10 Well-Known Songs That Your December Playlist Should Have

Atop my prior list of hidden-gem seasonal music for December comes this list of definitive versions of holiday classics.

Enjoy, and Merry Christmas to all.

Carol of the Bells - Danny Wright

This song can get awfully frantic and busy. But this all-instrumental version retains the vigor and verve that the carol calls for without going crazy.

Christmas Time Is Here - Vince Guaraldi Trio

No better version exists than the original. I love the slightly off-key singing (which had to be coached, as the original call for kid choir singers brought well-rehearsed groups who sang as if they were at Carnegie Hall!). And the piano, which sounds "well seasoned" is perfect for an upbeat song with a tinge of melancholy.

Ding Dong Merrily On High - Roger Whittaker

The synth accompaniment is a little dated here, but I love the opening peal of bells. And the reflective tempo (rather than the usual vigorous 2/2) is a welcome change from the usual.

12 Days (Gifts) of Christmas - Allan Sherman

There's a deserved love-hate relationship with The 12 Days of Christmas that understandably has listeners checking out somewhere around the maids-a-milking (day eight, btw). Sherman not only cuts the length but does so hilariously. I also love that the background choir, against Sherman's ridiculous lyrics, takes its harmonies absolutely seriously. The dichotomy is brilliant.

Good King Wenceslas -  The Ames Brothers

Listen to this with earbuds: I love how the brass intro starts in mono and then travels to stereo-land before the vocal. This weird carol gets a zippy interpretation here that makes me smile, even down to the fourth beat "ding" that occurs pretty much throughout.

Hallelujah - The Harry Simeone Chorale

Okay, so the Hallelujah Chorus is really for Easter. But it often appears as part of Christmas-music season. This re-arranged version (brilliant brass parts!) is energetically upbeat and fun and full of appropriate praise.

Can't embed this one for some reason, but here's the well-worth-clicking link.

Here We Come A-Caroling - The New Christy Minstrels

The Minstrels aren't so 'new' anymore, in fact, they're all but forgotten. But in the early 1960s, they were a big deal in the folk scene. Their version of "Here We Come A-Caroling" is full of intricate rhythms and harmonies, backed by a bright banjo and string bass.

Let It Snow - Les Brown

Jazzy and fun and hard to keep your fingers from snapping to.

Silent Night - Linda Eder

This familiar carol starts simply and quietly, where Eder's pure tones shine. Verse two gives her a charming countermelody. Verse three sends her into a goosebump-inducing octave version of the melody that sends her to the top of her impressive range.

Silver Bells - Johnny Mathis

Full disclosure: This one makes me cry, especially when I first bring out my Christmas playlist in the post-Thanksgiving time frame. I grew up with it on a compilation sold by WT Grant (the Walmart of its day), and hearing it now reminds me of hearing it as a kid, with the smell of chocolate chip cookies baking and the hustle-bustle of decorating etc. The feelings of family it evokes are very powerful for me, especially given the losses over the years.

All that emotional muck aside, I adore Mathis' vocal, the choral backing, and especially the bells (various versions of them) subtly in the accompaniment.

10 Little-Known Songs That Your December Playlist Should Have

I have a massive December-Holiday-Christmas playlist.

Given that vocal music was interwoven in my genetic makeup from a very early age and the fact that as a church musician, I've been exposed to seasonal songs for decades, it's probably no surprise.

So the following recommendations are purely things that have stuck with me through the years, fare that goes well beyond what the radios are playing ad infinitum (I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas, Christmas Don't Be Late [ugh, those Chipmunks!]).

You may know and -- as I do -- love some of these.

You may have never heard of some of them -- or any of them.

In either case, if you're just discovering them or rediscovering them ... enjoy!

NB: I apologize up front for whatever ads you may need to endure. 

Also: I'm planning a follow-up post, listing 10 Well Known Christmas Songs and the Definitive Versions That Your December Playlists Should Have.

But here's the little-known gems, in no particular order:

Elohai N'tzor

This is a Hanukkah carol. And I understand exactly 0 percent of the words. But I find it calming and hauntingly beautiful. A great remedy for the hustle-bustle of December.

Through Your Eyes

Suzy Boguss is a country singer who was completely unknown to me before stumbling across this recording. Full confession here: Its theme -- how kids /get/ Christmas on a level that adults often forget -- is extremely evocative for me

 

Song of the Sleighbells

I heard this song in a store one long-ago shopping season, I was so taken with it, I tried as best I could to memorize them (I think I jotted as many as I could recall on a business card in my car immediately after). I had grabbed enough of the gist to find it online. I love the 50s-style close harmonies and the breezy orchestrations. The vocalist is long-since-forgotten Big Band singer June Hutton.

 

See Amid the Winter's Snow

I had never heard of this hymn until hearing Julie Andrews sing it. Since then, it's become a favorite.

It Wasn't His Child

A friend, instead of handing out Christmas cards each year, gave out CDs he made of seasonal songs he liked. This was included in one of his editions, and it quickly caught on with me

Happiest Christmas Tree

Nat King Cole, forever the "Chestnuts Roasting" guy, did this little ditty whose background chorus again evokes 1950s Christmases and their silver-tinsel trees, bourbon-heavy eggnog, and stacks of seasonal records on the hi-fi. 

Ev'rybody's Waitin' for the Man with the Bag

Kay Starr, jazz singer who conquered numerous music genres, feels quite comfortable with the big-band accompaniment she soars over here.

 

Christmas Tree

Like Nat, the Harry Simeone Chorale gets aired this time of year only for "The Little Drummer Boy." And as classic as that is, it's not the arranger's only standout work. This tune, which started out to be a countermelody to "O Christmas Tree," took on a pop sound all its own. It also features that rarity of rarities, a kids' choir that isn't annoyingly screechy.

Christmas Is a Birthday

Returning to Harry Simeone. I like this a lot because as a kid, it helped make my two-days-after-Christmas birthday feel special.

Cool Yule

Louis Armstrong's gruff-voice isn't exactly imbued with the holiday silkiness of a Bing Crosby or Julie Andrews, but it fits this song hand-in-glove. Tough to listen to this and not smile.

Why Nobody Needs Shoes More than the Cobbler's Son

 It has been a long time since I've blogged.

Like almost a year.

My readership, such that it is, doesn't seem to have missed me. It's not like I've been inundated by messages: Where are you? and Why aren't you publishing anymore? and Gee, did you retire after winning that Pulitzer?

As if.

The truth is I am writing. I'm writing a lot, in fact. Like every day.

It's the latest turn in my professional life. I'm now the editor of an online daily e-newspaper. So I'm writing a ton. My publishing schedule is five stories per day, somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 words, six days a week.

That's a lot of words.

I'm heading up a publication called BUCKSCO Today.

When I first came aboard last March, I balked mightily against the all-cap (not a fan, unless it's an acronym. Or a story about someone warning people about a disaster: "THERE'S A TIDAL WAVE COMING!").

But it is our brand standard.

Brandard?

Hmmm.

So I got over my all-cap-a-phobia.

The writing I'm doing is some original work. But the rest of the work involves 'curating' content from other (properly sourced, totally attributed, all-above-board) sources.

I'm therefore something of a re-write artist, boiling down lengthy articles from The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal into bite-sized pieces.

Oh, and there's one more twist.

My "beat" (do journalists still refer to a beat?) is Bucks County.

That was a bit of a stretch when I first came aboard.

We publish editions for Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties. And all of them had editors in place.

Bucks County was the last geographic addition to the family, so it needed an editor.

So I'm learning a ton about Bucks — including that fact that it really doesn't cotton to being called Bucks.

Bucks County seems to be the preference.

Sir Bucks of County, Your Magesty...

Whatever.

So in becoming something of a word machine, I've let this blog go quiet for a while.

I'll dust it off more often, squeezing in content when I can.

So thanks for hanging in there.

You'll hear from me more often moving forward.

Are You There, God? It's Me, Dan

God speaks.

He really does.

We as humans doubt that from time to time -- I do, especially when things are going rotten. Like they are now.

But He speaks.

To wit: I've been on a job hunt for almost a year, now. I am fraught with fear and worry, as my unemployment compensation is set to run out soon (not sure what happens at the end of 52 weeks, but whether it's a sudden dropoff or a temporary extension, the truth is I need to get back to work soon).

And I've prayed for help. And prayed. And prayed. And PRAYED! 

That prayer, along with hours and hours of job-hunting fun, has yielded me some pretty dim results: Somewhere near 200 resumes sent out. Perhaps five interviews in 11 months. And not a single job offer.

None.

Zip.

So it's little wonder that I've gotten angry at God. And the other crewmembers "up there" I've been praying to (pleading to, begging from, imploring with all my heart).

Being only human, it's easy to conclude that God isn't listening. He doesn't care. He's busy refereeing fights in Washington between the Left and the Right. Or trying to cure Covid. Both worthy goals, but they don't do much for our disastrous finances at present.

But there have been glimmers along the way.

For instance: I walk a lot with the dog. One of my common routes is a paved pathway through a local park. And for months, now, I've seen little squares of paper scattered on that path, each with a little, handwritten message reading either "Pray to St. Jude" or "Thank you, St. Jude."

St. Jude is on my daily go-to list of Saints tapped for help. He's the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes. And after 11 months of nary a nibble on the job front, I think I qualify as hopeless. At least part of the time.

This week was particularly bad. I had what I thought was an inside track on a position. I had worked with several of the organization's leaders before. And their predecessors. They knew my work and we had gotten along famously in the past. I felt comfortable enough with one of the chiefs to ask about who in HR to contact 1:1. I submitted my materials to that director and waited. The standard reply eventually came -- they had my stuff and would let me know. 

Weeks went by. Then months. But I stayed in contact and kept getting assurances that they were still going to fill the position and that I was still in the running. I remained hopeful.

The HR director even emailed me without emailing her first. She told me that so much time had elapsed that they were reposting the job... but not to worry, I was still in contention, my credentials were automatically being forwarded and that I needed take no action at this time.

Hooray!

Six weeks of silence followed. I finally bit the bullet and emailed my contact.

The reply I got knocked the wind out of me: They were no longer moving ahead with my candidacy for the slot.

It was devastating.

It was cruel; if I weren't the guy, why not tell me that six months ago?!?!?

Why was I led on, only to get not even a phone interview?!?!?!

Are you there, God? It's Me, Dan. Mad as hell.

And then, something truly odd happened.

On Saturday, I was walking the dog on a different route. He and I passed a public bulletin board, and a notice caught my eye.

Not an ordinary ad for a local karaoke night or a yard sale.

It was more like a letter... a long letter. 

So I stood and read it.

I won't quote it verbatim, but the gist was this: It was a public recognition of the hand of God from an female immigrant who started to the US with her brother but landed her alone when he lost his courage and returned home. She was praising God in this public, anonymous forum for His care of her when things were very dim (running out of money, struggling with visa applications, living in fear, learning the language etc. etc.).

This direct quote spoke to me loud and clear: "Don't you dare let your situation define you. ... God's grace is working. ... He knows your path."

I was speechless. Dumbstruck. Humbled. Ashamed by my doubt.

I continued my walk, turning these words from a stranger over and over in my head, blinking away tears.

It told me something when I really needed to hear it.

A message from God.

Portraits in Black and White

Each of us is a product of our age. The particular circumstances of how we're brought up -- the family that we land in, the times we're raised in, the forces that affect us along the way -- contribute to who we become as adults.

I know that from experience. For example, I react badly to civil disobedience.

I can trace this negativity toward lawlessness to a clear and obvious source: the televised unrest of the late 1960s. Watching teargassed crowds, vicious police dogs, water cannons, chanting protesters, nightsticks, police barricades, National Guardsmen and fighting in the streets scared me. The 1968 Democratic National Convention was, for me as a kid of six, a nightmare.

I had no context for it. Couldn't source the outrage. Couldn't comprehend the issues. Saw only a bunch of crazy people doing crazy things.

And now, here we are again.

My initial reaction to the wanton looting that overtook cities across the US in the aftermath of the George Floyd death was scorn. What the hell? Since when does the death of a black man halfway across America entitle the citizens of Philadelphia or Boston or New York to an armful of boxed sneakers or a new Keurig, swiped from the smashed display window?

If anything, the wholesale theft of goods undercut the entire messaging of Black Lives Matter. The takeaway seemed to be: Okay, Black Lives Matter. But to those who rampaged city business districts, the extent that they "matter" is a value equal only to an armful of sweatshirts or a plasma TV.

A law enforcement officer's prejudice took George Floyd; I'm taking this iPhone. We're even.

Thankfully, cooler heads are now prevailing, as the protests have taken a turn for the more peaceful. My echoes of late-1960s anxiety have calmed down.

In that more level-headed space, I've thought a lot about Black Lives Matter.

At first, I was dismissive: Black Lives Matter, sure, that's obvious. As do Brown Lives, Asian Lives, Muslim Lives, Christian Lives, Jewish Lives and Unborn Lives.

But then memes like the following began popping up:

And the logic behind BLM became clearer.

I thought about this in the context of the annual MS Bike Ride I participate in. Each year, I raise funds for this charity, essentially asking my donors to support my notion that MS patients matter. Each year, I could just as well be asked: Don't cancer patient lives matter? Don't drug addict lives matter? Don't heart disease lives matter?

Don't black lives matter?

Yes. Yes they do.

My focus on one health issue doesn't lessen the importance of all health issues. Our current focus on one racial component of the US doesn't lessen the importance of all racial components of the US.

I then took the logic further: The fact that we even have to assert that Black Lives Matter -- amid police brutality and white privilege and rampant Karen-ism and inner-city crime and disparate public school funding and gerrymandering -- tells us how bad things are. How in need we are of change.

I know there was racism in my background: My grandparents (my father's parents) were highly distrustful of black people, who they blamed for many of the social ills that beset their home city of Philadelphia. I remember both my grandfather and grand mother using cruel racial slurs in casual conversation.

Fortunately, that viewpoint did not seem to pass to my father. And my mother -- as a registered nurse -- learned by necessity to treat people of all backgrounds with respect and dignity. When commenting on race, she often said things like "Everybody bleeds red blood." And "Nobody's skin color matters in a hospital gown."

So I'd like to think that my own racial prejudices were filtered out. Perhaps not totally, if I'm going to be brutally honest. But I strive for that.

Where's all this going?

I hope it leads to a more just, colorblind system of law enforcement. We will never weed out all bad apples, but we can at least stop turning a blind eye to their blatant disregard for some human lives. And take swift, just action when they do.

I also hope that this discussion on the value of life can extend to the unborn. Lives matter. All lives. Even those in utero.

I know this brings up a ton of related issues. If this stance means we also launch conversations on supporting parenthood, healthcare, education, wellness, employment, equity, opportunity, community and all the other related issues to raising a wanted child, then it's time for steps in the right direction on those fronts as well.

I get it. I see it. Black lives do matter.

As If I Didn't Dislike Joe Namath Enough...

My migration from football hater to football fan has been a relatively recent thing. As a student, I can remember trying to muscle through homework on Sunday afternoons while both my parents bellowed at the gridiron action on television, specifically their Philadelphia Iggles.

From those days, I remember my Dad's dislike of Broadway Joe Namath. Dad found him too flashy, too egotistical, too much of a pretty-boy to throw his allegiance behind. Namath's appearance in pantyhose in a high-profile commercial didn't help either.

That genetic disposition aside, I've now got one more reason to grind my teeth over Joe Namath: His nonstop television commercials for a Medical Supplement Plan.

Like most Americans, I'm home now ... lot. Unlike most Americans, I've been home longer than the pandemic called, having been tossed from my full-time job back in November. That's six months, folks, of job hunting, which fills much of my time, but certainly not all of it.

And I'm not exactly proud to admit this, but I will: Much of my downtime between searches on LinkedIn and Indeed has been taken watching television. Where Namath's mug extols the virtues of "prescription drug coverage and even rides to and from doctor's appointments" in a seemingly endless loop.

I can say, however, that he's not the worst offender. Liberty Mutual -- whose ads I've liked in the past (including the one with the clueless beefcake actor who can't get his lines right) -- has one that's a parody of cop-chase-scenes in countless movies and TV shows. But for some reason that I don't quite get, the officer giving chase has as a partner an emu (!). This commercial starts with a police siren, for which the producers opted for the cheesiest sound effect in history. It sounds like an 8-year-old blowing a birthday-party horn-favor until his cheeks turn purple.

Perhaps my over-exposure to these ads results from the shows I'm watching. I've been enjoying reruns of such 1970s staples as What's My Line? and The Waltons.

The former is the 1970s edition, where host John Charles Daley was replaced by Larry Blyden and black-and-white shooting was replaced by color. However, there's something appealing to me about a game show where intelligent conversation and probing questioning takes place in a quiet, suit-ad-tie setting (if you can forgive Soupy Sales' occasional mugging). No screaming audience members; no blazing lights; no set-pieces that mimic theme-park rides; no six-figure payouts.

The latter (The Waltons) just makes me feel good. It's a worthy reminder that bad times end, that people persevere and that there's a lot to be said for faith and family.

They're both almost worth putting up with Joe Namath.

One thing in all of the above is clear. I need to get back to work. Not just intellectually but financially, socially and psychologically.

Hopefully soon!

Happy Knee Year

Climb every mountain; ford every stream.

Thank you, Rogers and Hammerstein, for encapsulating pretty well where I am right now.

In the midst of an ongoing job hunt, I'm on the mend from a knee replacement. Or, conversely, in the midst of a knee replacement recovery, I'm on the job hunt (so yes, PA Unemployment Compensation Office, I am still actively seeking work as directed, just in case you monitor recipients' social accounts).

The declining status of my right knee necessitated its replacement. This joint has been deteriorating for some time now. I remember trying to navigate London in 2018, when we went to visit Daughter Claire who was studying abroad, and suffering mightily. London is definitely a walking city -- steps to/from the Underground, wandering museums, standing in queues -- and I had a tough time.

I wasn't quite aware of what my specific knee problem was, but shortly after arriving home, I knew I needed to see someone about it.

Turns out, the meniscus was just about gone, worn away to almost nothing. So all that grinding I was feeling was the femur coming into direct contact with the tibia. Ouch, right?

My Osteo guy tried some short-term fixes, a series of gel injections that bought me some time. And they worked, for a bit. But eventually, the deterioration continued apace, and a more permanent solution was needed.

So now, I've got a bionic knee on the right. And might be due one on the left, if that one continues having issues. Oh, the joys of aging.

Spent one night in the hospital recovering -- a first for me, which is a good thing, I guess, to have made it to 57 without ever spending a night in a hospital.

And now, I'm clunking around the house with a walker, sticking to doctor's orders, trying not to be a total pest to the rest of the family and managing my pain as best as possible.

I know Day Two will be better than Day One, and Day Three even better than that. Looking forward to feeling great, regaining my mobility, getting back to my music ministry (currently being paused, can't imagine trying to navigate a pedalboard with my limitations) and returning to full-time work.

I've really had my spirits lifted by the number of family and friends reaching out to see how I'm doing. It means a lot. And my immediate family has been very patient and helpful. Parker, FWIW, won't leave my side.

2019 was not a total annis horribilus for us -- yes, we're watching The Crown on Netflix and loving every episode. But it definitely ended with a whimper.

2020, as I see it now, has nowhere to go but up.