1991- "Santa's Polka"

.....This is the fourth and final original song from Brave Combo's first Christmas album. I provided a few details about the album in the first of these posts (on Monday) but neglected to credit the band members. I'll rectify that now; note that each member is a multi-instrumentalist.

• Carl Finch
• Bubba Hernandez
• Jeffrey Barnes
• Mitch Marine

.....The fourth song is:

• 02:40 "SANTA'S POLKA" (Bubba Hernandez, Jeffrey Barnes)
• performed by Brave Combo
• original source: CD IT'S X-MAS, MAN! P-Vine PCD-2300 (Japan) 12/91
• and my source: CD IT'S CHRISTMAS, MAN! Rounder Records CD 9033 (US/Canada) 09/92

.....When Brave Combo's US label at the time, Rounder, showed an interest in releasing the album in the States, it asked if they could add a song about Hanukkah. This was not a problem (as if the band needed an excuse to record a hora). Rather than tack it on to the end, though, they placed the new song in the middle and relocated the secular instrumental "FROSTY THE SNOWMAN" from the end of the Japanese edition to after "HANUKKAH, OH HANUKKAH" (the new song), which would come after another secular number, "PLEASE COME HOME FOR CHRISTMAS". The rest of the album's tracks experienced minor shuffling with two exceptions: "LITTLE DRUMMER BOY" went from track 3 in Japan to track 11 in the US and the brief instrumental version of "JINGLE BELLS" went from the opening track to the closing track. That could be because on the Japanese album it functioned as a feint that would have been lost on an American audience. The Japanese album begins with a 0:42 version of "JINGLE BELLS" reminiscent of Raymond Scott's intro to "POWERHOUSE", suggesting that perhaps this album might be perfunctorily framing standards within a polka/klezmer matrix. It then follows that with their now-famous arrangement of "MUST BE SANTA". The original version of that song was an Alma Cogan B-side of a novelty song that spent nearly a year at the top of the Japanese charts in 1960-1961, "HE JUST COULDN'T RESIST HER WITH HER POCKET TRANSISTOR". Cogan's version of "MUST BE SANTA" was the A-side in the UK, where it bombed and in America it was overwhelmed by the Mitch Miller & His Gang version. The Brave Combo version is a polka that grabs you by the ears and swings you around the room. Their arrangement was acknowledged by Bob Dylan as the basis for his 2009 recording and accompanying must-see video. That same year the song appeared again on Brave Combo's second Christmas album, CD CHRISTMAS PRESENT, which was unfortunately all-covers, including a third of the songs covered on the first album.

.....Oh, and "SANTA'S POLKA" is a pretty good, up-beat number as well.