Talking Christmas Songs on HuffPost Live

The impromptu talking tour that has grown, to my surprise, out of my Slate piece from last week asking why it's been a generation since we admitted any new songs to the Christmas pop canon, marches on. I was on HuffPost Live earlier today for about 20 minutes, part of a webcam panel hosted by Nancy Redd that included Huffington Post social media fellow Ryan Kristobak and -- this was exciting -- Walter Afanasieff, the man who co-wrote "All I Want for Christmas Is You" with Mariah Carey.

The video doesn't seem to be embeddable, but you can watch the segment here. You'll see my head bobbing around distractingly -- useful in boxing, less so in on-camera interviews. You'll also get a nice look at my girlfriend's mom's spoon collection in the background. 

Webcam conferences are always a little dicey. You're contending with wildly variable video and audio quality, unpredictable transmission delays that create awkward pauses in the conversation and make it difficult to tell when the other party or parties have finished speaking, and frequently, unsynchronized sound and image. Allowing for all that, I think this went reasonably well.

Walter had just finished a point about the incongruity of sunny Los Angeles Christmases when Nancy called the segment to a close. Bad timing! I'd read only yesterday in Jody Rosen's terrific book White Christmas about how Irving Berlin's eponymous Christmas song, the most popular of all time, has originally opened with a verse about that very thing -- Christmas in Beverly Hills -- that Berlin ordered removed from the sheet music after Bing Crosby's chorus-only version in the 1942 film Holiday Inn proved to be definitive. Walter teed up the perfect opportunity for me to share this fascinating story, but the bit ended before I could.

I've got another handful of radio and podcast appearances coming up between now and Christmas Eve. I'm grateful for all the practice I'm getting forming sentences in real time. I'll try not to repeat myself too much.

Concerning the Death of Ray Price

View fullsize

"Well, if I’m going to go out, I’ll go out singing." Ray Price, 1926-2013.

I was waiting to board a plane at Reagan National Airport this morning, operating on about two hours’ sleep, when the Washington Post‘s J. Freedom du Lac, who used to assign me music reviews back when he was the paper’s pop music critic, Tweeted me the WashPo’s obit of country legend Ray Price.

Price’s death had been falsely reported by his son over the weekend, but as I read Terence McArdle‘s thoughtful summing up of Price’s extraordinary life, it quickly became clear he really had left us this time.

I'm quoted briefly in the story, from my review of a 2007 concert that featured Price, Willie Nelson, and Merle Haggard, touring together as The Last of the Breed. It was a great show. I brought my dad along as my plus-one. "I'm 81 and I ain't quit yet!" Price told us on that evening six years ago.

Anyway, I was honored. R.I.P, Ray.

The Washington Post, Sept. 8, 2007

Musical Advent Calendar: On Her Majesty's Secret Service Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, 1969

View fullsize

The soundtrack album for On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the once-reviled 1969 James Bond film that's enjoyed a critical reappraisal among fans in recent decades, isn't a Christmas record, true. But the film, which starred George Lazenby -- a handsome and hardy but unengaging Australian model with no prior acting experience -- in his single appearance as 007, is set at Christmas. 

Its soundtrack features some of the best music in the entire 50-year franchise. You've got John Barry's kinetic opening title theme (reprised in Brad Bird's The Incredibles, among other places). You've got its elegiac love theme, "We Have All the Time in the World," with lyrics by Hal David, beautifully sung by Louis Armstrong.

And until a couple of weeks ago, I didn't realize that you've also got Nina's (whose?) "Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown?"

With its crisply annunciated Julie Andrews-style lead vocal and creepy childrens' choir, it would seem more at home in, say, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (written by Bond creator Ian Fleming) than in a Bond joint. It's lack of suitability for its original context makes it a perfect fit my annual yulemix, which I have this year decided to call Children Go Where I Send Thee! Yuletunes Eclectic & Inexplicable Hard Eight: The Desolation of Nog. I have my reasons.

Matt Mira and Matt Gorley just posted the OHMSS episode of their terrific James Bonding podcast last week. Highly recommended.

Musical Advent Calendar: Children, Go Where I Send Thee! Yuletunes Eclectic & Inexplicable Hard Eight: The Desolation of Nog, 2013

View fullsize

We're going in a radically different direction with today's Musical Advent Calendar selection, debuting the cover of a classic Christmas record yet-to-come.

That would be the eighth in my unstoppable series of holiday mixtapes, Children, Go Where I Send Thee! Yuletunes Eclectic & Inexplicable Hard Eight: The Desolation of Nog. My only real goal for this to staunch the 2009-2012 trend of these things getting steadily longer -- last year's installment weighed in at a truly obnoxious 130 minutes, only two minutes shorter than the classic holiday movie Die Hard. Which is not to say I wasn't proud of the goddamned thing. I was.

Anyway, that grand ambition of brevity flowered only, uh, briefly. When it drops in a week or so, my new yulemix will be another feature-length epic to comfort and amuse you through your car trips, your long layovers, and your interminable sleepless nights of loathing and regret. I think you'll really dig it. Merry Christmas!

Musical Advent Calendar: Christmas with McGriff, 1964

View fullsize

"Featuring the fantastic organ artistry of Jimmy McGriff"!

Mr. McGriff, whose career spanned another 46 years after he played on Ray Charles' "I've Got a Woman" in 1961, died in 2008. I regret that I did not pay tribute to him on that year's collection, Santa Claus and Popcorn.

Musical Advent Calendar: Christmas with Buck Owens and his Buckaroos, 1965

View fullsize

My best find this year. The songs more than live up to the sleeve's considerable promise. How had I never heard this, or even heard of this, before? You mofos been holding out on me.

I'll be fighting the temptation to over-represent it on the yulemix. Better to ration out its treasures over the coming years. I'm playing the long game, yulemixwise. But this one goes so deep I can afford to throw away good tracks like "Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy" here.

Musical Advent Calendar: The Don Ho Christmas Album, 1967

View fullsize

December 4th. And I've barely begun my yulemix. But I'm only three days late starting the Yuletunes Advent Calendar, wherein I will post one classic album cover each day until Christmas. 

This one was part of my big Black Friday splurge, which came to just over $14. I got it in a dollar bin. For 15 percent off. There is a star to the east of Ho's face, yes. I wanted to show you the actual CD I got so you can see that it apparently once belonged to a cat named Bob Burger. C'mon, that's a little bit funny.

Anyway, can't talk. Yulemixin'.