I’ve loved the music on this album from Mary Chapin Carpenter since the first time I heard it in 2008. I’ve posted the title track a few times in the seven years since, but this time the video was posted by Ms. Carpenter herself, with photos she selected. If you haven’t heard the “Come Darkness …
Kings of the guitar instrumental, The Ventures put out a Christmas album in 1965. If you have an opportunity to buy it or at least hear it, jump at the chance. You’ll hear the melodies of all these classics interspersed with sleigh bells and humongous reverb. Here’s Silver Bells.
Remember how Perry Como’s ambition was to own a barber shop? Dean Martin was the son of a barber from Steubenville, Ohio. The drunken womanizer act he showed on TV and on the stage in Las Vegas was just that, an act. He borrowed it from comedian Joe E. Lewis. In fact, his second wife …
Continue reading ‘A member of the Rat Pack sees Christmas’ »
A college fraternity brother of mine posted this clip on Facebook earlier this week, and I liked it. It’s by a group called Pastiche, friends of Andy’s from his San Francisco days as a DJ. They’ve put out three CDs and worked as backup vocalists for many recording sessions.
Bill Murray is the host of “A Very Murray Christmas” (trailer) on Netflix. Here’s a sequence including Bill, Miley Cyrus, George Clooney and Paul Shaffer.
This song is nearly two centuries old. Its title was mentioned as one of a number of “Christmas carols” in a book titled Ancient Mysteries Explained by a political satirist and bookseller named William Hone. In 1817 he was prosecuted, ostensibly for harming public morals; in actually he’d ridiculed several government ministers and the Crown …
That’s the clever title of a now four-year-old album produced by Louise Goffin and sung by her rather more-famous mother Carole King. This is one of three original songs mixed in with more familiar holiday pieces. It was written by Ms. Goffin with Jodi Marr.
I haven’t posted this in a while (not since 2009, to be exact), and I’d forgotten how cute the cartoon is. The animation was done by cartoonist Joshua Held back in 2002. The song was performed by The Drifters on their Christmas album, released in 1954. Here’s an interesting note about this version: “We wanted …
Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme were a husband-and-wife team who met on the set of the original Tonight show with Steve Allen. They married a year later and spent the next 55 years performing as a duet act. They put out a Christmas album in 1964 called “That Holiday Feeling,” from which this track is …
Count Basie and His Orchestra play “It’s the Holiday Season,” with Johnny Mathis providing the vocals. Released just last month, “A Very Swingin’ Basie Christmas” is the first Christmas album the orchestra has released, and it was founded in 1935! If you like Big Band jazz, this 19-member group is a credit to its namesake.