Happy New Year from SHECKYmagazine.com!
Our postings have been on the light side. We’ve been paying attention to other matters– the holidays, entertaining, the Male Half’s First Cruise (which is now history)– and it’s been a vacation within a vacation.
In prepping for Christmas, we determined that our playlist here at SHECKYmagazine HQ would be strictly drawn from our carefully selected collection of mostly mid-century Christmas recordings. We gleaned them from carefully digitized vinyl and scrupulously transcribed audio cassettes then pumped the resulting files through the stereo system using our mp3 player.
These holiday recordings by Dean Martin, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, Jimmy Sturr, Les Brown, Bing Crosby raised the bar to very high level. Most of the recordings since– the overwrought Phil Specter stuff, the novelty songs using chipmunks and grandmas and injurious reindeer and the ubiquitous bleatings of Bruce Springsteen, Mariah Carey and (gulp!) Natalie Cole– are crass, calculated and cheap by comparison.
We incorporated a new album into the mix this year. We happened across a pristine copy of a cassette of Mel Tormé’s “Christmas Songs” and immediately pumped it through Sound Forge, converting it into mp3’s. It is a delight.
In the world of holiday music, Tormé is famous for having penned one of the more popular modern Christmas songs, “The Christmas Song.” (“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”) So, you’d think that an entire album featuring his treatments of Xmas standards would be as prominent on department store playlists as the wretched “Motown Christmas Album.”
But, no!
Tormé’s collection (recorded in 1992 for the Telarc label), with the Cincinnati Sinfoneitta, is tasteful, understated, and swingin’! It belongs right up there with the greats, perhaps even knocking off Andy Williams’ aptly titled “Andy Williams Christmas Album” at the number one spot. (We have a near-mint vinyl copy of Williams’ 1963 classic, recorded for Columbia, which is curiously lacking any information on its cover, other than a listing of the song titles! Is that even legal?)
Click here for a clip of Mel singing/swinging “Good King Wenceslaus”! Mel, backed by a standup bass and then a tinkling jazz piano with brushes on a snare, is at his best. He even sings the more obscure verses where most vocalists dare not go:
Bring me flesh and bring me wine
Bring me pine logs hither
Thou and I will see him dine
When we bear him thither.Page and monarch forth they went
Forth they went together
Through the rude wind’s wild lament
And the bitter weather
Anyone who can sing a song and use the word “thither” and still maintain credibility is a master!