If You Want It
I am curmudgeonly about some things, but Christmas music has never been one of them. At our house, the CD changer is usually full of nothing but Christmas CDs during December. I notice Jethro Tull is out with a Christmas album this year, which takes them about as far afield from Aqualung and Thick as a Brick as it is possible to be. (The album does includes the superb "A Christmas Song" and "Ring Out Solstice Bells," however, which the group recorded back in the day.) For so-called classic artists, a whole Christmas album is generally a give-up move, although reviews of Tull's album have been positive. I also noticed this one. It's not a joke. It's a real album. He doesn't actually sing, but he did write a couple of the tunes. It's like what would happen if Andy Williams ran for the Senate, which I guess wouldn't be so weird now.

 Here are five CDs you would do well to find and play between now and the Big Day:

1. Phil Spector's Christmas Album, Various Artists, 1963. A monumental, moving, beautiful work of art from the Wall-of-Sound producer and his stable of artists. This album contains the best work ever by the Ronettes, and that includes "Be My Baby": "Sleigh Ride" overflows with youthful joy, while their version of "Frosty the Snowman" is the only good one I know. Spector's arrangement of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town," done for the Crystals, has become the one everybody knows, thanks to Bruce Springsteen's use of it. And Darlene Love's versions of "A Marshmallow World" and "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" should earn her a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, even if she had never recorded a note with the Crystals.

2. In the Christmas Spirit, Booker T. and the MGs, 1966. These guys were the house band at Stax Records in Memphis during the 1960s, and played on dozens of R&B and soul classics. They were the most economical of bands, never doing more than absolutely necessary to get the groove across. To contemporary ears, that sparse, no-wasted-licks style is so refreshing it's almost radical, but especially on this gorgeously funky album.

3. A Charlie Brown Christmas, Vince Guaraldi Trio, 1967. This is the best instrumental Christmas album of all time, period. It's the soundtrack for the legendary Peanuts special that first appeared in 1965, and if you grew up watching the show annually, you know all this music--exuberant, cool, sentimental, and heartfelt, an album you can put on in July and enjoy even then.

4. Pretty Paper, Willie Nelson, 1979. In 1978, Willie Nelson collaborated with Booker T. Jones (see In The Christmas Spirit above) on a magnificent album of standards called Stardust. The two got together again at Christmas 1979 for this album of holiday tunes in the Stardust style. If you're looking for gregarious good cheer, you won't find a lot here--just plenty of moments that will surprise you with their understated beauty. You'll know you're plugged into the vision when you realize that "Christmas Blues," an original instrumental you've never heard anywhere else, is the perfect way to end the album.

5. A Christmas Album, The Mighty Blue Kings, 2000. A little-known gem from one of Chicago's best rockin' swing bands, now apparently defunct. This album mixes blues and jazz covers, seasonal standards, and originals in the Kings' usual muscular style. It's the one to play in the middle of the Christmas party when things start smokin'.

Next, five Christmas singles:

1.-2. Yeah, one way to look at them is as warhorses nobody really needs to hear again. But another way to take them is as indispensable components of American popular culture. "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby and "The Christmas Song" by Nat King Cole are still priceless and essential after all these years.

3. Someday at Christmas/Stevie Wonder. So deceptively simple, yet one of Stevie's best records, seasonal or otherwise. It sounds like a nursery rhyme, but you find yourself hooked as Stevie unfolds his vision of a utopian Christmas to come. And then he breaks your heart:

Someday all our dreams will come to be
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmastime

"Someday At Christmas" brings me nearly to tears every time I hear it, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. And on this Christmas, the lump it leaves in the throat is particularly large. Said sentiments thus lead us to . . .

4 "Happy Xmas (War is Over)"/John Lennon and Yoko Ono. This was my favorite holiday song until Lennon was murdered just before Christmas 1980, and for years after I couldn't hear it without getting angry. Those years are past now, and I don't love this song like I used to, but I still couldn't imagine the season without it. It always seemed a bit odd to me that cynical old the-Beatles-are-more-popular-than-Jesus John Lennon would embrace the jolly season, yet he did it with the properly bemused attitude, placing the significance of Christmas where it seems to belong: on what happens inside those who celebrate it, and how that could change the world.

5. Merry Christmas Baby/Charles Brown. Brown first recorded this sometime during the 1950s, and rerecorded it many times thereafter. His duet version with Bonnie Raitt on A Very Special Christmas Volume 2 is absolutely righteous, and about as cool as it is possible for a single piece of music to be. [12/04]