🎄 Holidays! Little-known holiday songs

[Rudy]

I was just thinking of a Jackie Gleason song on an old 2-LP Capitol set my Dad owned. It's called "Late In December". It's a nice, slower song reminiscent of the holidays.

Henry Mancini wrote an instrumental called "Carol For Another Chrstmas" that I'm also fond of.

For that matter, Bacharach's "The Bell That Couldn't Jingle" would almost qualify, although I don't know if Bacharach's or Alpert's version was first. (In a comp, I'd use Bacharach's version anyway, just to be different...Herb's I already have on a couple of other discs...well covered there. )

This would be a nice compilation to put together--unique holiday/Xmas songs that aren't often heard except in the concept of an artist's album.

Anyone else have some gems to share? I'm not exactly looking for album filler, but something that stands well on its own as a holiday song.

 

[Mike Blakesley]

I can think of a couple:

Nat King Cole "Buon Natale," a waltz about a town in Italy that has no clocks, so they celebrate Christmas all year. It was done more popularly by a country singer whose name escapes me at the moment. I've been looking for a Cole recording of it for a while with no success.

And, "Sing Hosanna Hallelujah" by the New Christy Minstrels, which was one of my favorites as a kid and I heard it last year on XM for the first time in at least 30 years. Haven't heard it this year yet.

Another favorite of mine, not a rarity but not that well known, is George Winston's "Peace." It's on his DECEMBER album and is really just a winter song, but it's got that quiet-evening-Christmas-snowfall vibe.

 

[Rudy]

Nat King Cole "Buon Natale," a waltz about a town in Italy that has no clocks, so they celebrate Christmas all year. It was done more popularly by a country singer whose name escapes me at the moment. I've been looking for a Cole recording of it for a while with no success.

Cole, Christmas & Kids...did you ever pick that one up? It's been out of print for awhile. It's not on his later "kids" Xmas compilation, which is still available. Amazon actually has the cover for Cole, Christmas & Kids on its site, but has it mistakenly attached to a CD with a different title...

It also features an earlier version of "The Christmas Song"; the one we all know so well was the later one re-arranged slightly by Ralph Carmichael. (IIRC, Nelson Riddle may have done the original arrangement with the strings.)

You have a PM...

 

[A&Mguyfromwayback]

There's a great singer/songwriter named Rob Mathes (his Christmas CD was one of my album list faves) who has written a couple of great songs that are starting to get cover versions by the likes of Vanessa Williams and Kathy Mattea: "When The Baby Grew Up", "Star Bright", "One Small Glimpse" and "Good News" are some of the ones I like.

I would have said "Mary Did You Know" (Mark Lowry/Buddy Greene), which is a song I've liked for a while, but in the couple of years it's been covered enough to take it way out of the 'obscure' category...

 

[A&Mguyfromwayback]

There's a great singer/songwriter named Rob Mathes (his Christmas CD was one of my album list faves) who has written a couple of great songs that are starting to get cover versions by the likes of Vanessa Williams and Kathy Mattea: "When The Baby Grew Up", "Star Bright", "One Small Glimpse" and "Good News" are some of the ones I like.

 

[Brasil_Nut]

Anyone else have some gems to share?

Although mentioned in another Holiday thread, Vic Damone's "Christmas In San Francisco" is amazing. It sounds like a classic from first note to last. A definite keeper!! (IMHO)

Jon

 

[Plucky87]

Royal Guardsmen - Kinda Looks Like Christmas......just can't resist this one (B-side of Snoopy's Christmas)

 

[DAN BOLTON]

The song I mentioned in an earlier post seems to fit in this category...I hears somebody mention THE GIFT in another thread, and was wondering if someone could share some of the lyrics, especially the chorus. Maybe this is the one...



Dan

 

[jimac51]

Here's a few? "It Wasn't His Child"-Trisha Yearwood;"Just In Time For Christmas"-Nancy LaMott;"Suzy Snowflake"-Rosemary Clooney; "I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas"-Gayla Peevy"It's Christmas Time All Over The World"-Sammy Davis Jr.-these have all received airplay and may have had some real success in their own time but still seem to fall short of that "classic" level,though each seem to have something special to add to the holiday. I can remember buying a "remaindered" copy of Vince Guaraldi's "A Charlie Brown Christmas" in 1970 and the J.C. Penney cashier jealous that I had found a true bargain in the bin-the airplay for "Christmas Time Is Here" was about nil till the CD era and after almost 40 years.look how frequently covered that little Christmas tree of a song has become-it's now a classic-all it needed was a little love. It looks like good ol' Charlie Brown wasn't such a blockhead after all. Mac

 

[Brasil_Nut]

As a child, I once owned a 78 entitled "Dingle, Dingle, Jingle" on Disneyland Records. I believe it was Sterling Holloway who did the vocal. Don't know why, but it just popped into my head as I was reading the thread. I remember this record well, as I just about played the grooves off of it as a child.

Jon

...sharing a childhood Christmas Memory...

 

[Rudy]

I can remember buying a "remaindered" copy of Vince Guaraldi's "A Charlie Brown Christmas" in 1970 and the J.C. Penney cashier jealous that I had found a true bargain in the bin-the airplay for "Christmas Time Is Here" was about nil till the CD era and after almost 40 years.look how frequently covered that little Christmas tree of a song has become-it's now a classic-all it needed was a little love. It looks like good ol' Charlie Brown wasn't such a blockhead after all. Mac

I may be on the quest for a stere first pressing of this album, with the original cover. That LP is the best it ever has sounded. The original tape has been used so much that even the SACD release from lats year doesn't sound all that good--poor tape is just wearing out.

 

[Tim Neely]

I know lots of obscure Christmas songs deserving of more attention. Let me pick 10:

One Small Child -- was done by that other Swedish superstar, Evie Tornquist, on her 1970s Christmas album Come On, Ring Those Bells. A few years ago, I heard this on a Christian station that was playing all Christmas music near the holiday, and I had to find it ... and I have.

Christmas Is a Birthday -- a gorgeous song done by Burl Ives on his Have A Holly Jolly Christmas album.

Christmas in the Trenches -- John McCutcheon, from his 1984 album Winter Solstice, it's a first-person story of the 1914 "Christmas Truce" as if sung by one of the grunts who was there.

The Gift -- I'm not talking here of the treacly song done by Jim Brickman with Colin Raye and Susan Ashton. No, this one was written in 1990 by Stephanie Davis, and first recorded by Garth Brooks in 1992 on Beyond the Season and lost in the shuffle there. In 2002, a young woman named Aselin Debison recorded it and made it her own. The first line is "A poor orphan girl named Maria..."

Don't Forget to Feed the Reindeer -- a charming song recorded by Peggy Lee on her Christmas Carnival album.

The Magic of Christmas Day (God Bless Us Everyone) -- written by, of all people, Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, he wrote it as a present to his wife and kids. A producer found it, pitched it to Celine Dion, and Celine liked it so much she included it on her These Are Special Times CD. But the better version uses the same backing track, adds the processed voice of Rosie O'Donnell, and puts a children's choir on top of that; it was issued on A Rosie Christmas in 1999. Twenty years from now, I think this Spectorian record will be considered a classic.

The Angels Cried -- another 1990s song, it was done in a gorgeous duet by Alan Jackson and Alison Krauss on Alan's first Christmas album.

Winter Song and Christmas Song -- these are the same song with different lyrics, both done by 1970s rock band Angel. They both work for me.

A Strange Way to Save the World -- originally done by the Christian group 4HIM, covered by other CCM artists in the years since, but the original is definitive.

Touch Hands on Christmas Morning -- a sentimental favorite, as it was on the first Grants A Very Merry Christmas album from 1967. Mike Douglas, the talk show host, recorded it on his Christmas album.

 

[Tim Neely]

By the way, I think the first version of "The Bell That Couldn't Jingle" was by Bobby Vinton, on his Christmas album A Very Merry Christmas from 1964. Bobby Helms also recorded it when he was with Kapp Records in 1965, as the B-side of one of his many re-records of "Jingle Bell Rock." Both Bacharach's and Alpert's versions came later.

 

[Brasil_Nut]

The above mentioned title of "Dingle, Dingle, Jingle" on Disneyland Records is incorrect...it should read "Kris Kringle" and is, indeed, sung by Sterling Holloway. I was thinking of the main verse of the song: "...Kris, Kris Kringle, with a Dingle, Dingle, Jingle is headed on his merry way..."

Jon

 

[A&Mguyfromwayback]

I heard a fun, goofy Lou Rawls song on the speakers in a store today called "Good Time Christmas" or something like that; a VERY sixties feel, almost like Ramsey Lewis' "The In Crowd" mixed with a Christmas song

 

[Ed Bishop]

For some reason, the 'grumpy' or downbeat holiday numbers attract me, for some perverse reason.

Obvious examples: Greg Lake's "I Believe In Father Christmas"; Jethro Tull's "Christmas Song"; the Staple Singers' "Who Took The Merry Out Of Christmas"; and the extremely foreboding Liona Boyd guitar version of "Prelude On The Huron Carol," which ends with three dark, descending chords that have never quite left me. Strange way to end an album(A GUITAR FOR CHRISTMAS), an otherwise upbeat effort. It seems as if, at the very end, she felt a twinge of mortality, of the sadness behind the gladness of the holiday, and simply left it there as a reminder to embrace the good times, they never last.

Of course I've been accused of reading something into it that may not necessarily be there, but I always trust my gut, it's never wrong...and after listening to this one for 23 years now, my opinion remains the same.