1962- "The Christmas Song" (Marvin Gaye)

.....This was a live recording from the Apollo Theater, New York, NY on December 16, 1962. Obviously that would be too late to release for that year's holiday sales, but neither the Miracles' sessions in August or the Kim Weston song recorded in October led to any releases that year either, so I'm not certain if there were clear plans for this recording when it was captured. Because of conflicting liner notes from different sources the post that I put together last year was confused and probably confusing. What is certain is that the song was originally recorded by Nat 'King' Cole and written by Mel Tormé and Robert Wells. As a cover it should not be given any priority on this blog but I'm including it as a part of Motown's history with Christmas music as a whole. As for the conflicting liner notes, I should just list all the sources I've been able to find.

.....First, the original appearance in 4CD THE MARVIN GAYE COLLECTION Motown MOTD4-6311 (US) 09/19/90

• Live from the Apollo 1963, previously unreleased
• Mixed from the original masters by Roger Nichols
• Producer: William Stevenson; Compilation Producer: George Soloman
• Mastered by John Matousek at Soundworks West, Los Angeles, CA

.....That first appearance lists the running time at 2:22, but other appearances range from 2:35 to 2:38. It first appeared in an all-Christmas context in VACD CHRISTMAS IN THE CITY Motown Master Series 37463-6326-2 (Germany) 10/19/93

• Produced by Smokey Robinson
• First issued on the album THE MARVIN GAYE COLLECTION Motown 6311, 09/19/90
• Recorded live at the Apollo Theater, 1963
• Compilation produced by Cary E. Mansfield
• Digitally remastered by Bill Inglot and Dan Hersch at Digiprep, Los Angeles, CA

.....I don't own a copy of VACD A CHRISTMAS PRESENT FROM MOTOWN VOLUME 2 Spectrum 544 684-2 (UK) 10/05/01, although I've learned that both this CD and Volume 1 (released simultaneously) contain 18 tracks. While Spectrum is generally a budget label dealing in repackagings of licensed recordings, that seems to be more generous than you'd find on a loss-leader. They could have song-writing and even producing credits but it's unlikely that there would be revealing or elaborate liner notes and certainly not investigations into the recording's history. Leave a comment if you've found otherwise.

.....The next appearance changes the recording dates, but doesn't name a producer. At this point there's one vote for Mickey, one for Smokey, one absentee and this makes one abstention. From VACD A MOTOWN CHRISTMAS VOLUME 2 Motown/Universal 440 016 364-2 (US) 11/06/01 :

• Recorded on stage at the Apollo Theater, New York, NY, probably December 16, 1962
• First issued with a different mix on the box set THE MARVIN GAYE COLLECTION Motown 6311, Sept 1990
• Compilation produced by Harry Weinger
• Digitally remastered from original sources by Kevin Reeves at Universal Mastering Studios-East
• Mixed by Kevin Reeves

.....The difference between the 1993 mix and the 2001 mix is mostly that the crowd noises at the beginning are more distinct. Actually in both mixes Gaye's voice comes through remarkably clearly for a decades old live recording. It sounds as though he's accompanied by piano and flute and the subtleties of the fluttering of the flute are easier to hear in the 2001 mix. I'd considered the possibility that the song had been recorded twice but the instrumental arrangements and Gaye's address to the crowd are identical. I'm convinced that they're the same recording, and more importantly so is Keith Hughes. Hughes has had access to Motown's paperwork during the course of doing research for the liner notes of some of Motown's higher end boxed sets and has compiled the website Don't Forget The Motor City. The entry there for this song notes that the appearance on the 1990 box is in stereo but the 1993 and 2001 mixes are in mono. It also places the date at December 31 (?), 1962 and confirms that William Stevenson produced it. Stevenson also produced the live album LP RECORDED LIVE: MARVIN GAYE ON STAGE Tamla TM242 (US) 09/09/63, recorded August 4th. The New Year's Eve date is the same one given for tracks from the various artists' album LP MOTORTOWN REVUE VOL. 1 RECORDED LIVE! AT THE APOLLO Motown M609 (US) 04/23/63. That album includes other Marvin Gaye songs, but they were all produced by Berry Gordy. After the live Gaye album (recorded at Graystone Ballroom in August 1963) there was another live Motortown Revue album recorded November 17, 1963 and produced by Mickey Stevenson but it was recorded at the Fox Theater, Detroit. If anyone has inside information that can get the date, location and producer to line up, please leave the information and your source in the comments below. Thanks.

1962- Wish You A Merry Christmas (stereo)

.....I posted about Kim Weston's "WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS" last year, but neglected to mention that an alternate mix exists and that many compilations containing the song don't distinguish between the two. First, you may want to read the original post:

http://lgcmusic02.blogspot.com/2011/02/1962-wish-you-merry-christmas.html

.....The different versions are the original monaural version discussed in that post, which appears on:

• VACD CHRISTMAS IN THE CITY Motown Master Series 37463-6326-2 (Germany) 10/19/93
• VACD A CHRISTMAS PRESENT FROM MOTOWN VOLUME 2 Spectrum 544 684-2 (UK) 10/05/01

.....At about the same time that Spectrum/Universal licensed the earlier version for Europe, a previously unreleased stereo mix was released in the United States. At 2:47 it was twelve seconds longer and had a noticeably better dynamic range; the difference between the softest and loudest parts was more pronounced whereas the monaural version seems to spend too much time "in the red". Without so much distortion listeners get more of an indication of the headliner she would be in just a few years. The new mix is credited to Kevin Reeves, who also handled new mixes of "X-MAS TWIST" and two Marvin Gaye songs. The liner notes give a more specific recording date, October 31, 1962. There's also a change in the song-writing credit: it adds Kim Weston's name to William 'Mickey' Stevenson's. While the monaural version continued to show up on European compilations (especially those that licensed tracks from sources besides Universal) the stereo version appeared in the U.S. three times in one decade:

• VACD A MOTOWN CHRISTMAS VOLUME 2 Motown/Universal 440 016 364-2 (US) 11/06/01
• VACD 20TH CENTURY MASTERS: THE CHRISTMAS COLLECTION-- THE BEST OF MOTOWN CHRISTMAS [VOLUME 1] Motown/Universal 602498-60566-0 (US) 09/23/03
• VA2CD THE ULTIMATE MOTOWN CHRISTMAS COLLECTION Motown/Universal B0013383-02 (US) 10/13/09

.....From repeated listenings I'm certain that both mixes use the same take as a source. Both start abruptly, although the stereo sounds as though it starts a half-second later. The greater difference is at the end. While the monaural mix fades out, the stereo has a longer edit and an entire additional line, "Oh, I've got to be with you..." before fading out.

1962- Miracles' album sessions 1

.....In August 1962 the Miracles began recording Christmas songs. These songs eventually became half of their first Christmas album the following year, but I don't know if the intention was to record a few secular holiday tunes and a few religious carols and pick through them for a likely single, or if it was always the intention to produce an entire album.

.....The first three tracks were finished August 21, 1962. They were:

• 2:39 "THE CHRISTMAS SONG" (Mel Tormé, Robert Wells), produced by William 'Mickey' Stevenson.
• 2:11 "O HOLY NIGHT" (Adolphe C. Adam), produced by Ron White and Smokey Robinson.
• 2:29 "CHRISTMAS EVERYDAY" (William 'Smokey' Robinson), produced by Smokey Robinson.

.....After the album was released in late October 1963 a promotional single circulated coupling the original song "CHRISTMAS EVERYDAY" with the cover "THE CHRISTMAS SONG" as 7" Tamla EX-009 (US) 11/63.

.....Another session was held on August 23, 1962:

• 2:30 "NÖEL" (Traditional), produced by Smokey Robinson.

.....And at least one more on August 29, 1962:

• 2:27 "I'LL BE HOME FOR CHRISTMAS" (lyrics: Kim Gannon, music: Walter Kent, for legal purposes Buck Ram), produced by Ron White.

.....If that last songwriting credit seems a little cryptic, my apologies, but I've already provided capsule backgrounds to these songs with a track-by-track look at the album last year in the three posts linked below:

....."1963- Christmas Every Day" http://lgcmusic02.blogspot.com/2011/02/1963-christmas-every-day.html

....."1963- Christmas With The Miracles side A" http://lgcmusic02.blogspot.com/2011/02/1963-christmas-with-miracles-side.html

....."1963- Christmas With The Miracles side B" http://lgcmusic02.blogspot.com/2011/02/1963-christmas-with-miracles-side-b.html

.....I'll place the remainder of the sessions chronologically.

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.

1962 Wish You A Merry Christmas

.....Mention Kim Weston to any large group of people and enthusiasts of old school rhythm and blues will likely close their eyes and say, "Ahh, yes", while casual radio-listeners will probably mumble, "Who the hell is Kim Weston?". I was already familiar with the name years ago from rooting around catalogs and compilation record bins for the Christmas truffles of other Motown artists that I knew to exist. It wasn't until the mid-1990's when I came across a German import of rare and previously unreleased recordings that I discovered what I was missing. At first I was afraid it might be simply alternate takes or mixes, since the label is known for returning to the same hit well many times and most of the tracks were by their only three acts to release full Christmas albums during the sixties-- the Miracles, Supremes and Stevie Wonder. Then I noticed not one, but four tracks by Marvin Gaye. That made me give a closer scrutiny and I noticed the Funk Brothers, Kim Weston and a non-album B-side I had been hunting for and the purchase became a done deal.

• 02:35 "WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS" (William 'Mickey' Stevenson)
• performed by Kim Weston
• recorded in 1962 but not contemporarily released
• original source: VACD CHRISTMAS IN THE CITY Motown Master Series 37463-6326-2 (G) 1993
• and my source: the same

.....Some databases state that Weston signed to Motown in 1963, which is guesswork, apparently, since her first solo release was in that year. If you look closely at the previous post, you can see the name Brian Holland (of "Holland-Dozier-Holland" fame) as a co-writing credit for "WHITE HOUSE TWIST". The Brian and brother Eddie had a cousin named Johnny Thornton who recommended a local girl named Agatha Weston. Eddie brought her to Berry Gordy, and, no doubt owing to her background of singing in church, Gordy placed her with the Wright Specials. They released the first two singles on the short lived gospel subsidiary Divinity, but those both came from a 1961 session she didn't take part in. Agatha became Kim and recorded this for producer Mickey Stevenson. Not as slinky or suggestive as Eartha Kitt's "SANTA BABY", or even Dodie Stevens' "MERRY MERRY CHRISTMAS BABY", it is easily as seductive despite being nearly belted out as though Whitney Houston were working in a bar filled with longshoremen. With a little more polish she began releasing singles on the company's first label, Tamla, in February 1963 and shifted to Gordy in 1965. She married Stevenson in 1966 and when he was offered a position at MGM's Venture subsidiary, the two left Motown together, reportedly with two albums unreleased.

.....I have to mention that this song is completely unrelated to the standard "WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS". In fact, the title doesn't appear anywhere in the lyrics. There is really only one verse, which is then repeated with the first half spoken. Why they passed on this is beyond me. In the last ten years it has certainly been making up for lost time by appearing on several Motown compilations.