Tag Archives: White Christmas

Spike Jones on the Box ► Monday Musical Appreciation

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On this day in 1911 Lindley Armstrong Jones was born. He later got the nickname Spike because he was as thin as a railroad spike.

Spike Jones was, essentially, a drummer. He got his first drum kit at the age of 11 and never looked back. As a young man he played in various bands, orchestra pits and radio shows as he was coming up. As a drummer in the John Scott Trotter Orchestra, Jones can be heard playing on Bing Crosby‘s biggest hit “White Christmas.”

Bored with playing the same music night after night, Spike found some musicians who were as warped as he was and they started playing parodies of the songs of the day for their own enjoyment. Then they started recording the songs to play for their wives.

One of those recordings found its way to RCA Records, where Spike Jones and His City Slickers recorded their first single, “Der Fuhrer’s Face.” The song, written by Oliver Wallace, was skedded for a 1943 Donald Duck cartoon called, originally, “Donald Duck in Nutzi Land,” and later “Der Fuhrer’s Face. It later won an Academy Award.

However, Spike Jones’ version was released first and became a huge hit.
Jones thought this would be a flash in the pan, but the ‘Merkin public surprised him. They demanded more from Spike Jones and His City Slickers and Jones was happy to accommodate them.

As the shows became more elaborate, Jones’ impeccable timing came to the fore, with guns, whistles, and pots and pans all taking the place of percussion in some songs. He called his concerts Musical Depreciation.

It wasn’t just the hit parade that Spike Jones and His City Slickers parodied. According to the WikiWackyWoo:

Among the series of recordings in the 1940s were humorous takes on the classics such as the adaptation of Liszt‘s Liebesträume, played at a breakneck pace on unusual instruments. Others followed: Rossini‘s William Tell Overture was rendered on kitchen implements using a horse race as a backdrop, with one of the “horses” in the “race” likely to have inspired the nickname of the lone chrome yellow-painted SNJ aircraft flown by the U.S. Navy’s Blue Angels
aerobatic team’s shows in the late 1940s, “Beetle Bomb”. In live shows
Spike would acknowledge the applause with complete solemnity, saying
“Thank you, music lovers.” An LP collection of twelve of these “homicides” was released by RCA (on its prestigious Red Seal label) in 1971 as Spike Jones Is Murdering the Classics. They include such tours de force as Pal-Yat-Chee (Pagliacci), sung by the Hillbilly humorists Homer and Jethro, Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours, Tchaikovsky’s None but the Lonely Heart, and Bizet’s Carmen.

The first time I ever heard a Spike Jones tune, it was on an 78 RPM platter of “My Old Flame”at Craig Portman’s house. It was one of his parents’ records. We played it dozens of times and laughred because we were just old enough to recognize the impersonation of Peter Lorre talk/singing the lyrics as the scenario became more and more macabre. [Later we used the stack of wax as Frisbees, long before the Frisbee was invented. While I’m not proud of that fact today, I’d still like to find Craig Portman, who moved to California when we were still teenagers. Google has been no help.]

Comedy music has a long and honourable history, as the Wiki also tells us:

There is a clear line of influence from the Hoosier Hot Shots, Freddie Fisher and his Schnickelfritzers and the Marx Brothers to Spike Jones — and to Stan Freberg, Gerard Hoffnung, Peter Schickele‘s P.D.Q. Bach, The Goons, Mr. Bungle, Frank Zappa, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, and “Weird Al” Yankovic. Billy Barty [who appeared with Spike Jones] appeared in Yankovic’s film UHF
and a video based on the movie. According to David Wild’s review in
Rolling Stone Magazine, Elvis Costello’s 1989 Album “Spike” was named
partly in tribute to Jones.

Syndicated radio personality Dr. Demento regularly features Jones’ music on his program of comedy and novelty tracks. Jones is mentioned in The Band‘s song, “Up on Cripple Creek“. (The song’s protagonist’s paramour states of Jones: “I can’t take the way he sings, but I love to hear him talk.”) Novelist Thomas Pynchon is an admirer and wrote the liner notes for a 1994 reissue, Spiked! (BMG Catalyst). A scene in the romantic comedy I.Q. shows a man demonstrating the sound of his new stereo to Meg Ryan‘s character by playing a record of Jones’ music.

As always, it’s about the music. Here’s a selection:










Bing Crosby’s Last Christmas Special ► Monday Musical Appreciation

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On this day in 1977 (as The Music History Calendar tells us): Bing Crosby’s last Christmas special airs. The show was recorded in September, and Crosby died that October. The show is remembered for Crosby’s unusual duet with David Bowie, where they sang a modified version of “Little Drummer Boy,” with Bowie singing the new “Peace On Earth” lyrics composed by the show’s writers.

For many decades — and for millions of people around the world — Bing Crosby meant Christmas. His rendition of Irving Berlin‘s White Christmas has been certified by Guinness World Records as the best selling single in history, with well over 150 million copies. According to the WikiWackyWoo:

The first public performance of the song was by Bing Crosby, on his NBC radio show The Kraft Music Hall on Christmas Day, 1941; a copy of the recording from the radio program is owned by the estate of Bing Crosby and was loaned to CBS News Sunday Morning for their December 25, 2011, program.[5] He subsequently recorded the song with the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers for Decca Records in just 18 minutes on May 29, 1942, and it was released on July 30 as part of an album of six 78-rpm discs from the film Holiday Inn.[5][8]
At first, Crosby did not see anything special about the song. He just
said “I don’t think we have any problems with that one, Irving.”[9]

Crosby reprised the tune in the 1954 movie White Christmas, which was virtually a remake of Holiday Inn.

One of my earliest posts here was called “Okay, I’ll Confess. I Love Bing Crosby!” It is a paean to one of my favourite vocalists, and one I used to make jokes about. However, as I explained, it took Louis Armstrong to make me appreciate Bing Crosby, who rocketed up to the top of my personal hit parade.

Here is the last time the country was able to celebrate Christmas with Bing Crosby.

Long may he sing.

Okay, I’ll Confess. I Love Bing Crosby!

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People, who know that Dub Reggae is my favourite musical genre, and that I was also a ‘60s psychedelic, hard-driving, product of Detroit, are often surprised to learn that my favourite singer of all is Mr. Bing Crosby. Here’s something totally stupid and incomprehensible to whet your appetite while I try and convince you that Bing was best.

I admit. I didn’t come to appreciate Bing until about 10 years ago. I was born in the early ‘50s. By the time I was rocking out to the MC5 and Iggy Stooge at the Grande Ballroom, I had pretty much dismissed Bing Crosby in my mind as an untalented hack that had only lucked into a singing and acting career. He was the guy that was so easy to imitate—so ubiquitous—that anyone saying “buh buh buh blooo” was referencing him. You couldn’t escape the muther. He would pop up as a caricature in kiddy cartoons of my youth. Nothing says “has been” more to a kid than a caricature someone popping up in a cartoon.  Nothing demonstrates this better than the Warner Brother’s cartoon, “Bingo Crosbyana.”

Of course, this was long before I knew what “homage” meant.

Another thing I disliked about Bing Crosby is that he owned Christmas. As a Jewish boy being called kike in the ‘50s and ‘60s, I was sure that Bing was somehow connected with it all. Hell, maybe he was behind it all, for all I knew. According to Gary Giddins (see below) Crosby “made the most popular record ever, ‘White Christmas,’ the only single to make American pop charts twenty times, every year but one between 1942 and 1962. In 1998, after a long absence, his 1947 version hit the charts in Britain.” And let’s not even talk about all the Christmas movies.

However, worst of all, Bing Crosby was the guy who almost ruined David Bowie for me for all time. I heard Bowie was going to make a rare appearance on a Bing Crosby Christmas special. Wait! What? Yes. True. It took me a long time to forgive Bowie for that. Crosby’s Christmas specials occupy its own niche in the category of Hollywood kitsch. On reflection, with so many years to assuage hurt feelings, the harmonies are lovely and the arrangement of “Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth” medley is clever. Still, you have to admit this is the low point of David Bowie’s career, especially the 1st minute, forty nine. Watch:



Here’s what I’m trying to say: I had absolutely no appreciation of Bing Crosby. This, despite being a huge Frank Sinatra fan. I just didn’t think Bing was fit to hold Sinatra’s trench coat.

This began to change about 10 years ago. I was watching a documentary on Louis Armstrong (a musical hero of mine) and in it Mr. Armstrong made 2 remarks: 1). All singing begins and ends with Bing Crosby; 2). Bing’s voice was like honey being poured out of a golden cup.

Well, Louis Armstrong ain’t no slouch and he knows his Jazz. If he’s saying these wonderful things about Bing Crosby, maybe I should reassess my opinion. I started doing a little reading and found that pretty much every singer subsequent to Bing said they merely imitating Crosby and owe it all to him. Elvis name-checked him as an influence, as did both Sinatra and Dean Martin. Here’s a clip from “Robin and the Seven Hoods,” where Sinatra and Martin have a whole lot of fun with Bing’s sartorial choices in “Style.”



Now I was more curious than ever. What was I missing?

Coincidentally (or just another instance of synchronicity), right at this same time I happened to see a book on my local retailer’s remainder table called “Bing Crosby; A Pocketful of Dreams; The Early Years; 1903-1940” by Gary Giddins (who was quoted extensively in that Armstrong documentary referenced above). Amazingly this 592 page book (published in 1991) ends at “White Christmas” and is merely the first volume in a proposed 2-volume set. While reading the book, I also immersed myself in Bing’s earliest recordings, something I had never taken the time to do before.

The light went on!!! I am now a believer!!!

There were recordings I knew, but didn’t realize they were by a young Bing Crosby because his voice had changed so much over the years. His “Pennies From Heaven” or “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?” are transcendent, blissful, and (here’s the most important part) are full of pathos. His voice carries the drama of the songs in a way that few singers have ever been able to pull off. For so many people of my parent’s age these songs, and Bing Crosby’s version of them, represented the Great Depression.

Everyone knows the dreadful David Lee Roth rip off of the Louis Prima arrangement of “Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody,” however those arrangements make the song swing and being a gigolo doesn’t seem like such a bad life. Even Louis Armstrong’s version swings. However, I never really understood the song until I heard Bing Crosby’s version of “Just a Gigolo” To begin with, it’s a very, very sad song, something you don’t get from Prima, Roth, or Armstrong. When Bing sings it, you hear every ounce of the pathos in the song. Bing also sings the introduction, left off most other versions. I can’t listen to Bing’s version without feeling great empathy for that sad, unemployed, World War One doughboy. Get out a hanky:



I now own a great deal of Bing Crosby’ recordings and I hear something new in them every time I listen.

Finally, here’s a partial list of Bing’s accomplishments, by Giddin in the Introduction to his book, I find most impressive, especially the second-to-last, because that changed Show Business forever: 

  •  He was the first full-time vocalist ever signed to an orchestra. 
  •  He made more studio recordings than any other singer in history (about 400 more than Sinatra). 
  •  He made the most popular record ever, “White Christmas,” the only single to make American pop charts twenty times, every year but one between 1942 and 1962. In 1998, after a long absence, his 1947 version hit the charts in Britain. 
  •  Between 1927 and 1962 he scored 368 charted records under his own name, plus 28 as vocalist with various bandleaders for a total of 396. No one else has come close; compare Paul Whiteman (220), Sinatra (209), Elvis (149), Glenn Miller (129), Nat “King” Cole (118), Louis Armstrong (85), The Beatles (68). 
  •  He scored the most number one hits ever, thirty-eight, compared with twenty-four by The Beatles and eighteen by Presley. 
  •  In 1960 he received a platinum record as First Citizen of the Record Industry for having sold 200 million discs, a number that had doubled by 1980. 
  •  Between 1915 and 1980 he was the only motion-picture star to rank as the number one box office attraction five times (1944-48). Between 1934 and 1954 he scored in the top ten fifteen times. 
  •  “Going My Way” was the highest-grossing film in the history of Paramount Pictures until 1947; “The Bells of St. Mary” was the highest grossing film in the history of RKO Pictures until 1947. 
  • He was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor three times and won for “Going My Way.” 
  • He was a major radio star longer than any other performer, from 1931 until 1954 on network; 1954 until 1962 in syndication. 
  •  He appeared on approximately 4,000 radio broadcasts, nearly 3,400 of them his own programs, and single-handedly changed radio from a live-performance to a canned or recorded medium by presenting, in 1946, the first transcribed network show on WABC — thereby making that also-ran network a major force. 
  •  He financed and popularized the development of tape, revolutionizing the recording industry. 
  •  He created the first and longest-running celebrity pro-am golf championship, playing host for thirty-five years, raising millions in charity and was the central figure in the development of the Del Mar racetrack in California. 

Taste is subjective. We won’t all like the same things in food or music, f’rinstance. However, I suggest you take another listen to Bing Crosby. He’s a lot better than your parents ever told you.

Quality never goes out of style and Bing Crosby has quality!