Twelve Songs of Christmas

I love when episodes overlap. Today, soul singer Eli "Paperboy" Reed talks about--among other things--his love of Huey "Piano" Smith's Christmas album, which we recently featured. 

Reed has a new album, Hits and Misses: The Singles on YepRoc Records, and today we're talking about that and his Christmas music, including a snappy version of "Last Christmas" by Wham!

Along the way, we talk about a couple of tracks that weren't available on mp3, "What Do the Lonely Do at Christmas" by The Emotions and Reed's "Party Hard for Christmas." The link will help you get you to the first track, but he and/or his management appear to have taken down "Party Hard for Christmas." You'll hear why in the episode.  

Chuck Brown has been dubbed "The Godfather of Go-Go," the distinctive Washington D.C.-based funk sound that has its own aesthetics and culture. This week, New Orleans' musicologist and go-go aficionado Melissa Weber shines some light on go-go and Brown because in 1999, he released The Spirit of Christmas.

Weber is an archivist at Tulane University, and in New Orleans she DJs at WWOZ and throws parties under the name she's best known by, DJ Soul Sister.

We talk about Brown, his Christmas music, and the 1991 compilation, Let's Go-Go Christmas. 

New Orleans venerates its R&B royalty from the early days of rock 'n' roll, and many of them stayed active until they died, including Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, Eddie Bo, Snooks Eaglin and Earl King. Huey "Piano" Smith was not one of them; he lived the last third of his life until his death earlier this year out of the limelight.

Since Smith also recorded one of my favorite Christmas albums, 1962's Twas the Night Before Christmas, I invited journalist John Wirt on the show to talk about Smith--his heyday, his heartbreaks, his later years, and his Christmas album, which comes with a story that I learned reading John's 2014 book, Huey "Piano" Smith and the Rockin' Pneumonia Blues. 

Capitol Records tried to cash in on the '90s lounge revival with its "Ultra-Lounge" series--albums that pulled tracks from the label's vaults that fell under some of the umbrellas that came to associated with lounge including crooners, mambos, space-age sounds, and tiki bar music. In 1996, it released Christmas Cocktails, with series compiler Brad Benedict pulling together holidays songs from those genres.

It was so successful that Capitol released Christmas Cocktails Vol. 2 in 1997, then Christmas Cocktails Vol. 3 much later in 2012 with a different, more pedestrian creative team. By that point, Benedict and the Ultra-Lounge creative team had gone on to Shout Factory Records for the "Wonderland" series, three similar compilations of Christmas music that had different label libraries to draw from.

Christmas Cocktails was influential at the time and is still fondly remembered, so this week I'm discussing it with the King of Jingaling, Brad Ross MacLeod from one of the OG Christmas mp3 blogs, falalalalala.com.

We talk about his site, lounge, reissues, nostalgia, the contemporary music that bridged these songs from the late 1950s and early '60s with the music of the '90s when the first two volumes came out.

Along the way, we talk about Peggy Lee, who I discussed in an episode with her granddaughter Holly Foster-Wells in 2021.   

The name "Sara Noelle" sounds like something made up for Christmas music, but she had been a recording artist since 2010, 10 years before she released her first Christmas track, "Christmas at Sea."

Since 2020, the ambient folk artist has made a tradition of releasing new Christmas music each year, and it's not a reach to think her songs would make sense on David Lynch's Twin Peaks Holiday Special. Noelle's songs aren't haunted, but the electronic atmospherics paired with her treated voice make her songs sound like they come from somewhere else, even while they sound very human.

 We talked about her Christmas music, New Mexico, and her recent releases, a cover of The Beta Band's "Dry the Rain" and her most recent album, Do I Have to Feel Everything? We also discussed a creative writing journal she edits, Lyrics as Poetry, with writing from members of the rock 'n' roll community. 

In 2018 when I launched Twelve Songs, I published "The 12 Songs Manifesto," a statement of my core beliefs about Christmas music. 

Now that we're in our sixth season and have a lot of listeners who weren't around back then, I thought it was worth revisiting and documenting in podcast form. I flesh out my thoughts, add a few and revise a few that no longer seem as crucial to me. And, I have music by Luther Vandross, Rockin' Sidney, Paul McCartney, Alexander O'Neal, The Bird and the Bee, SUNBEARS! and more to put some musical meat on those bones. 

There was one late edit that some of you will notice. There is no Number Eight in my manifesto, not because I didn't have one but because I discovered while looking for an image to accompany this episode that the musician I featured had been found guilty of some extremely un-Christmas-y behavior. It was too late in the process to redo the whole passage, so I simply cut it. 

Chris Marchand's blog post "On the Importance of Sad Christmas Songs" makes the argument its title promises, using "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" as Exhibit A. Podcaster and writer Chris Marchand last appeared on Twelve Songs to break down Sufjan Stevens' Christmas albums, and this week he returns to talk about "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." 

The song written for Judy Garland to sing in the movie Meet Me in St. Louis was too bleak in her mind for the situation, so it was revised to be merely guarded and tentative. We have her version, a performance of the original lyrics, and a few that followed to see how artists handle the song's mood and message.

 

Last week, I started the story of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," taking the song from being written by Haven Gillespie and J. Fred Coots, to the first version by banjo player/bandleader Harry Reser, to the version that popularized the song by Eddie Cantor. 

This week, the song grows up with the help of Phil Spector, The Crystals, and Bruce Springsteen.

"Santa Claus is Coming to Town" is an orphan, a Christmas song without a singer attached. "White Christmas" has Bing Crosby, "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" has Andy Williams, and "Happy Holidays" has Peggy Lee. But who sang the early version of the Christmas classic that casts a shadow over all the versions that follow? Nobody. 

This week and next week, I'll tell the story of the song, from its writing to its place in the Christmas canon today. I'll tell the story of the song growing up, starting this week with its early days.

"Player's Ball" is a contemporary Christmas classic, but it's not very Christmas-y by design. Today, Big Boi of OutKast talks about why the song is the way it is, and how it ended up being the first solo release from the group. 

After that, we have an encore segment from 2018. At the time, I talked to writer David Dennis Jr. about the song. Today, David's resumé has expanded somewhat. He recently launched the podcast Rap Stories, which features interviews with rappers about albums important to him. Last year he released the book The Movement Made Us, in which he helps his father tell some of the stories of his early days as a worker in the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. David is also a regular participant on ESPN's Around the Horn.