Christmas in December 2015 coming soon!

Keep checking back!

It's Christmas in December!

Happy holidays -- and welcome to Year 19 of Christmas in December! Can that be right? 19 years? Maybe I counted wrong. Anyway, this all started back in 1996 with too much spare time and a few extra 90-minute cassette tapes, and has since been dragged into the 21st century, onto this here Internet. So what say we dig right in and see what Santa brought us this year?

1. Intro: The Now Sound of Christmas
The "Now" referred to in this case being 1968 -- coincidentally the year of my birth. This appeared on a promotional record released by, of all entities, the United States Air Force. Music performed by The Airmen of Note, the USAF's official dance band, with vocals by Canadian good-vibe purveyors The Free Design.

2. Merry Christmas Baby, Ike & Tina Turner
How, how, how is it possible that I didn't know that this existed before this year? This is probably now my favorite version of this song, and I'm including the Charles Brown original as well as the cover by the inestimable Otis Redding.

3. Christmas Time Again, Reuben Anderson
A 1967 single by Anderson, a Jamaican singer I had never heard of before I saw the trailer for "Jingle Bell Rocks," a documentary obviously so far up my alley that it actually crosses the street and goes into another alley altogether.

4. Jingle Bells, The George Garabedian Players
Another product of the year 1968, and specifically a product of the Tijuana music craze spearheaded by Herb Alpert and his Tijuana Brass. As I've often noted, many of Alpert's imitators sound more Tijuana Brass-y than Alpert's own official Christmas album.

5. Sleigh Ride, Lenny Dee
From the 1961 album "Happy Holi-Dee." Some of the virtuoso Hammond organist's other releases were, no kidding, "Dee-Lightful," "Dee-Lirious," "Dee-Licious," and "Dee Day." I guess if you've got a highly punnable last name, you make as much use out of it as you can (a lesson Greg Kihn seems to have taken to heart).

6. Feliz Nava-Nada, El Vez
It's easy to pigeonhole El Vez as "the Mexican-American Elvis impersonator," but as Wikipedia points out, his oeuvre includes artists "such as David Bowie, Iggy Pop, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, T. Rex, Queen and the Beatles" -- and Public Image Limited, referenced herein.

7. We Three Kings, Bobby Timmons
I first featured soul-jazz pioneer Bobby Timmons in 2002 with "Deck the Halls." It's taken me more than ten years to get back around to him, mostly because his "Holiday Soul" album has never, to my knowledge, been released on CD or digitally.

8. Little Drummer Boy, Dengue Fever
Dengue Fever is a six-member Los Angeles band fronted by a Cambodian vocalist who sings in the Khmer language. I found this funky take on "Little Drummer Boy" through Christmas A Go Go, one of many holiday music enthusiasts/obsessives out there who make me feel like a dilettante.

9. White Christmas, The Three Suns
"It's a gone album, gang, with the kind of melodic surprises we've come to expect from The Three Suns,"says Art Whitman, in his liner notes to The Three Suns' 1959 release "A Ding-Dong Dandy Christmas." "[G]ive this album to someone you really like this Christmas. If he's spirited, if he's swingin', if he's a ding-dong dandy guy, he'll love it."

10. Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, Jayram Acharya
Not much is known about this sitarist or this record, released in 1967. "While the Christmas songs reached India several centuries ago," read that record's liner notes, "it is only now, several centuries later, that the sound of sitar has reached the Western World and is considered the most exciting sound of today."

11. Almost Time for Santa, Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns
I learned from the Hip Christmas blog that "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," the 1962 release by New Orleans R&B legend Huey "Piano" Smith, was rumored to have been pulled by the record label "when enraged listeners condemned it as sacrilegious." And certainly, Smith's version of "Silent Night" has to be the least reverent version I've ever heard. But, no, although “the record was quickly relegated to obscurity,” it was “the victim of a bad distribution deal rather than controversy.” The CD rerelease contains “Christmas karaoke” versions of eight of the songs — basically, the instrumental tracks stripped of the vocals.

12. Do You Believe in Santa Claus, Billy May & His Orchestra (feat. Thurl Ravenscroft)
You know Thurl Ravenscroft, even if you don't know you know him. He's the singer of 'You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch," as well as the original voice of Tony the Tiger. The official credits on the "Ultra-Lounge Christmas Vol. 3" album also credit The King Sisters, a big-band era vocal group, but I'm danged if I can hear them here. Whatever they paid Thurl for this session, he earned every penny with that last note, am I right? (I am.)

13. Santa’s On His Way, Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys
I first heard this during the Simpsons episode "Miracle on Evergreen Terrace," in 1997, very early in my holiday music career. It's one of my favorite Christmas music finds, and I'm a little surprised I haven't included it in more mixes. I don't know what year it's from (if anybody does, please tell me), but I'm guessing somewhere in the mid-'40s.

14. I’ll Be Your Santa Baby, Rufus Thomas
It's possible that this 1973 single by Thomas, a stalwart of the Memphis-based Stax Records, was inspired by an earlier lascivious Christmas R&B single, Clarence Carter's Back Door Santa, recorded just down the road in Muscle Shoals, Ala. Mid-century Southern R&B was a small world, so to speak.

15. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
I didn't do this intentionally, but it turns out I followed one '73 release with another, this one from A Motown Christmas. By the way, this is only one of five songs in this mix released after 1968. I'm not sure what that says about me; do I subconsciously hanker for the years before I was born?

16. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Arthur Lyman
A 1964 (see what I mean?) release from "The King of Lounge Music," who I was surprised to find out was actually born in Hawaii, and not just another mainlander co-opting Polynesian culture.

17. Deck the Halls, Little Jimmy Thomas
Note the structural similarity to "Merry Christmas Baby," above -- opening salvo by female backup singers, followed by a spirited, stomping R&B take on a beloved Christmas classic. There is not much information out there on Little Jimmy Thomas, beyond this single, backed by "Jimmy's Christmas."

18. Jingle Bells, New Birth Brass Band
One wonders if the New Birth Brass Band feels any animosity toward the Rebirth Brass Band, another New Orleans brass band specializing in second-line rhythms. The Rebirth Brass Band have their own Wikipedia page, though, so I guess they're winning.

19. Up On the Housetop, Pomplamoose
Those of you who follow such things probably already know that Pomplamoose is currently (in December 2014) embroiled in some Internet-fueled controversy or another, which I haven't had the time to care that much about. Feel free to fill me in or denounce me on Reddit or whatever.

20. Beatnik’s Wish, Patsy Raye & The Beatniks
Here's where it starts to get kind of convoluted. There have been a bunch of beatnik-themed versions of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (a.k.a. "'Twas the Night Before Christmas"). One of these is "Cool Yule," by Tony Rodelle Larson, which uses this exact same instrumental backing. Larson's song may be a ripoff of/homage to "Yulesville," by Ed "Kookie" Byrnes (you'll have to Google him yourself; if I try to provide all of the cultural context, we'll be here all night), which appeared in 1959, and features many of the same lyrics.

21. Blue Christmas, First Aid Kit
Thanks to the ears of Christmas in December's head elf, Josephine, who has gotten right into the spirit of the somewhat insane seasonal enterprise she married into, for finding this stunner from 2009. Despite being an elf, by the way, Josephine has regular non-pointy ears -- a quite fetching pair indeed, if I do say so.

22. While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night, Louvin Brothers
One song featuring exemplary two-part harmony followed by another.

23. The First Noel, The Moog Machine
The Moog Machine's "Christmas Becomes Electric" (1969) is one of two Moog-centric holiday albums I know of, the other one being Sy Mann's "Switched On Santa." If there are others, I'd love to know about them, so please enlighten me.

24. Jingle Bells, The Hoosier Hot Shots
They're from Indiana. That's about all I can say about them right now; I'm kind of rushing to get these done.

25. Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, The Peanuts Gang
We end this year as we end every year: serenaded by America's favorite ovoid-headed dysthymic toddlers. Lights, please:
 

And that sticks a fork in 2014! Hope these notes (the ones you're reading as well as the ones you're listening to) find you and yours well this holiday season -- and we'll see you in Year 20.

Note: Some of the CDs we've burned here at CiD World HQ this year have had the songs in the wrong order than you see here and in the printed booklets. We'll call those... collectors editions.