1962- "Henry Had A Merry Christmas"

.....Well, I'm a little rusty at this. Let's start with something tricky, then the rest of the month will seem easy. I first found this number (both sides of the single, actually) on a two-for-one CD. Both albums were originally released in 1962 on the Liberty label:

• LP OLD RIVERS Liberty LRP-3233(mono) or LST-7233(stereo) (US) 1962
• LP 'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS...BACK HOME Liberty LRP-3257(mono) or LST-7257(stereo) (US) 1962

.....Complication #2? These aren't even consecutive albums. Due to the success of his television series, "The Real McCoys", on top of decades of film work, Walter Brennan released five albums in 1962. If the release schedule strictly followed the order of the catalog numbers, these would be the first and fourth, respectively. More likely, the Christmas album was recorded and/or mixed fourth and held back until the holiday season, probably making it the last album of the year. He only made two further albums for Liberty as far as I can tell and did spotty, irregular recording before and after that. That he released more than two or three albums such as this in his lifetime, let alone more than eight is a testament to the public's boundless appetite for faux sentiment and maudlin kitsch. Brennan doesn't really sing so much as speak song lyrics as though he were giving a dramatic poetry reading in that rusty door hinge of a voice; his vocal chords were damaged by toxic gas during his World War I military service, according to imdb (The Internet Movie Database). The homespun plainsman demeanor was also an act, an amalgamation of numerous film characters he was often typecast to play. He was born and raised in Massachusetts and reportedly did not speak with either the accent or folksy idioms he affected when on mike. Most of his recordings are formulaic studies in insincerity, wistful recollections of a past he never lived, always including a calculated whine timed to imply how physically painful it is that there has been some form, any form, of change in the world. It's like someone spliced Ronald Reagan with Dr. Zachary Smith.

.....Complication #3? None of the songs here are given song-writing credits. The CD insert reduces the jacket art for the LP's in order to fit both on the cover. The interior of the insert reproduces the art from the backs of the jackets, but since the original format didn't have songwriting credits on the back, the CD doesn't either. There's no information on the inlay card or the disc surface. The label's website no longer lists the title. Predictably, websites offering song lyrics attribute credit to Brennan, but most of those sites don't even have the correct lyrics. Their only reason to exist is to be tar pits of viruses and pop-up ads, so they'll promise access to any kind of information but they gain no advantage in being accurate and suffer nothing for delivering misinformation. The next line of action would be to find a scan of the label, either for the single or for the full album. My usual sources turned up nothing but I noticed a number of You-Tube videos, some of which open and/or close with shots of the actual record and sat through a couple. Either the videos or my monitor wouldn't attain a sharp enough focus to read the label, unfortunately. Bored at the prospect of running down another blind alley, I read the comments left for the videos while I thought about what kind of search options I had left. One of the commentors claimed that their grandfather, Cliff Crofford, was the author. I took that with a grain of salt, since delusional people and would-be con artists are always claiming tangent relationships to fame, however minor. The name clicked for some reason, though, and when I reread the CD insert I noticed that the liner notes for the earlier of the two albums, OLD RIVERS, mentioned that the author of that title track was Cliff Crofford. It took little time to find a few different biographies of Crofford and the records of a library's holdings. The sheet music in the library corroborated what I found in the biographies, that Crofford did indeed write the song below and at least two others on the Christmas album.

• 02:30 "HENRY HAD A MERRY CHRISTMAS" (Chris Crofford)
• 02:29 "WHITE CHRISTMAS" (Irving Berlin) [see below]
• performed by Walter Brennan [and possibly the Johnny Mann Singers]
• original source: 7" Liberty 55518 (US) 1962 [probably December]
• and my source: CD TWO CLASSIC ALBUMS FROM WALTER BRENNAN: OLD RIVERS & 'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS... BACK HOME EMI-Capitol Music/Collectors' Choice Music 72438-19218-2-1 (US?) 1996

.....Both sides were produced by [Thomas] "Snuff" Garrett and arranged and conducted by Ernie Freeman. Cliff Crofford, I discovered, was a staff writer at Liberty. That might explain why I couldn't find any trace of an earlier recording of "HENRY..." by Crofford himself. In fact, I couldn't find any recordings other than Brennan's. It's possible that he also wrote the poem about snow that Brennan recites during what would otherwise have been the instrumental break in "WHITE CHRISTMAS", but since the A-side is the focus of this post and the B-side is far from an original recording I'm going to absolve myself from tracking down that detail. Like Crofford, the Johnny Mann Singers were part of the Liberty staff and performed as backing vocalists for a number of artists on the label, occasionally releasing titles of their own.

.....Complication #4? Most sites still selling the two-for-one CD cite the release date as 2004. As I mentioned earlier, the label's site no longer offers it and my own copy was bought used. The price sticker has the name of a store that I seem to remember closing at about that time. It could be that the CD was pressed twice or it could be that the 1996 copyright date on my copy refers to an earlier cassette issue. For what it's worth, Amazon places the cassette as being released in 1998 and the CD in 2000. It could also be that the 1996 date is when Collectors' Choice made the CD available for mail order only and that 2004 was when remaining copies circulated through retail outlets. I remember being on CC's mailing list and receiving their catalog, even though I had never ordered anything from them. (I used to buy a lot of music, and, even before the days of the internet, if you paid by credit card you'd get some strange offers in the mail. The CC catalogs were interesting and full of artists not seen in years, but not on the bizarre end of the scale.)

.....If any reader has inside information on the CD package (or, ideally, the original vinyl), feel free to leave a note in the comment field. I'll be notified, even after the post has become old.