1956- "I'm Gonna Lasso Santa Claus"

.....Brenda Lee was born Brenda Mae Tarpley on December 11, 1944. This makes her the youngest artist I've posted so far, but the field of Christmas pop music is peppered with child performers, especially in the 1940's and 1950's, and I doubt she set any records with this first of several Christmas singles. It could be, though. Augie Rios would be a few months older when he recorded "¿DONDE ESTA SANTA CLAUS?" in 1958. Jimmy Boyd, although he started his career earlier, was about a year older when he recorded "I SAW MOMMY KISSING SANTA CLAUS" in 1952. Yet, for some reason, her label felt it necessary to lie about her age on this early single. Both sides are originals, I think, but I'm focusing on the B-side, which I have in front of me.

• -N/A- CHRISTY CHRISTMAS (Marty Symes, Tony Starr)
• 02:17 b/w I'M GONNA LASSO SANTA CLAUS (Frankie Adams, Wilbur Jones)
• performed by Brenda Lee
• original source: 7" Decca 30107 (US) Oct. 29, 1956
• as well as: Decca Children's Series 9-88215 (US) 1956
• and my source: VACD ROCKIN' LITTLE CHRISTMAS MCA Records MCAD-25084 (US) 12/90

.....The A-side, just for the record, has a running time of 2:22 according to Amazon. The first evidence I can find of it ever being made available on CD is as part of a Bear Family box in 1997. It then surfaced again on CD ROCKIN' AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE: THE DECCA CHRISTMAS RECORDINGS MCA 70090-2 (US) 10/05/99, which was repackaged as CD THE BEST OF BRENDA LEE: THE CHRISTMAS COLLECTION MCA Nashville/Chronicles B0000520-2 (US) 09/23/03. Since then it's been licensed for a handful of hastily assembled compilations of familiar holiday recordings. The song was filed for copyright in 1952, but unless it was released regionally by a small country label somewhere I'm going to have to guess that Lee was the first to record it.

.....I first heard the B-side on the vinyl counterpart, MCA-25084 (US) 11/86, of the CD in the citation. I upgraded to the CD when it became available because it's a concentration of great singles in different styles in the Eisenhower-Kennedy era from several labels which were later absorbed into MCA. It also has a note of introduction by Brenda Lee written for the LP. But the compilation also has a number of flaws that have always bugged me. For one thing, it's less than a half hour long. The LP could have comfortably accommodated nearly twice as much playing time and the CD just less than three times as much. What makes the skimpiness even more egregious is that nearly all of the songs on the album were from singles whose flip sides were also Christmas themed. That's just a relatively minor example of something that was a chronic problem at MCA before the merger with PolyGram. When MCA dragged its feet in regards to putting Brenda Lee's 1964 Christmas album (MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM BRENDA LEE) back into print, Lee recorded a new album for Warner Brothers, CD A BRENDA LEE CHRISTMAS Warner Bros. 9 26660-2 (US) 10/24/91. MCA responded by taking the 1964 album, removing two songs from it, and issuing it on CD as CD JINGLE BELL ROCK MCA Special Products MCAD 20728 (US) 1992. The program order is otherwise intact. To add insult to insult, the two tracks that were removed became the lead tracks on a CD issued on a subsidiary called Hand the following year. CD MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM BRENDA LEE Hand/MCA HAND 22098 (US) 08/93 (which you may note uses the original title) not only was made entirely of tracks from the 1964 album again, but removed two different songs and rearranged the program order so that Lee's fans would first see the two songs not previously available and, perhaps, buy it before they realized that they already owned the rest of it. In other respects, ROCKIN' LITTLE CHRISTMAS avoids some of the characteristic sleaziness of MCA's vinyl days. For example, there are producer credits for some of the songs, yet no songwriting credits, something most major labels would consider a matter of basic competence. But even there MCA falls short. The song "I'M GONNA LASSO SANTA CLAUS" is credited to producer Owen Bradley, who took over production of Lee's sessions in 1958. This post's single was the second of Lee's first six, which were produced by Paul Cohen (except for the third, produced by Milt Gabler) from 1956 to 1957.

.....The 'lasso' image was in keeping with her Nashville recording locale, but like many young people who grew up immersed in country music during the fifties Brenda Lee leaned towards pop and rockabilly, eventually finding a broader audience than the one to whom she was marketed, as did The Everly Brothers and Buck Owens. But even the catchy, canter-like rhythm is not as memorable as her powerful voice. It's like getting hit on the head with a hammer by the sweetest little girl you've ever seen. Only five years later that same booming twang would be used to heartbreaking effect on the more adult song "BREAK IT TO ME GENTLY" while Lee was still in her teens. And the difference between her actual age and the mature sound of her voice certainly fueled interest in her records. This single, which was only her second release remember, carried the phrase "9 years old" on the label of the Children's Series copies although she would turn 12 just two months after its release. It may have been a ploy to make her obvious talent seem that much more remarkable but it caused a few headaches years later after she and her boyfriend, both 18 at the time, got legally married but had to continuously disprove poorly researched scandal sheet articles that claimed otherwise. For a saner and more concise look at her career, her official website has a clean look and is easy to navigate. It also has some brief notes specifically about her Christmas recordings.

1966-1970- James Brown on King

.....James Brown recorded about three and a half LP's worth of Christmas songs between 1966 and 1970. I would like to think that he was prompted by the success of Gary Walker's "SANTA'S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG", which I discussed in the previous post, if only because it made a good story. It probably had more to do with his expressed desire at that time to provide inspiration to impoverished black youth. It was a common sentiment at the time and much of his previous material was more oriented for adult audiences. What I can be certain about is that most of the songs were original compositions, many of them written by himself, Alfred "Pee-Wee" Ellis and Nat Jones. Since my purpose in this blog is to account for the earliest recordings of original 20th Century Christmas songs, Brown alone could provide about three weeks of daily entries. When I ran across a CD compilation I had and went to look up the original catalog numbers for the singles, I was reminded that Brown died on Christmas Day, 2006. That makes this year the fifth anniversary and perhaps deserving a little more than a mere mention. Instead I'm going to post a full discography of his original releases. A complete, exhaustive discography would be more difficult, since this material became the basis for numerous repackagings under similar sounding titles. All times are roughly approximate, since they vary among the reissues.

.....There were three singles released late in 1966, possibly all in December:

• 7" King Records 45-6064 (US) 12/66
• 02:41 THE CHRISTMAS SONG (Version 1) (Mel Tormé, Robert Wells)
• 02:44 THE CHRISTMAS SONG (Version 2) (Mel Tormé, Robert Wells)

.....

• 7" King Records 45-6065 (US) 12/66
• 02:54 SWEET LITTLE BABY BOY (Part 1) (James Brown, Nat Jones)
• 02:37 SWEET LITTLE BABY BOY (Part 2) (James Brown, Nat Jones)

.....

• 7" King Records 45-6072 (US) 12/66
• 02:53 LET'S MAKE CHRISTMAS MEAN SOMETHING THIS YEAR (Part 1) (James Brown, Nat Jones)
• 02:57 LET'S MAKE CHRISTMAS MEAN SOMETHING THIS YEAR (Part 2) (James Brown, Nat Jones)

.....Between the second and third single is the most likely time for the release of the album LP THE JAMES BROWN CHRISTMAS ALBUM King Records K1010 (mono) and KS1010 (stereo) (US) 12/66. Not only was this album pressed several times with minor variations to the jacket but the same songs were assembled in a different order and released again in 1967(?) under the title JAMES BROWN AND HIS FAMOUS FLAMES SING CHRISTMAS SONGS.

• 06:29 LET'S MAKE CHRISTMAS MEAN SOMETHING THIS YEAR (Part 1) (James Brown, Nat Jones)
• 00:00 LET'S MAKE CHRISTMAS MEAN SOMETHING THIS YEAR (Part 2) (James Brown, Nat Jones)
• 05:15 SWEET LITTLE BABY BOY (Part 1) (James Brown, Nat Jones)
• 00:00 SWEET LITTLE BABY BOY (Part 2) (James Brown, Nat Jones)
• 02:31 MERRY CHRISTMAS, I LOVE YOU (James Brown, Nat Jones)
• 04:37 SIGNS OF CHRISTMAS (James Brown, Nat Jones)
• 02:44 THE CHIRISTMAS SONG (Version 2) (Mel Tormé, Robert Wells)

.....and side B:

• 03:54 MERRY CHRISTMAS BABY (Lou Baxter, Johnny Moore)
• 02:41 THE CHRISTMAS SONG (Version 1) (Mel Tormé, Robert Wells)
• 03:21 PLEASE COME HOME FOR CHRISTMAS (Charles Brown, Gene C. Redd)
• 02:59 THIS IS MY LONELY CHRISTMAS (Part 1) (James Brown, Gene C. Redd)
• 04:46 THIS IS MY LONELY CHRISTMAS (Part 2) (James Brown, Gene C. Redd)
• 02:53 CHRISTMAS IN HEAVEN (Billy Ward)

.....The two versions of "THE CHRISTMAS SONG" and the other three covers on side B seem to be the last of the non-originals. The next two albums contain songs written for (and a few by) Brown that I can't find in any earlier form. A fourth album was released in 1999 and a half a dozen times since under as many titles. It may contain covers or originals, but I haven't sprung for a copy yet and won't be examining it in a post until I have. The two tracks on side B above that aren't covers appear to have been prepared as a fourth single, following the pattern of the first three of being one song in two parts. It's at times like this that I wish I knew more about James Brown's catalogue but he was extremely prolific, in a very rare class with Frank Zappa, Chet Atkins and few others. For instance, a more fanatical fan might have come across a report of a test pressing for such a single or might know if the mastering codes for those two tracks were significantly lower numbers than the other album-only songs, suggesting (but not proving) that they were prepared separately for separate release.

• 7" King Records 45-6187 (US) 09/68
• 02:45 SAY IT LOUD-- I'M BLACK AND I'M PROUD (Part 1) (James Brown)
• 02:30 SAY IT LOUD-- I'M BLACK AND I'M PROUD (Part 2) (James Brown)

.....That's not a mistake. Although not a Christmas song, the above single leads the second side of the next album.

• 7" King Records 45-6203 (US) 12/68
• 02:55 SANTA CLAUS GO STRAIGHT TO THE GHETTO (James Brown, Alfred Ellis, Hank Ballard)
• 02:55 YOU KNOW IT (instrumental) (Alfred Ellis, Bud Hobgood)

.....

• 7" King Records 45-6204 (US) 12/68
• 03:05 TIT FOR TAT (AIN'T NO TAKING BACK) (James Brown, Nat Jones)
• 02:45 BELIEVERS SHALL ENJOY (NON-BELIEVERS SHALL SUFFER) (instrumental) (Bud Hobgood, Nat Jones)

.....The songwriting credit for the A-sides above and below were both changed to "Charles Bobbit, Nat Jones" after these recordings were repackaged by Polydor, which acquired the King Records catalogue in 1971. I really don't know which is correct, but Brown's name was on the 7" vinyl. Also, the subtitle for the above A-side is definitely "AIN'T NO TAKING BACK", despite numerous websites listing this song as "TALKING BACK" or "TURNING BACK" or who knows what. The song is about the child's game, Tit For Tat. Each child hits the other in turn and the other child is allowed to hit back at least as hard as they were hit themselves. The trick is to hit harder than you were hit yourself, but no harder than you can withstand being hit in return. Hence, "ain't no taking back", meaning that you can't hit someone and then change your mind when you realize how hard you have allowed them to hit you in retaliation. It's a way of saying, "No cheating". The game ends when someone quits before hitting back.

• 7" King Records 45-6205 (US) 12/68
• 02:42 LET'S UNITE THE WHOLE WORLD AT CHRISTMAS (James Brown, Nat Jones)(see above)
• 02:35 IN THE MIDDLE (Part 1) (Bud Hobgood, Alfred Ellis)

.....LP SOULFUL CHRISTMAS King Records KS1040 (US) 12/68

• 03:01 SANTA CLAUS GO STRAIGHT TO THE GHETTO (James Brown, Alfred Ellis, Hank Ballard)
• 04:03 SANTA CLAUS, SANTA CLAUS (Charles Bobbit, Nat Jones)
• 02:14 BELIEVERS SHALL ENJOY (NON-BELIEVERS SHALL SUFFER)(vocal) (Bud Hobgood, Nat Jones)
• 03:06 SOULFUL CHRISTMAS (Hank Ballard, Charles Bobbit, Alfred Ellis)
• 03:04 TIT FOR TAT (AIN'T NO TALKING BACK) [see note below single]
• 02:38 CHRISTMAS IS COMING (Bud Hobgood)

.....and side B:

• 04:46 SAY IT LOUD-- I'M BLACK AND PROUD (Part 1) (James Brown[and Alfred Ellis?])
• 00:00 SAY IT LOUD-- I'M BLACK AND PROUD (Part 2)
• 02:42 IN THE MIDDLE (Alfred Ellis, Bud Hobgood)
• 02:42 LET'S UNITE THE WHOLE WORLD AT CHRISTMAS [see note above single]
• 02:20 YOU KNOW IT (vocal) (Alfred Ellis, Bud Hobgood)
• 03:50 SANTA CLAUS GAVE ME A BRAND NEW START (Bud Hobgood, Nat Jones)

.....Soon after, one of the songs was rerecorded as a duet with Marva Whitney and released as an A-side with an earlier A-side as the flip:

• 7" King Records 45-6206 (US) 02?/69
• 02:44 IN THE MIDDLE (Part 2) (Alfred Ellis, Bud Hobgood) with Marva Whitney
• 03:05 TIT FOR TAT (AIN'T NO TAKING BACK) [see note below earlier single]

.....Both sides of "SAY IT LOUD... " also appear on an album of the same name, King Records KS1047 (US) 04/69.

....."IN THE MIDDLE" Parts 1 and 2 eventually appear together on the album LP JAMES BROWN PLAYS AND DIRECTS THE POPCORN King Records KSD 1055 (US) 08/69.

.....The first two albums continued to be available in 1969 but a new single came out as well:

• 7" King Records 45-6277 (US) 12/69
• 03:10 IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME (Part 1)(James Brown, Bud Hobgood)
• 03:15 IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME (Part 2)(James Brown, Bud Hobgood)

.....The following year two singles preceded the third album.

• 7" King Records 45-6339 (US) 11/70
• 03:42 HEY AMERICA (vocal) (Nat Jones, Addie Williams Jones)
• 03:42 HEY AMERICA (sing along) (Nat Jones, Addie Williams Jones)

.....

• 7" King Records 45-6340 (US) 12/70
• 04:24 SANTA CLAUS IS DEFINITELY HERE TO STAY (single version) (Nat Jones)
• 04:24 SANTA CLAUS IS DEFINITELY HERE TO STAY (sing along) (Nat Jones)

.....The third Christmas album was released with an art collage cover that was not obviously holiday themed. It was soon replaced with a cover featuring the title and subtitle in at least 2 inch font on a blank dark background over a small photo that looks like James Brown. Unlike many of the repackagings of Brown's Christmas music these both carried the same title: LP HEY AMERICA [IT'S CHRISTMAS] King Records KS 1124 (US) 12/70. It also became available as Polydor 2391 049.

• 03:49 HEY AMERICA (vocal) (Nat Jones, Addie Williams Jones)
• 03:59 A LONELY LITTLE BOY AROUND ONE LITTLE CHRISTMAS TOY (Nat Jones)
• 03:03 GO POWER AT CHRISTMAS TIME (Nat Jones)
• 06:00 CHRISTMAS IS LOVE (Nat Jones)

.....and side B:

• 04:22 SANTA CLAUS IS DEFINITELY HERE TO STAY [LP] (Nat Jones)
• 06:00 MY RAPP (Nat Jones)
• 03:03 I'M YOUR CHRISTMAS FRIEND, DON'T BE HUNGRY (Nat Jones)
• 03:55 MERRY CHRISTMAS MY BABY AND A VERY, VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR (Nat Jones)

.....The last two tracks were also pressed as a single in The Netherlands as 7" Polydor 2066 276. Again, I wish I had some way of knowing if there had been plans for a U.S. release, since most compilations don't include either track but do emphasize the singles. The one single that I can confirm was kept in print during the 1970's was:

• 7" Polydor 14161 (US) 12/72
• 02:58 SANTA CLAUS GO STRAIGHT TO THE GHETTO [1968]
• 02:50 SWEET LITTLE BABY BOY [1966]

.....Before Christmas this year I hope to post about the most notable compilations of these recordings. Except for the Marva Whitney duet, all the songs mentioned here can be found on 2CD THE COMPLETE JAMES BROWN CHRISTMAS Hip-O-Select/ Polydor 14791 (US) 10/12/10.

1965- "Santa's Got A Brand New Bag"

.....Five years ago this Christmas, the world lost James Brown. I couldn't let the first year of this blog go by without giving some mention to the man who released three Christmas albums (plus singles) in a five year period. "Hardest Working Man In Show Business" wasn't just some kind of press release hype. In the next post I'll begin covering the wealth of original holiday music he left us, but before I can do that I need to set up a little chronology to introduce it. Because the first James Brown Christmas single wasn't by James Brown.

.....At this time sixty years ago Brown was completing a prison sentence. He left determined to change his life and began performing with Bobby Byrd's Gospel Starlighters. Brown's personal charisma and powerful confessional style soon drew the lion's share of attention and Byrd's outfit increasingly gravitated towards secular gigs, renaming themselves The Famous Flames. They began recording as the Flames at about the same time as a gulf area band of young white musicians calling themselves the Boogie Kings made a notch for themselves in history by deciding to devote themselves to playing music recorded by black artists. Being a cover band normally isn't remarkable, but in 1955 that was thought to be a first. In 1958 they racked up another first by appearing on the first release by Louisiana based Jin Records, a single on which they backed Doug Ardoin.

.....A decade later, James Brown releases "PAPA'S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG" (backed with Part 2) on King Records 5999 (US) 07/65. Brown had long been a star on the R&B charts, but had only once previously entered the Top 20 on Billboard's Pop charts (with "PRISONER OF LOVE" in 1963 at #18). The success of "PAPA'S... " was palpable; it reached #8 on Billboard's Hot 100. In England, it's reported that the Who had completed recording their first album, including covers of Brown's "PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE", "I DON'T MIND" and "SHOUT AND SHIMMY". Daltrey had been a Brown fan for a while and his songs had been a part of the Who's live set since the beginning. In fact, the total number of covers concerned their management, who delayed the release of the album until December (April 1966 in the U.S.) while they recorded more originals to replace some of the covers. In October, "SHOUT AND SHIMMY" became a B-side and the other two made it to the final cut of the album. Meanwhile, back in the states both sides of Brown's "PAPA'S... " single opened a new album of the same name in September 1965 on King 938 (US) 09/65. He also used an instrumental version as the B-side of the instrumental version of "TRY ME" (an earlier hit) on Smash 2008 (US) 12/65. None of this was lost gulf area soul singer Gary Walker. That fall he went to Jin Records with a holiday song based on Brown's recent hit.

• -N/A- "LOSING MY MIND OVER YOU" (-N/A-)
• 03:08 b/w "SANTA'S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG" (James Brown)
• performed by Gary Walker
• original source: 7" Jin Records 45-195 (US) 1965
• and my source: VACD THE BEST OF COOL YULE Rhino Records R2 75767 (US?) 1988

.....'Answer' records were very common in the 1950's and still kicking around in the 1960's. In fact, one of the earlier posts on this blog was for "X-MAS TWIST". However, those songs are usually original songs with new lyrics and music about the same subject matter as an existing hit. What Walker did was set new lyrics to Brown's song and went one step further by doing a straight faced imitation of Brown while singing it. There was no attempt to sell the record as a James Brown recording-- Walker's name clearly appears in larger, bolder type as the performer than Brown's name does, parenthetically as the composer. But complicating matters is the fact that there was no separate credit for the new lyrics, however minimally they were changed. Also, listening to the song today on a properly mastered and balanced compact disc with headphones, it may be difficult to imagine anyone being fooled into believing that this was James Brown. But in 1965, listening to a vinyl copy played on AM radio over your car's speakers? Welll... we're not all audiophiles. As I mentioned above, Walker copped Brown's style of delivery if not his exact voice. It starts with a 'single-finger-on-piano' quote from "JINGLE BELLS" and a chorus singing the title before launching into the familiar horn blast. Then Walker delivers a credible take on "PAPA'S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG" with a few strategic lyric changes. He didn't go for a broad, farcical imitation (probably for reasons of good taste; at that time the often mercenary Brown was instead passing up paying engagements to do benefit concerts for civil rights interests and the SCLC). To this day it turns up on Christmas compilations routinely. It sounds like something Brown might have recorded, except that despite his gospel origins he had never marketed any explicitly holiday-oriented material. Yet.

.....James Brown began recording his own Christmas songs the following year and continued through 1970, after which that material continued to be occasionally pressed and sold every year to date. He did one more album in 1999, but never recorded (or at least never released) a version of "SANTA'S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG", contrary to the popularly held misconception. Despite this, when Rhino records got the go ahead to license his old King recordings from PolyGram Special Products, they called their compilation "SANTA'S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG", hopelessly confusing people still looking for that song. I hope to clear up a bit of that confusion with a James Brown Christmas discography over the next few days. While preparing this post I began getting error messages when I tried to save it. Unlike past experiences in which several paragraphs of original writing disappeared into the ether, I didn't lose anything except the time it took to copy the upper half of this post by hand, fearing it would also be lost. Cross your fingers and we'll all see it by the weekend if not sooner.

.....Oh, and one last note about Gary Walker. You may find it difficult to find much more by searching online. Too many websites take a research-by-robot approach instead of employing musicologists. They don't seem to realize or care that this is not the same Gary Walker as Gary Leeds, the Seattle area musician who joined some fellow expatriate Americans who were working in England under the name The Walker Brothers. About a year before the gulf area Gary released his Christmas single, the northwest Gary joined The Walker Brothers and changed his name to Gary Walker. When they hit big they eventually all released solo material under their Walker pseudonyms. From what I've been able to disambiguate, Gulf Gary had already released three singles for MGM Records in the late 1950's. In 1966 he released one more single for Jin. I haven't been able to track down all of Jin's various artists albums, but I was able to confirm that he joined the Boogie Kings in 1967, explaining the lack of visible material under his own name from that point on. There were two more Jin singles circa 1980, but I don't know how old the recordings were. According to the Boogie Kings' website, he has since passed away but they don't offer any details. If anyone living in that area (especially anyone involved in organizing musicians and other artists in the wake of Katrina) has verifiable knowledge, it would be greatly appreciated in the comments section. Thank you.