Sunday, December 1, 2019

Breaking out the Christmas Music

It’s the Sunday after Thanksgiving and that means it’s time to add some Christmas Music to the mix of Oldies.

As a young Top 40 radio DJ, happiness was that big old teletype paper box placed under the table where the cart machines and Gates ST101 by the way in case you were wondering “ST” stood for Spot Tape! Most of the time, it was like Santa on Christmas Eve, the box would magically appear and it was time to dig in and begin to add those Christmas gems to the mix.

But one year, I guess it was my coming of age, the Santa-delivering-the Christmas-tunes myth was broken when Woody brought the box in during my shift and said, “Have at it, you know the rules!” Ah yes – the Christmas Music Rules! Here is how they went. So that first week, we were supposed to play one Christmas song per half hour. The next week, two songs and so on, adding one more Christmas song to the mix each week until Christmas Eve at 6 PM we would go solid Christmas until 6 PM Christmas Day.

We did not go cold turkey on the Christmas music at 6 PM on Christmas day; it was a gradual decrease between December 25 and New Years Day until we were back to the regular Top 40/Up and Comers/Solid Gold rotation when we hung up the calendar for the new year. For the most part, I think the audience liked the ease-in/ease-out approach to holiday music. A not inconsequential portion of the requests I’d get from listeners over the phone were for those Christmas Tunes. Although, I do remember getting a call from some Grinch one late December day telling me that Christmas was over, and that it was time to drop the Christmas tunes. I had rehearsed the perfect retort in case this happened and I gleefully told him that the Twelve Days of Christmas began, not ended on December 25th and that the last day of the 12 days was not until Epiphany, January 6th.

There were two types of Christmas songs that I loved; the traditional and the rock and roll. In that cardboard box there were classics like Gene Autry’s “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” and Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” which was the number one song of all time until Elton John’s tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales; "Candle in the Wind 1997" replaced it after her tragic passing. The other type of Christmas Music that I loved to play were the ones that were released by the artists of the day, such as The Drifter’s “White Christmas”, Bobby Helms “Jingle Bell Rock” and Brenda Lee’s “Rock Around the Christmas Tree” and who could forget that iconic 1963 album; A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector. Apple Records re-released the album in 1972, with different cover art—a photograph of Spector dressed as a heavily bearded Santa Claus, wearing a "Back to Mono" button—and retitled “Phil Spector's Christmas Album.” My favorite track from that album was "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" written by Ellie Greenwich, Jeff Barry, Phil Spector. Spector produced that album with his classic “Wall of Sound” approach. Also many of the Mid 60’s artists were releasing Christmas singles; Elvis “Blue Christmas”, The Temptations “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” and “Silent Night”, The Supremes, “Joy to the World”, and many more. In 1973 Motown released their Christmas compilation “A Motown Christmas” which along with Phil Spector's Christmas Album is a solid backbone of any 1960’s Christmas Music collection.

As much as I enjoy the Christmas Music season both as a listener and a radio host, I am absolutely not a fan of a radio station going “wall to wall” Christmas in Mid November as so many of today’s stations are prone to do. It’s like candy after Halloween, consume it in moderation.

In modern times, if I heard that my favorite station was going “wall to wall Christmas” I’d immediately begin to worry. So many corporate radio clusters use the Christmas tunes to buffer their audiences from a format change. Not always but more often than not, they would not return to the format that I enjoyed when they went back to regular programming in January, but would switch to whatever the corporate programmers deemed more “relevant.” That’s their word, not mine, what usually followed was never more relevant to me. (Is my grumpy old curmudgeon showing? Bah-Humbug!)

Lest you think that I don’t appreciate newer Christmas Music, for example I’ll tell you that I’m a huge fan of the Pentatonix Albums “That's Christmas to Me” and “A Pentatonix Christmas.” Some of the others, not so much!

This year, I plan on breaking out the Christmas Music on my WUSC-FM Backbeat show in a big way. Tomorrow, December 2nd at 10:15 AM Eastern time I’ll be playing my first Christmas Song of the season. It will be (drum roll…) Snoopy’s Christmas by The Royal Guardsmen. And to make it all special Marvin “Chris” Nunley, one of the Royal Guardsmen will be doing the introduction live over the phone from Ocala Florida. If you listen really closely, you might hear the “B” side: “It Kinda Looks Like Christmas!”

Later on in the show I’ll be featuring a long lost Christmas oldie; “Christmas Eve In My Home Town” by Bobby Vinton. This song was written by an old fiend and long time local television presenter Don Upton. Don worked at both WIS-TV and WLTX-TV. It’s gonna be a good holiday season. Oh MY!

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