And So, This is Christmas – Getting into the holiday spirit with our Favorite Christmas Songs

And So, This Is Christmas

Getting Into The Holiday Spirt

With Our Favorite Christmas Songs

By Jack Coll

12-20-24

     Christmas Music, we all have our favorites, and if you’re like me, there are more than a few Christmas songs I could do without.  (Dominic the Donkey)  I got to thinking if I had to name my favorite Christmas Song of all-time, well that would be easy for me, Darlene Love singing “Baby Please Come Home.”  Part of that ranking comes from the fact that Darlene is without a doubt my favorite female singer.  This goes back to the early  1960’s when Darlene sang on a number of Phil Spector songs, (before he went bats#!t crazy)  When Spector released his Christmas album titled, “A Christmas Gift For You,” believe it or not the album was a flop.  Part of that reason is because the album was released on November 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.  However, in 2019, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Spector’s Christmas Album the greatest Christmas album of all-time!

     It’s easy to understand the popularity of the music on the album as more than a dozen musicians contributed to the popular songs including members of the “Wrecking Crew” including Hal Blaine on drums, Leon Russell on piano and Tommy Tedesco on guitar.  Other popular song on the Christmas album included Darlene Love singing “White Christmas,” “Marshmallow World,” “Winter Wonderland” and my favorite “Christmas, Baby Please Come Home.”  The Ronettes sang “Frosty The Snowman,” “Sleigh Ride,” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause.”  The Crystals, who featured Darlene Love on lead vocals contributed “Santa Clause Is Coming To Town,” “Parade of Wooden Soldiers,” and “Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer.”

     I should mention that I’ve met Darlene Love a number of times over the years and shared one of my greatest musical thrills standing next to her on the side of the stage during a concert at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia.  It was one of Jerry Blavat’s holiday shows that involved a number of musical guests.  Bob Frost and I attended the show, actually we spent the day there enjoying the sound check and having lunch and dinner with the performers that included Ben E. King, Chris Montez, ( who told Frost and myself a few really great stories about when he toured with the Beatles) Shirley Alston Reeves of the Shirelles, Lenny Welch, The Trammps, Darlene Love and a number of others.  

     So, Frost and I were standing on the side of the stage during the main performance with Darlene Love standing between us watching Ben E. King performing “Spanish Harlem,” “Save The Last Dance,” “Stand By Me” and a few others. Darlene and I looked at each other in between his songs nodding and smiling with approval.  Darlene, who closed the show, followed King and headed out onto the stage, Ben E. King filled in Darlene’s spot on the side of the stage standing between Frost and I and together we watched Darlene’s performance as she brought the house down.

     Other Christmas songs on my top ten list in no special order would include:

“Someday At Christmas” by the boy genius Stevie Wonder.  The song was written by Ron Miller and Bryan Wells and released on November 22, 1966.  The song yearns for a Christmas where “Men won’t be boys, playing with bombs like kids play with toys.” It’s rare to hear a Christmas song talk about war, but Stevie’s vocals are truly up-lifting and worth giving a listen-to. 

     The song yearns for peace on earth, “Someday at Christmas, There’ll be no war, when we have learned what Christmas is for.”  The one verse repeated about three times during the song he sings,

“Someday all our dreams will come to be,

Someday in a world where men are free,

Maybe not in time for you and me,

But someday at Christmastime.”

    When I hear,  “Maybe not in time for you and me,” I think about my grandchildren, your grandchildren, just imagine our grandchildren experiencing a Christmas, or any other holiday, enjoying a life without war, anywhere in the world, the thought gives me goosebumps!

     Talking about WAR Christmas songs, well it doesn’t surprise me that both John Lennon and Paul McCartney both released Christmas songs pertaining to war.  Lennon of course was all about peace during a time when the Vietnam War was raging.  Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded “Happy Christmas, (War is Over) along with a little help from the Harlem Community choir consisting of about thirty children ranging in age from four to twelve years old singing backing vocals.  The refrain in the song “War is over, if you want it,” was certainly about the struggles in Vietnam.  Phil Spector helped produce the song.

     Paul McCartney’s Christmas Song, “Pipes of Peace” released in 1983 also pertains to war, fashioned after an incident during World War One.  December 25, 1914, in France.

     “The song depicts the Christmas Truce in 1914, a moment of peace in French history.  The Christmas truce in 1914 remains one of the most extraordinary and poignant events in World War One, symbolizing the fleeting but inexorable power of peace amid one of the bloodiest conflicts in History.  While the war raged across Europe, soldiers on both sides of the western front in France and Belgium put down their guns, paused for a brief moment of humanity during Christmas.  Though not universally experienced, the truce is remembered as a rare instance of compassion during a time of extreme violence.” 

      McCartney’s song, “Pipes of Peace” isn’t one of my favorite Christmas songs, rather slow and boring, but I love what it stands for. 

     This is a little known Christmas song but I love the song and I love the story behind it.  The song, “Christmas on The Block” by the Alan Mann Band is kinda touching and gets very little radio play, with the exception of WMMR Radio’s Pierre Robert, (The long haired hippie Jerry Garcia loving, pot smoking Hooters lover who has been on the air at WMMR for nearly a half a century and isn’t just one of the greatest DJ’s in the history of Philadelphia radio, but without a doubt the greatest DJ in the country,) Robert tells the story and plays the song every December and delights in the fact that the Hooters gracefully covered Mann’s song.

     The short story behind the song is very touching and goes something like this, taken from “Song Facts”

     “Alan Mann was a 1980’s song writer and was in West Philly walking home one night in December when he came across a house lit-up spectacularly for the holiday season.  He later learned the house was the Overbrook School for the Blind, founded in 1832.  Even though the students couldn’t  see them, the staff helped them decorate the building with beautiful lights and displays.  Mann was deeply moved and got to thinking about how the blind perceived Christmas.  He imagined that their experiences would be quite vivid, filled with colors others can’t see, a blessing rather than a handicap.  He wrote “Christmas on The Block” from the experience.

     Mann recorded the song in 1982, and delivered it to Philadelphia radio stations, which gave it some air-time.  It got a great reaction from listeners, so Mann made a video for the song, recorded that winter in the Upper Darby section of Philly by his friend Rich Murray, a student at Temple University.  The video was reportedly played on MTV.

     The song got more airplay on Philadelphia radio that year, and in 1984 was released as a single.  It remains a Christmas tradition in the city especially on the station WMMR.

     The children who sang in the choir were just regular kids Mann recruited from a second grade class.  They’re clearly unprofessional and unrehearsed, but that’s part of the charm, giving the feeling that anyone can sing it.

     Alan Mann died in 1987, at the age of 33 when his apartment caught fire and he either fell out or jumped out a window to escape the flames.  He was a beloved fixture in the Philly music scene.”

 (Jack and Pierre hanging out a year or so ago at Coll’s Custom Framing)   

You want to hear it on the radio, tune in to WMMR’s Pierre Robert show, sometime after Preston and Steve’s morning circus vacates the airwaves.  Robert’s show normally goes to about 2:00, sometimes 2:30, and other times he could go off air at three o’clock, who knows, but he’s likely to play “Christmas on The Block” sometime between now and Christmas.

     Not all my Christmas songs are that serious, or that deep, ever hear of Robert Earl Keen?  Well now, you’re in for a treat, “Merry Christmas From The Family.”  It starts off with “Mom got drunk and Dad got drunk, at our Christmas party.” Well, you really need to listen to this, it’s a song Preston and Steve would love!

     OK, the stories are getting a little long so let’s just go to the list of my favorite Christmas songs”

Bruce Springsteen, “Santa Clause is Coming to Town” Ho-Ho-Ho

Eartha Kitt, “Santa Baby”  Madonna covered this one, sexy!  

Beach Boys, “Little Saint Nick”  “He don’t miss no one, and haulin’ through the snow at a

                                                          frightin’ speed”

Chuck Berry, “Run Rudolph Run” “Said Santa to a girl child, what would please you most to get,

                                                             a little baby doll that can cry, sleep, drink and wet!”

The Kinks, Father Christmas”

Dolly Parton, “Hard Candy Christmas” the song don’t make much sense but I enjoy listening to

                                                                        it

Burl Ives, “A Holly Jolly Christmas”

Nat King Cole, “The Christmas Story”

Brenda Lee, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”

Bing Crosby and David Bowie, “Little Drummer Boy”

The Pretenders, “2,000 Miles” actually a very sad song written by lead singer of the Pretenders

                                                        Chrissie Hynde.  It’s a story written about the band’s guitarist

                                                        James “Honeymoon” Scott, who died of an overdose in 1982. 

                                                        “Two thousand miles, is very far through the snow, I’ll think of

                                                         you, where ever you go.”

Tran-Siberian Orchestra, “Christmas Canon”  Just a terrific piece of music.

Band Aid, “Do They Know It’s Christmas”  A little quirky but for a good cause.

“Baby It’s Cold Outside” covered by dozens of artist, more recently by John Legend and Kelly

                                            Clarkson.  Recently viewed as a controversial song, (She wants to leave,

                                             but he says no, stay awhile) go figure.

Bobby Helms, “Jingle Bell Rock”  Who doesn’t like this song?

The Carpenters, “Merry Christmas Darling,” “Greeting Cards have all been sent, the Christmas

                                                                                 rush is through!

Jim Croce, “It Doesn’t Have To Be That Way,” I loved Jim Croce and was heart-broken  when on September 21, 1973 I learned of his death from a plane crash in Natchitoches, La.  Jim was born in South Philadelphia, his family moved to Drexel Hill where Jim attended Upper Derby High School and later Villanova University.  Jim, with his wife Ingrid lived in a 200 year old farmhouse in Lyndell, East Brandywine in Chester County where he wrote many of his early songs including “Time in a Bottle,” and “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim.”  He could often be found at the Main Point performing in the early days.

    Croce’s Christmas song is a very soft and sad, enjoyable song with a few of the lyrics:

“Crowded stores-the corner Santa Clause.

Tinseled afternoons

And the sidewalk bands

Play their songs

Slightly out of tune

On the windy winter avenues

There walks a lonely man

And if I told you who he is

Well, I think you’d understand”

     And finally, let’s end with this, “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.”  Yeah, it’s a novelty song, Grandma’s dead, “should we open up her gifts on Christmas morning or take them back.” 

      The song was written back in the 1970’s by Randy Brooks, later recorded in 1979, by Elmo Shropshire and Patsy Trigg, “Elmo and Patsy” I actually had very little interest in the song, but it turns out an old classmate of mine, Larry Carlin, (Upper High School Class of 1972) teamed-up with Elmo and starting performing with him in 1981.

     Larry played base guitar and sang harmony with Elmo for more than three decade’s, Larry told me he must have played that song live more than a thousand times.  In 1983, a video was produced, (Elmo played both Grandma and Grandpa while Patsy plays the part of cousin Mel.)  At the end of the video Grandma survives the attack and makes a triumphant return through the chimney.  Throughout the video there’s this flaming red-headed guy, seen first in a bright red jacket, decorating the tree and joining in on the family’s fun, at the end of the video he’s dressed in a black suit helping Grandma out of the chimney, that my friends would be Upper Merion’s own Larry Carlin.

     Not everyone would agree with my favorite Christmas tunes, perhaps very few people, but if you have a few favorite’s feel free to list them, and have a Merry Christmas!