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To my friends, family, and to anyone stumbling onto this weblog: my love and best wishes for a MerryChristmas and a happy 2005.I'm sitting here listening to Bing Crosby's
Merry Christmas.
Nothing sounds like Christmas to me morethan this record. My mom had an original vinyl LP of the 1955 version which I'd play each year inDecember. It's the gold standard of Christmas records: a mix of music devotional and secular, reverentand goofy - and yet it strikes the right balance of tone all the way through, despite a 13-year gap therecordings of some of the songs.
Merry Christmas
features the definitive recording of Irving Berlin's "White Christmas, "the top-sellingChristmas single of all time, and the top selling
song
of all time - in any category - until 1998. BingCrosby first performed "White Christmas" on a radio show on Christmas day, 1941, only eighteen daysafter the attack on Pearl Harbor. It was on the release of 
Holiday Inn
in '42, when the song touched anerve that would make it the best-selling song of throughout the war. The song that would becomeCrosby's signature. It captured an unironic longing for a time when things weren't so complicated. Boy,if only they knew.Most of the songs on
Merry Christmas
were recorded as singles throughout the War, and were compiledto an album of five 78 rpm records called
Merry Christmas
in 1945. By 1948, the original ascetatemaster of 
White Christmas
was so degraded from over use that Crosby rerecorded it, with the original1942 session players and singers, with the more modern recording equipment that followed the War. Itwas reissued as a single, and again sales soared.The late 1940's marked the dawn of the long-playing record, or LP, which could hold more songs perdisc than the original 78's. The LP made the literal record album was a thing of the past, through theword is still used euphemistically to this day. I still use it all the time, even when referring to CDs. In1949, all five discs in Bing's
Merry Christmas
album were condensed into a single LP, and two onlyperipherally related to Christmas, "Danny Boy" and "Let's Start the New Year Right," were cut.Many of the tracks feature Patty, LaVerne, and Maxine Andrews - the Andrews Sisters, one of the morepreeminent vocal groups ever and Crosby's tourmates on the World War II USO circuit. The AndrewsSisters are an indelible part of the soundtrack of World War II, with a unique singular vocal blend that,like Glenn Miller's special "sound", is instantly recognizable - it can be no one else. Sure, the McGuireSisters might have been technically "better," but they had half the Andrews' charm and few rememberthem today. The Andrews Sisters wrote the book on vivacious girl performers with talent to spare, andartists from Melanie to Gwen Stefani owe their careers to them.The Andrews' matched Bing's relaxed delivery with the same spunky energy they brought to
BoogieWoogie Bugle Boy 
- they sounded great together, and uniquely American, even when singing
Bei Mir Bist Du Shoen
. Their version of Jingle Bells ("jiiingle bells, ji-ji-ji-jingle bells") crushes Sinatra's ("I lovethose j-i-n-g-l-e bells - pop!") version like a tin can. And I've yet to hear a better, more fun and versionof "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town." It tears the roof off.Then came the 1950's. World War II still loomed large over American culture. Veterans were starting toemerge from their GI-bill funded education into the white collar workforce and into severe depression -many felt they'd lived the best years of their lives during and
because
of combat. The officious greyflannel suits of corporate culture were no match for the ineffible camaradarie of war buddies. BingCrosby (and his frequent partner Bob Hope) were reminders of that time, and Crosby knew it. Hisnatural midwestern affability made him seem like a trusted buddy and a voice of comfort that crossedgenerations. He received thousands of letters each year from veterans who told him how a hearing"White Christmas" sustained their hope in hopless times.In 1954, Bing made the film
White Christmas
a peacetime remake and revision of his own
Holiday Inn
from 1942.
White Christmas
was originally indended to bring Holiday Inn's stars, Crosby and FredAstaire, together in a sort-of sequel. But Astaire had decided after
Blue Skies
in 1946 to retire frommovies. So the part was reworked for Donald O'Connor (
Singin' in the Rain)
, and then again for DannyKaye when O'Connor was injured. While I'm sure Donald O'Connor would have rocked, and could've
 
danced circles around Danny Kaye, Kaye makes the movie work, and then some.
White Christmas,
the movie, is about a couple of war buddies, played by Crosby and Kaye, who musterup their original platoon to a country inn run by their lionized old "sarge" who has falled into deepdepression. Along the way they befriend a singing sister act played by Rosemary Clooney and dancerVera Ellen (who, according to IMDB, had to wear high-necked costumes to cover the ravages of anexoria). And of course, once again, Bing sings "White Christmas," this time in full color.I just love
White Christmas
, and have ever since my mom brought it home on VHS when I was elevenor so. Most film buffs consider
Holiday Inn
the better of the two, and I think in many ways they're right- I mean, come on, it's Fred freakin' Astaire. But
Holiday Inn's
gung-ho patriotism and original concept- a song for every holiday - grows tedious quickly.For me, though,
White Christmas
wins the prize because I simply don't buy Crosby and Astaire as aduo. Crosby's breezy charm was always better when foiled by a great partner or co-star - the AndrewsSisters on record, Bob Hope on film. The chemistry was undeniable, it just worked. And it didn't workwith Crosby and Astaire. I can't see the creamy Astaire, with his top hat and tails demeanor, in Crosby'sIrish pubs. On his feet, Astaire was a miracle, but he couldn't really sing. And Bing didn't wear toomany top hats.After Astaire's exit
White Christmas
emerged as something more interesting, if less focused - instead of a sequel or a remake, it became a little of both, and yet neither:
White Christmas
took elements of the
Holiday Inn
and reimagined it through a more sober, post-war reality, where ten years on the vetsweren't all that happy about being home. This was all set in a world so appointed and sumptuous as tomake Douglas Sirk seem restrained. With 1950's America in peace and great economic prosperity,
White Christmas
was an escapist message-movie fantasy for people who had everything.The sets are such a suptuous exaggeration of peacetime prosperity, as to resemble less the actual erabut a lounge scenester's dream of the 50's. Think Jack Rabbit Slim's in
Pulp Fiction
. Everything isoutrageously lavish: Crosby and Kaye rescue Clooney and Vera-Ellen from a dead-end job at a "dinnertheatre" so swanky it could be the El Morocco. The World War II prologue that opens the film is soobviously fake, even moreso than earlier movies with lower budgets, that I still wonder if it's dated orintentionally stylized.Danny Kaye saves the movie from its own length. The guy is just hilarous. I've loved him since I when Ifirst saw
Hans Christian Andersen
and
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty 
on the Disney Channel at age 10.I'd always thought that if I'd gone to war, I might've reacted much like Kaye's character in
WhiteChristmas,
deflecting horrors with humor, song-and dance, and slightly effete wit. But there was aninteresting fact I didn't know.It was only a couple years ago that I learned that Kaye was, in fact, gay - which puts a lot of things intoperspective, and makes certain elements of 
White Christmas
affectionately funny. Consider his constantbrush-off of Vera-Ellen's romantic overtures with "ew-icky" facial expressions or the jaw-dropping theinterlude where Kaye and Crosby don sequins and feather fans for an impromptu lip-syncing drag show.I'm not kidding here, people. Kaye is as over the top as Farley Granger in
Ben-Hur -
camping andswishing around, playing it to the hilt, while Bing follows along with the smirk and shrug of a guy that'sworked around the sissies for so long it's just another bit of buh-buh-boo to him.Middling reviews notwithstanding, the film was a huge hit, and to capitalize on the success, Bing'srecord company, MCA, decided in 1955 to release what's become the definitive version of his
Merry Christmas
album. Bing recorded four new songs, none of which appeared in
White Christmas
or in theoriginal Merry Christmas album of 78s. They were more contemporary than their counterparts andreflected the transition from the big band era to the more singer-focused era of the 1950's hit parade.One of these is "Silver Bells," a duet with Carole Richards in a style similiar to "Tennessee Waltz" duetsof "Tennessee" Ernie Ford. Another is "Christmas in Killarney," a droll song of Christmas in Ireland,perhaps intended as a replacement for "Danny Boy" which had been cut from
Merry Christmas
in theoriginal transition from album to LP. My mom has video of me at age ten, lipsynching along to"Christmas in Killarney" and doing a rather instresting interprestation of a "jig" - which consisted staringinto the lens with my eyes really wide, and marching at the camera. I was a weird kid.
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