Twelve Songs of Christmas

COVID-19 forced major changes to Mardi Gras, including no parades, but New Orleanians still found ways to honor to day and spirit of the holiday. Since I take Mardi Gras seriously, my family and I were out on Fat Tuesday to see - and be a part of - a socially distanced Mardi Gras. 

In honor of the holiday, I've scheduled an encore presentation of the first episode of 12 Songs with Ben Schenk of New Orleans' Panorama Jazz Band. Panorama plays music from the traditional jazz repertoire and folds in music from other cultures that makes sense with it. Not surprisingly, the band has made good, interesting Christmas music that is musically and conceptually true to who they are. 

In honor of Mardi Gras, the show opens with a new cover of the '70s Philly soul instrumental "T.S.O.P. (The Sound of Philadelphia)" by Panorama's parade band incarnation, the Panorama Brass Band.

If you like that or other music in this episode, you can get it by subscribing to Panorama's Good Music for You/Song of the Month Club.

Last December, listener and Anglican pastor Chris Marchand wrote to tell me about Let Nothing You Dismay--an EP of Christmas music that could serve as a the soundtrack to A Blade Runner Christmas--and a book he wrote, Celebrating The 12 Days of Christmas: A Guide for Churches and Families. While we swapped email, we started talking about Sufjan Stevens' five-CD Music for Christmas. 

Pitchfork.com reviewed it and contended that the album's plain-spoken embrace of Christianity felt punk in an indie rock context. The review felt a little like an effort to hold on to Stevens and pull him into indie's doubt-everything ethos that he might not really share, but to be fair, Music for Christmas sends enough signals that it's hard to feel certain about readings of it. Because of that, I thought Chris brought a perspective that would prove useful, so we met online early in January to break it down a bit. 

In this episode, I also went into the collection to pull out another favorite that's hard to explain. The fiercely Canadian Stompin' Tom Connors released Merry Christmas, Everybody in 1970, and it's hard to put your finger on what's so great about it. I try though. 

If you like what you hear or are curious, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts—Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or Spotify.

Mento Buru from East Bakersfield, California has played around California's Central Valley since the early 1990s. Bandleader Matt Munoz explains how they, like many bands, have made a living and endured as a regional act. 

Last Christmas, Mento Buru released the East Bakersfield Christmas EP, which features Christmas classics adapted to suit the band's Latin ska sound. Munoz talks about how and why they made it, along with the two Spanish-language Christmas songs--"Donde Esta Santa Claus" by Augie Rios, and "Feliz Navidad" by Jose Feliciano. We discussed his fascination with Augie Rios in an earlier episode, but this time we talk about where he found the Spanish lyrics for the song that was written in English.

Along the way, Munoz shares some of his holiday favorites, including songs by the Ramsey Lewis Trio, Cheech and Chong, and Alexander O'Neal.

This week's episode also pays some attention to Earth, Wind & Fire's 2014 Christmas album, Holiday, and the 2015 Sony Legacy repackaging of it with a few extra tracks as The Classic Christmas Album. I'm fascinated by it because the band doesn't simply lend its grooves to Christmas favorites. On a number of the tracks, it either adds seasonal lyrics to pre-existing EWF songs, or it reuses familiar horn flourishes and signature parts to make their versions explicitly theirs. 

If you haven't already done so, please follow or subscribe to 12 Songs wherever you get your podcasts. If you listen via Apple, a five-star review would be much appreciated.  

Chas Justus' musical taste ends around 1965, he says, and he has made his living playing in roots music bands in Southern Louisiana--the swing band The Red Stick Ramblers, and more recently in The swamp pop band The Revelers. Last fall, he brought together a number of his musical friends to record Joyeux Noël, Bon Chrismeusse, an EP of classic Christmas songs sung in Cajun French. He talks about how the project came about, and how COVID-19 helped make it possible. 

Along the way, he turns me on to a couple of tracks--Belton Richard's Cajun French version of Buck Owens' "You're All I Want for Christmas," and Chicago guitarist Joel Paterson's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

I first interviewed Justus in 2015 for MySpiltMilk.com. Here's that story on The Revelers.

In this week's episode, I also talk about My Holiday by Mindy Smith, a Christmas album that I think merits more far attention than it gets.  

Before Christmas, I talked to Holly Foster-Wells, the president of Peggy Lee Associates, about her grandmother, singer Peggy Lee. In the episode that also included conversations with Joey Burns of Calexico and Grant-Lee Phillips, we talked about Lee's Christmas parties and her songwriting, which seemed to be aimed at children more than fans might expect. 

Today, we resume the conversation to talk more about her songwriting, her role in her career, and the challenges she dealt with as a woman that men didn't. 

During the Christmas season, Capitol Records released a two-CD/two-record set of her Christmas music, Ultimate Christmas.

This episode also includes one of my favorite bizarre Christmas songs, "Jingle Bell Hustle" by Wayne Newton.

This week's episode features two very different conversations. First, I talk to Patrick Droney, a Nashville-based guitarist trying to establish himself as an artist who makes soulful contemporary rock music. In October, he released an EP, State of the Heart, and he'll flesh it out with an album-length version this spring. Between those releases, he put out a cover of Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You" as one of Spotify's Holiday Singles. We talk about covering Mariah and the role the song plays in his effort to establish himself. 

Then, New Orleans musician Boyfriend returns to 12 Songs to discuss Amy Grant's first of three Christmas albums, A Christmas Album from 1983. Nothing in her catalogue would lead listeners to believe the album was in her background, but she explains why it is in fact one of her favorite Christmas albums. 

Boyfriend also appeared to talk about "All I Want for Christmas is You" and The Carpenters' "Merry Christmas Darling."

Since I often ask the people I talk to about their early Christmas music memories, it seems only fair to share one of my own. To that end, I have included a song I discovered in my mom's box of singles: "I Yust Go Nuts at Christmas" by Yogi Yorgesson from 1949. 

A new year of “12 Songs of Christmas” begins with a discussion of 1984. Music critic and journalist Michaelangelo Matos’ new book, Can't Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop's Blockbuster Year, looks at an amazing year in pop music that culminated with two Christmas classics--"Last Christmas" by Wham! and "Do They Know it's Christmas" by Band Aid. We talk about those songs and fit them into the story that Matos tells of 1984. 

I interviewed Matos in 2015 when he published his previous book, a history of electronic dance music titled The Underground is Massive. You read my two-part interview on it at My Spilt Milk. 

My second interview this week is a few minutes with Flaming Lips' Steven Drozd. When we spoke last fall, he volunteered his take on "Do They Know It's Christmas" at a point that would have been hard to connect to the rest of the interview. Since it made sense as a part of this conversation, I've included it here. 

In addition to these conversations, I've shared one of my favorite modern Christmas songs--"Hark the Herald Angels Sing" by 11 Acorn Lane--and songs by Esquivel and The Three Suns that give it context. 

In the recording, I talk about the album that introduced Esquivel to a new audience, Space Age Bachelor Pad Music. On the recording, I say it was released in 1984. I guess I had 1984 on my mind because the album came out 10 years later in 1994. 

Finally, last month I posted an essay on Wham!'s "Last Christmas." You can find it online at TwelveSongsOfChristmas.com.

I'm ending 2020 with a bang on a number of fronts. First, I have four interviews for the nights before Christmas--"folk pianist" George Winston; singer Inara George of The Bird and The Bee; Jamie Hilsden, who performed this holiday season as The Myrrhderers; and Matt Munoz of the East Bakersfield ska band Mento Buru. 

The second big news is that there will more in the upcoming months from all of these artists and others I have interviewed this season including Steven Drozd, Grant-Lee Phillips, Joey Burns of Calexico, and Holly Foster-Wells, Peggy Lee's granddaughter. Twelve Songs will take December 30 off but will return January 6, 2021 and will continue year-around at that point. I've always thought that the show was more about musicians and their musical, commercial and personal lives, and that Christmas music was simply a unique lens to help us get that view. I've never thought the show was simply part of the soundtrack to the season.

This episode's interviews need little explanation. Inara George's roofers decided the day and hour of our interview was the time that they needed to work over her room, but the hammering is only briefly noticeable.  

Christmas is approaching and we have a lot of conversations to get to. This week, I spend time with Joey Burns of Calexico, Grant Lee Phillips, and Holly Foster Wells, singer Peggy Lee's granddaughter and the president of Peggy Lee Associates, which oversees her musical legacy. 

Calexico released Seasonal Shift in November, and it's true to the band's long-time project as it lives in a place where cultures find ways to coexist. As such, Calexico projects often feel like they have political subtexts, and Burns addresses that. 

Grant-Lee Phillips released the four-song Yuletide EP this year, and he talks about what Christmas music taught him about songwriting as a boy. He reflects on the experience of playing Christmas shows with Aimee Mann and being a mall Santa one Christmas season--a first for 12 Songs! He also talks about how his "Winterglow" ended up on Gilmore Girls.  

Holly Foster Wells remembers Christmases with Peggy Lee including Christmas parties that inevitably features some of the top singers of the day singing Christmas favorites around the piano. She provides behind the scenes recollections of her decorations and her biggest Christmas hits. We'll have more with Wells on Peggy Lee soon. 

This episode also spotlights Christmas Time is Here, a new album from sax player Benny Barksdale Jr. that sounds like home cooking--not quite smooth jazz but close, and the kind of warm sound and easy groove that sounds great at Christmas time. 

 

  

[NOTE: My apologies for the technical issues in this issue. I'm not sure how they happened, but they have been fixed. Thank you for your patience.]

Bounce doesn’t seem like a natural pairing with Christmas, but there are a number of artists and producers who have made bounce Christmas music. None have taken to it more prominently or prolifically than New Orleans’ Big Freedia, who will release her second EP of Christmas music, Smoking’ Santa Christmas on Friday. It follows 2016’s A Very Big Freedia Christmazz and an assortment of single tracks including one, “Make It Jingle,” from 2016’s Office Christmas Party soundtrack and another as a feature on RuPaul’s “Jingle Des Bells.”

We talk about her relationship to Christmas music as an artist, as a businessperson, and as a New Orleanian, where one of the songs that signaled the onset of Christmas for her was “Otis and Bonquisha.” I didn’t know the song, so we take a time out to briefly explore “Xmas Blues” by Big Time.

Big Freedia also released the paperback edition of her memoir, God Save the Queen Diva, on December 1. It’s on sale now.

Since Christmas is approaching, this episode has a second interview, this one with retro soul singer, producer and songwriter Kelly Finnigan. Finnigan is best known as the singer for Monophonics, and this season he released A Joyful Sound, which is exactly the album you’d expect from a student of soul music. Along the way, he talks about the influence of Ray Charles, Curtis Mayfield, Charles Stepney, and gospel music. He talks about the role those artists had shaping the music, and the trust he placed in members of the R&B community around the country who contributed to the album.

I also revisit my Twelve Songs Manifesto, which lays out my beliefs about Christmas music, and share music by Louisiana artists Chas Justus, who along with musical friends from South Louisiana released the EP Joyeux Noel, Bon Chrismeusse, and Museumgoer, who radically remakes Stan Kenton’s “What is Santa Claus?” with a vocal by me.

If you like this week’s show, subscribe or follow 12 Songs at Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and now, Pandora.