5 Songs Friday Dec. 20, 2024

This week I wish you all the best for the holiday season

Cyndi Lauper – “Home on Christmas Day” 1998 from Merry Christmas . . . Have a Nice Life. I assume that Lauper was told how many independent radio dj’s (like me) had fallen in love with her “Feels Like Christmas” song from her Hat Full of Stars album a few years earlier. So she decided to write up a whole album’s worth of songs for the season. This is the first track on her delightful Christmas record. It’s got an indelible chorus, even if the verses are a little less up to her melodic high standards. But, man, give me a twelve-string guitar chiming away, and a cello interacting with a sliding bass riff alongside some jingling percussion, and let Lauper belt out that mournful desire to get back to her love for the holiday, and I’m swooning. I love the little laugh she puts in between the lines, “But the twinkle in his eyes / Reminds me of you.” The shadowing second vocal with Lauper on the chorus is very effective, and helps the song remind me of the Bangles, who never got around to doing a holiday record.

Smokey Robinson & the Miracles – “Peace on Earth (Good Will Toward Men)” 1970 from The Season for Miracles. We all know the most mellifluous version of the title words to this song is from Linus Van Pelt in A Charlie Brown Christmas. (Technically, he says “On Earth, peace,” but who the heck remembers it that way?) I’m gonna give second place though to Smokey Robinson on this earnest little prayer for all the problems of the world to go away and be replaced by simple behavior changes. It’s an interesting song that doesn’t have verses as we understand them, that shifts into a vigorously angry bridge outlining all the troubles that need to be eradicated, and that benefits from the calm in the voices of Smokey and his compadres. I don’t generally feel that asking everybody to just get along is going to work, but if Smokey is doing the asking, I’m willing to consider it.

Charles Brown – “Please Come Home For Christmas” 1960 single available on Charles Brown Sings Christmas Songs. I am a creature of pop culture, but I still have blank spots. Wikipedia just told me that the Eagles had a gigantic hit with this song in the late 70s, and that Jon Bon Jovi did it in the 80s, but I can’t conjure up what either of those versions sounds like. I did enjoy Aaron Neville’s take on it in the early 90s. But nothing can possibly beat the original. Charles Brown, one of the great crooning blues singers, already had one signature Christmas song, “Merry Christmas Baby.” But he came up with this one to guarantee him two places in the holiday music hall of fame. The production on this record is cool, with the tubular bell chimes and the slow piano triplets. Brown conjures a mixture of sorrow and hope as he tells his lover of his loneliness, and his desire to have a return for Christmas, “if not for Christmas, then New Year’s Night.”

Rough Shop – “Christmas One More Time” 2009 from Just Because It Was Christmas. I’m lucky to share St. Louis air with a whole bunch of talented musicians, many of whom are either in the band Rough Shop or have performed with them at one of their 20 or so annual holiday spectaculars. Not content with just working up amazing versions of seasonal songs from all sorts of sources, the members of Rough Shop have written a whole bunch of original Christmas songs which can stand with the best of this sort of thing this century. “Christmas One More Time” comes from the pen of lead guitarist Andy Ploof, who sings with harmony provided by the late and wonderful Anne Tkach, who also played bass. It always reminds me in a weird way of Fairport Convention crossed with the Full Tilt Boogie Band. Ploof and Tkach sing as a couple that spends eleven months of the year fighting, but “put away the knives” for the holidays. It’s a stalwart English-folk derived melody that gives Ploof and pianist Jon Parsons plenty of opportunities to solo beautifully. And it obeys one of my first rules of getting out of songwriting troubles – when in doubt, modulate. About two thirds of the way through it speeds up and makes the similarities to Janis Joplin’s version of “Me and Bobby McGee” blatantly obvious. This is from the first of two Christmas albums Rough Shop released (so far) and I highly recommend them both.

The Whispers – “Happy Holidays to You” 1979 from Happy Holidays To You. The Whispers have never crossed over to white audiences in a big way (though they had some hits), but in r&b circles, they’ve been big stars for most of their long career. This Christmas album is a perfect example of what makes them so good – arrangements which make great use of four distinct voices which can blend in elegantly sweet harmonies. Opening with piano and xylophone, then adding sleigh bells and strings before one voice sets the stage with an “oooh,” the stage is set for the description of children’s joy on the holiday followed by wishing good for all the people in the world. There’s a verse in falsetto that sends a shout out to God and “Happy birthday to your son.” Everybody gets to sing lead at some point, and the “Happy holidays to you” line followed by the unison “Happy holidays, happy holidays” is an unforgettable earworm. It’s all performed with good will and cheer, as well as earnest love. That last chord formed by the four voices on “you” makes me content.