting to change.
I'm sure most of you are familiar with Eartha Kitt's classic 1953 Christmas single with Henry Rene and his Orchestra, Santa Baby. But a year later, Eartha Kitt came up with a follow up called This Year's Santa Baby, which didn't do nearly as well on the charts. In fact, it may not have charted at all.
You may remember that in the first version of the song from 1953, Eartha Kitt says, "Santa Baby, I want a yacht, and really that's not a lot." In the 1954 version, she decides that the yacht isn't good enough for her, and what she wants is the Queen Elizabeth!
There is a story going round, and I don't know how true it is, but supposedly Irving Berlin absolutely hated Elvis's version of his song White Christmas, which appeared on Elvis's 1957 Christmas album, and he tried to get radio stations all over the U.S. to stop playing that version of the song. Supposedly, there was only one radio station that dropped Elvis's version of White Christmas from their playlist, and that was CKWX in Vancouver, British Columbia, in Canada. Of course, this version of White Christmas that Irving Berlin hated so much was not originally recorded by Elvis at all. It was recorded three years earlier by the Drifters featuring the smooth bass delivery of Bill Pinkney and the soaring tenor falsetto of Clyde McPhatter. But the song was just an RNB record at the time, and hadn't achieved the amazing status that it would receive later, being clearly the version that influenced Elvis to record that song in the way he did.
But I've often thought, if Irving Berlin hated Elvis's version of the song, what would he have ever thought of the Four Lovers’ 1956 version? The Four Lovers recorded for the RCA label, and most of their records didn't chart, although You're The Apple Of My Eye may have charted in some markets.
The lead singer of the group was Frankie Valli, but RCA was so busy promoting Elvis at the time, that they failed to promote many of their other recording groups and artists. They didn't even promote any of Roy Orbison's material when he was on the label between 1958 and 1960.
Anyway, if you've never heard this version of White Christmas by the Four Lovers, check it out on YouTube. This version of White Christmas is absolutely wild! That's the only way to describe it, especially in the context of it being recorded back in 1956. It makes Elvis's version sound absolutely tame by comparison.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qc74lJAm_E
Well, as classic and wonderful as the Drifters’ 1954 version of White Christmas is, there was an RNB group from Detroit that also decided to record the song as well, and they never should have even bothered doing so, unfortunately. Although the Drifters achieved beautiful harmony when they recorded their version of this song, the Diablos, famous for their original 1954 version of The Wind and Adios, My Desert Love, just couldn't pull it off and, instead of rich harmony, as the group
concludes the song, they produced some of the most gastly and off key harmony that I have ever heard. It's really a shame and actually sad to hear, but the group just didn't have the sense of pitch that the Drifters had, and they just couldn't begin to duplicate the intricate harmonies that were present on the Drifters version of the song. I give the group credit for trying, but they simply weren't up to the challenge.
Jimmy Dean, best known for his Number 1 smash hit Big Bad John in 1961,
recorded a cute little Christmas song called Little Sandy Sleighfoot four years earlier, and this song may have made it on some country station charts.
The Little Drummer Boy has become a classic ever since the Harry Simeone Chorale recorded it back in 1958. But the song has actually been around for quite a bit longer than that.
There are two fascinating things to note about earlier versions of the song. First of all, back then, the song was known as Carol Of The Drum, and secondly, until the Harry Simeone Chorale recorded the song as The Little Drummer Boy, it had always been sung at a much faster tempo. The Trap Family recorded the song back in 1952, and both the Jack Halloran Singers and the Testor Corus recorded versions of this Christmas Carol before the name was changed in 1958. There's a wonderful parody of the song recorded by Michael Lynch in which the song is done in the style of the Count Five's 1966 hit Psychotic Reaction. The group does an astonishing job of imitating the Count Five's sound. Mary is not impressed with these stable rockers, and she tells them to leave the stable on the count of five, just to tie in even more with the Count Five. Perhaps the strangest version of the song, is Johnny Cash's 1959 version, in my opinion anyway.
Carl Mann, who had success with his rockabilly version of the Nat King Cole song Pretend, does a beautiful Christmas song called Today Is Christmas. Two years later, Joe Dowell, one of two people who recorded the German folk song Wooden Heart, the other one of course being Elvis, recorded a lovely Christmas song called I Wonder Who's Spending Christmas With You. I really love that song, and I hope when you hear it, you folks will, too. Another performer that had a lovely Christmas song in 1961 was Ral Donner, with his song Christmas Day.
These days, people think of the Neil Diamond and the Hall and Oates
remakes of Bobby Helms' 1957 ode to rock and roll and Christmas, Jingle
Bell Rock. But it seems that most people have forgotten Chubby Checker
and Bobby Rydell's 1961 remake of the song. In the final verse of the
song, there is one lyric change to bring the song more up to date in
1961, and I wonder if anyone knows what that slight lyric change is.
Well, those are just some forgotten Christmas gems that I like to pull out every year and listen to and enjoy during the holiday season. If I have helped some of you discover some forgotten Christmas songs that you may not have known about, that's really great. There are all these radio stations that are playing nonstop Christmas music 24 / 7, but they sure don't play any of these songs, and that's kind of sad. But, that's the reality of consultant programmed radio I'm afraid.
All the best to you all,
Sam Ward
