Holiday Songs Archives – How Good It Is

164: Chinese Food on Christmas

To be honest, I didn’t really expect both of the musicians I approached this year to be both very open to the idea of an interview and so generous with their time. But I’m definitely glad that they were, especially because you get to benefit from the chats I had with them. And during this holiday season you get two long episodes instead of one semi-long one. Win-win all around!

Brandon Walker’s “Chinese Food on Christmas” isn’t as Baltimore-centric as David DeBoy’s song is, but it definitely has its origins in the fact that Brandon is from the Baltimore area, which is estimated to have about 100,000 people of the Jewish faith living here. Baltimore City is just under 600,000 people, so that’s a pretty big chunk of matzoh, there. And, of course, he shot the video at several spots in the immediate area:

1. 1. Hunt Valley Towne Centre is a local outdoor shopping mall just north of the city. And yes, they spell it like that.
  2. The Senator Theatre is in the northern part of town. You may recognize it from several John Waters films.
  3. The Chinese restaurant (now gone) that appears near the end is in Owings Mills, MD. It’s perhaps best known for being where the Baltimore Ravens’ training facility is located.
  4. And, of course, some of it was shot in his mother’s basement. I don’t think you can tour that or anything.

So anyway, here’s my chat with Brandon:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:27 — 42.1MB)

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And here’s the second, fun version of the video, which Brandon posted about 13 years ago:

As usual, interview episodes don’t have a transcript created by me, but I’m curious to know whether the transcript generator provided by Blubrry gets the job done for you.

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163: Crabs for Christmas

Over the last several years, radio stations have been snapped up by large corporations. Then, as a cost-cutting measure, certain functions have been centralized. One of these has been the stations’ playlists, the literal list of songs that a station has in its rotation. This has led to a homogenization of radio stations and it kind of makes them not as much fun to listen to when you travel.

That said, there are going to be variations to the playlists depending on requests and local tastes. For instance, Billboard lists the Top Song of 2022 as “Bad Habit” by Steve Lacy, but in Charlotte, North Carolina it comes out as #16 for the year.

In Baltimore, there’s a Christmas-related song that’s a perennial favorite among the locals. However, it gets next to zero airplay anywhere else. And the song’s author and performer is fine with that, because he knows that the song is very Baltimore-centric. His name is David DeBoy, and his song is called “Crabs for Christmas.”

David DeBoy is a local theater actor, a television and movie performer, a voiceover artist, a motivational speaker, and a generally cool guy. And I’m not saying that because he responded so quickly to my request for an interview. In today’s episode we spend some time talking about his career overall and some of the stories connected to “Crabs for Christmas.” And I think my opening question may have caught him by surprise.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:50 — 44.6MB)

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Later this week I’ll have another Baltimore-oriented holiday song for you, and a chat with that song’s composer and performer.

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(Sorry, no transcripts for interview shows. However, the Blubrry podcast player is now supposed to generate one automatically, so let’s see how well that works. )

135: Lesser Known Christmas Pop

Merry Christmas!

I actually had a different show in mind but I got to listening to some old radio airchecks (not my own) and I was inspired to do something different from the usual show.

The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s a half-hour long. That’s because I’m playing songs in their entirety and not really talking very much. (If any episode is going to net me a C&D letter, this’ll be the one.)

In this year’s Christmas episode, I’m playing eight songs that don’t get airplay anymore for some reason. A few of them are kinda goofy, a couple are kind of derivative, and I daresay a few of them are seminal to their genre. And while I share a little history with you here and there, the intent this time is to just sit back and wonder why the All Christmas All The Time station in your area is sticking with the same twenty songs, and not playing any of these guys.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:00 — 24.2MB)

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All of these songs can be found without too much hassle on Amazon Music or YouTube. If you want to revisit them, here’s the playlist:

Merry Christmas, Mary—Tommy Dee and Carol Kay
Merry, Merry Christmas, Baby—Dodie Stevens
Santa’s Song—The Oak Ridge Boys
Yulesville—Edd “Kookie” Byrnes
Santa Claus Meets the Purple People Eater—Sheb Wooley
Please Come Home For Christmas—Charles Brown
White Christmas—The Ravens
Silent Night—The Ravens (flip side of White Christmas)

And just for the giggles, here’s one more song that didn’t make it into the show itself. It’s Bobby Helms’ other shot at a Christmas tune, from 1965. He wasn’t the original artist (I think he was the fourth) to release this song. I think the most popular version came from Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass in 1968, though Bobby Vinton’s version is kind of well-known, too. At any rate, here’s Bobby Helms:

Sorry, no transcript of this episode, since it’s mostly music.

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Episode 100–Christmas (Baby Please Come Home

Holy Moley! Episode 100! What a milestone!

This is the first of TWO episodes I’ll be publishing this week. You’re getting this one now, and another one sometime tomorrow, because I felt badly about taking my time with Episode 99.

As I mentioned during the show, the Phil Spector-produced Christmas album went through several re-issues and name changes between its release in 1963 and the early 1980s, including an unfortunate period when the album was remastered into manufactured stereo. In those days, that often meant that the higher-end sounds went to one channel and the lower-end stuff went to the other. It was a mess and really added nothing to the product overall.

At any rate, it was around the same time in the 1980s that a bunch of different events came together and allowed the song to finally break out. One was the reissue of the album on Rhino Records, in its original mono mixes. The second was Darlene Love’s appearance in a Broadway show, which led directly to her string of performances on David Letterman’s show on both NBC and CBS, and finally we have the cover version by U2 the following year. All of these things made for a resurgence in both the popularity of the song, and in Darlene Love’s career.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:00 — 12.1MB)

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Stay tuned! Very soon we’ll take a look at a Nirvana song, by listener request!

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Episode 62–Almost Christmas

Click here for a transcript of this show.

It’s the holiday season, and that means that radio stations have moved a bunch of traditional songs into their rotations. Some of them have even gone All-Christmas-All-The-Time. But it seems as though some of these songs don’t stand up to closer scrutiny as Christmas songs. They’re set in the winter time, but they don’t appear to mention Christmas at all, or they happen to take place during the season but that’s about it.

And while I’m complaining about Christmas songs that don’t stand up to scrutiny, have you really listened to Andy Williams’ “Happy Holiday (The Holiday Season)”? Sometimes I think poor Andy had a stroke in the middle of recording that one. It’s little more than a bunch of clichés strung together, and then he loses his mind and starts spouting nonsense lyrics, and failing miserably to make them rhyme. I’m going to blame Kay Thompson for this mess, because there’s no way Irving Berlin is responsible.

And don’t get me started (again) on “My Favorite Things.”

During the show I mentioned a short cartoon version of “Frosty the Snowman” that’s aired every Christmas season since 1955 on WGN-TV in Chicago. Here’s that clip for your listening pleasure:

And while I’m providing extra goodies, here, also as promised, is the audio of Wally Schirra reporting a “UFO” in December of 1965.

When I was in the third grade I sent a letter to NASA, and they sent me a packet of stuff, including photos of astronauts on the moon, a photo of Earth taken from space, and a flyer with frequently-asked questions about outer space. I remember distinctly that one of the questions was about whether the astronauts had ever seen a UFO, and the answer was that Wally Schirra had reported a UFO that turned out to be Santa Claus. I presume they were referring to this event.

At any rate, the episode has been available for a little while now, but if you’re the DIY sort you may want to download or listen here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:15 — 11.8MB)

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I’m likely to be out of town next weekend, so it’s possible that I’ll be taking a week off from the show. Next time around we finish Shel Silverstein for sure, and then I have a listener-suggested episode.

Have a great holiday! Thanks so much for your support!

58–Alice’s Restaurant Massacree

The early-to-mid 1960s was a great time to be a folk singer, whether or not you were the protesting type. And Arlo Guthrie, son of Woody Guthrie, had the decade pretty much fall into his lap. It didn’t hurt that he was actually kind of good at it. And when, as a freewheeling 17-year-old, he and a friend took a fateful trip to the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts to visit a couple of friends for the Thanksgiving weekend. It turned out to be an adventure that he later immortalized in a song. Between airplay on a single radio station in New York City and its inclusion on the Newport Folk Festival’s main stage, Arlo was able to get a record contract and the song became the entire first side of his debut album.

Arlo Guthrie in a still from
the 1969 film *Alice’s Restaurant*

And despite the song’s 18-1/2 minute length, and its subject matter (much of which was taboo then), and some of the language used (some of which is taboo now), the song continues to get radio airplay, in full, and unedited.

Although the restaurant and the microbus are long gone, Guthrie continues to perform the song from time to time, though he’ll update the lyrics so that they’re either more topical or less offensive. Or both.

And as usual, for the nine of you who don’t use the podcatchers, here’s the episode for listening or downloading:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:00 — 13.5MB)

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And of course, if you DO use a podcatcher of some kind, please leave a rating and/or a review. I really appreciate the support.

Click here for a transcript of this week’s show.

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Episode 17–Home for Christmas

Most people who know me personally know that I’m originally from New York, but it’s not because I have an accent, because I don’t.

Well, I DO have an accent of sorts, but it’s tough to suss out that I’m from the NY metro area. Most people think I’m from the Downstate region of New York, like Poughkeepsie or Newburgh. But the fact is, I’m from a small town on the north shore of Long Island called Kings Park. When I was a small child, Kings Park had a huge mental hospital plunked down in its center, and most of the 5000-odd people who lived in that town, worked at the hospital. Nowadays the hospital is closed, the grounds are long-abandoned, and the town population is close to 20,000.

But for all that, Kings Park and its nearby cousin, Smithtown, manage to have a connection to a couple of Christmas songs. Kings Park was the center of a nationwide news story back in 2013 regarding the song “Silent Night”, and as for Smithtown…well, you’ll just have to listen to see what Smithtown has to do with any Christmas song.

If you’ve got a favorite podcatcher, you should have this episode already! If you don’t, and you want to get it from here, just click the media player below:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:35 — 11.0MB)

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Hey, you know what would make a great Christmas gift for me? A positive rating and review in whatever software you’re using to download the show. But iTunes still reigns supreme in this respect, so PLEASE go to iTunes dot com (even if you don’t typically use it) and leave me a positive rating.