1966- "Season's Greetings From Motown"

.....In 1966 Motown had a Stevie Wonder single in the works for Christmas (see next post), but the rest of their holiday music catalog consisted of two single-artist albums, one redundant single and a fistful of out-of-print and unreleased songs. To the less savvy, the obvious answer would be to get use out of the non-album recordings by collecting them together as a various artists album, throwing in some choice tracks from the Miracles' and Supremes' albums to sweeten the pot. But we are not Berry Gordy.

.....Whatever else was going on in Gordy's life, what those of us who didn't know him personally knew for certain amounted to three things: he had an ear for what worked as pop music; he loved making money; and he wanted to project a positive, assimilationist image of African-Americans that countered images he saw growing up. More than anything he wanted black Americans to control their own image and not have it controlled by everyone else. If Mitch Miller and Bing Crosby sold Christmas albums, Motown would sell Christmas albums. But he wasn't going to be selling dated material. From this point on, for the foreseeable future, the only item prior to the Supremes' album to be returned to print would be the original Miracles song "CHRISTMAS EVERYDAY". The album it came from would sell through its remaining stock and eventually return to print years later, but the emphasis would be on new recordings. Eventually there would be a holiday product that could project the whole Motown brand identity and not just a single act. Inching towards that end, Motown released a promotional single with spoken greetings from Motown artists. Many of them hadn't recorded, and wouldn't record, Christmas songs for Motown. Some never recorded Christmas material ever. The single shipped only to radio stations and was known to be pressed on red vinyl. I wouldn't be surprised if plans existed to press it on green vinyl as well.

.....Except for Shorty Long every act was represented by two greetings. One greeting would specifically mention Christmas and/or New Year's and the other greeting would be deliberately vague so that it could apply to different holidays as well. Everything ranged from five to ten seconds in length. Below I'm going to transcribe the texts, which are generally spoken by a single person. Where another group member interjects, their part will be marked by parentheses. Where an entire group speaks, that part will be marked by double brackets, i.e., {{, }}.

.....7" EP SEASONS GREETINGS FROM MOTOWN Motown 2482 (US) 11/66 [promo]

• 1-) "Hi, this is Martha Reeves of Martha and the Vandellas wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a glorious New Year."
• 1A) "Hi, this is Martha Reeves of Martha and the Vandellas sending season's greetings to everyone everywhere."
• 2-) "Hi, this is Eddie of The Temptations speaking for the rest of the guys wishing you a Merry, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year."
• 2A) "Hi, this is Eddie of The Temptations wishing you the best holiday season ever."
• 3-) "Hi, this is Smokey Robinson (and Bobby of the Miracles) wishing you all a Merry Christmas (and a Happy New Year)."
• 3A) "Hi this is Smokey (and Bobby of the Miracles) and we'd like to extend a season's greeting to all."
• 4-) "This is Bad Shorty wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year."
• 5-) "Hi, this is Carolyn of the Velvelettes wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year from all of us."
• 5A) "Hi, this is Carolyn of the Velvelettes extending season's greetings from all of us."
• 6-) "{{Hello, we're The Spinners}} and we'd like to take this occasion to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year."
• 6A) "{{Hello, we're The Spinners}} and we'd like to take this occasion to wish everyone the best of season's greetings."
• 7-) "Hi, this is Duke of The Four Tops. I'd like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of The Four Tops."
• 7A) "Hi there, this is Duke of The Four Tops. I'd like to wish you the very best of season's greetings from all of The Four Tops."
• 8-) "{{Merry Christmas}} and a Happy New Year from The Elgins."
  
• 8A) "{{Season's greetings}} from The Elgins."
• 9-) "{{Hi, we're The Supremes wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.}}"
• 9A) "{{Hi, we're The Supremes wishing everyone a pleasant holiday.}}"

.....Tracks 1-5 are on side A, tracks 6-9 are on side B. The entire contents above appear as an unlisted fifteenth track on VACD A MOTOWN CHRISTMAS VOLUME 2 Motown/Universal 440 016 364-2 (US) 11/06/01, plus a Michael Jackson greeting from 1973. The order of the artists speaking is the same as the order on label scans of the original single, but I'm only assuming that on the original single that the Christmas-specific greetings always precede the general greetings for each artist as they do on the CD track. Although there was no picture sleeve, label scans can be found intermittently on resale and auction sites, both general ones like eBay and music-only sites, for however long it takes that copy to sell.

.....There are no details on the single itself to identify speakers who don't explicitly identify themselves. I also don't know exactly when during 1966 these were recorded. I've identified below what could have been the line-ups of the various groups during 1966, with the groups alphabetical but numbered by their respective track on the single.

• 8) THE ELGINS: Sandra (Mallet) Edwards, Johnny Dawson, Cleo 'Duke' Miller, Robert Fleming
• 7) THE FOUR TOPS: Levi Stubbs, Lawrence Payton, Abdul 'Duke' Fakir, Renaldo 'Obie' Benson
• 4) SHORTY (FREDERICK) LONG
• 3) THE MIRACLES: William 'Smokey' Robinson, Ronnie White, Bobby Rogers, Claudette Rogers-Robinson, Warren 'Pete' Moore, Marv Tarplin
• 6) THE SPINNERS: Henry Fembrough, Billy Henderson, Pervis Jackson, Bobbie Smith, (?)George W. Dixon
• 9) THE SUPREMES: Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, Florence Ballard
• 2) THE TEMPTATIONS: Otis Williams (or Otis Miles?), Melvin Franklin (or David English?), David Ruffin, Paul Williams, Eddie Kendricks
• 1) MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS: Martha Reeves, Rosalind Ashford, Betty Kelly
• 5) THE VELVELETTES: Betty Kelly, Sandra Tilley, Carolyn Gill

.....Since 1990, these greetings and the ones from a similar 1973 single have been used as 'bumpers' between tracks on label compilations. The two tracks from The Supremes appear, again unlisted, five seconds after the ending of the bonus track "SILENT NIGHT" on the 1999 remaster of their MERRY CHRISTMAS album (see two posts back). If you know of any unmarked uses of these tracks, please leave the details in the comments section. Thank you.

1965- "New Year's" (spoken)

.....While most people are aware that Motown artists in the 1960's not only played individual headlining shows but travelled as a collective identity as the Motor Town Revue, many are not aware that later incarnations of that revue were MC'ed by Willie Tyler, best known for his ventriloquist act Willie Tyler and Lester. Tyler has had a varied carrier (with and without Lester) acting in movies and television and also writing and singing original songs. On his website is an audio clip for "CHRISTMAS RAP" and a video clip for "DECEMBER AGAIN". If I can confirm that they were recorded before 2000 I may post on them in the future. This post is about a routine from one of his comedy albums. Bits from the album have turned up on Youtube but I have yet to hear this. I'm mentioning it here on faith that it's relevant to the season but can't really review it without hearing it.

• 00:00 "NEW YEAR'S" (Willie Tyler) (spoken word)
• performed by Willie Tyler and Lester
• original source: LP HELLO DUMMY! Tamla T265 (US) 11/65
• and my source: (still waiting)

1952- "A Child's Christmas In Wales" (Thomas)

.....[Re-edited from December 21st, 2011]

.....Persons like myself who delve into the history of rock music inevitably come across images of the Chelsea Hotel in New York, none of which call to mind Christmas. But long before the fates of Sid and Nancy (and others) came to define it for many of us, The Chelsea had long been a magnet for literary work. It was not merely a mecca for persons working in publishing but a site of actual creative production and, significantly for today's post, a catalyst for even more work that continued beyond its walls. Barbara Cohen and Marianne Roney met Dylan Thomas in the bar at the Chelsea Hotel after hearing him speak and after much cajoling convinced him to record his poems. Those recordings became the seed from which the Caedmon Records label grew. Later that year J.R.R. Tolkien recorded selected readings and the label became synonymous with spoken word recordings. Many of their releases became yardsticks by which future projects would be measured.

• 19:53 "A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES" (Dylan Thomas)
• performed by Dylan Thomas
• original source: LP DYLAN THOMAS READING A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES AND FIVE POEMS Caedmon Records TC 1002 (US) 1952
• and my source: CD A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES AND FIVE POEMS Caedmon/Harper Audio UACD 1002(1) (US) Nov. 12, 2002

.....Before kicking around New York, Thomas wrote for the BBC in his native Wales. In 1945 he submitted "MEMORIES OF CHRISTMAS" for inclusion in "Children's Hour", a popular series. In 1947 Picture Post printed his essay "CONVERSATION ABOUT CHRISTMAS". When trying to establish himself to American audiences, rather than simply rehash existing works he cannibalized these two to produce a much fuller more living work, "A CHILD'S MEMORIES OF A CHRISTMAS IN WALES" the December 1950 issue of Harper's Bazaar.

See: http://www.bfsmedia.com/MAS/Dylan/Christmas.html

.....Thomas had been promoting his work in the U.S. when Cohen and Roney discovered him. The initial scheduled recording date (Feb. 15) never happened. An appearance at the Museum of Modern Art on Feb. 18 was recorded, but those were dramatic readings of "King Lear" and other works (eventually released ten years later as Caedmon TC 1158). Finally, on Feb. 22, 1952, Cohen and Roney welcomed Thomas to Steinway Hall, which was to serve as the recording venue, and introduced him to Peter Bartók (son of Bela) who would serve as the recording engineer for the session. It was about this time that he was building the Bartók Records label and as of 2010 was still on its staff.

.....According to the liner notes of the CD noted as 'my source' above, Bartók had prepared the recording equipment in anticipation of recording a speech but decided to adjust the settings "for a symphonic recording to accommodate Thomas' sonorous voice." Listening to it, that's actually not hard to imagine. To some today, Thomas' voice might seem comically anachronistic, like Rudy Vallee or William Jennings Bryan. But listening to Dylan Thomas at length is like sitting in the center of a house as it is built around you. You wouldn't want to live in the initial frame but once the final nail is struck you wouldn't want to leave the room. It wasn't until the fifth poem was completed that the principals, somewhat intoxicated by the results, realized that their ambitious project yielded less than a half hour of material. That would be slim pickings for a long-playing record, the format of choice for the educated adult market they viewed as potentially most receptive to poetry readings. Securing the hall a third time was one pricey option, haphazardly assembling more poems without consideration for balance with the ones just recorded was another. Before a regretful error in judgement was made, Thomas remembered the Harper's Bazaar essay. Hasty panicked phone calls uncovered a copy of the issue, by then just over a year old. The session was completed with about forty-six minutes of best takes. While the quality of material wasn't in question, existing labels understandably balked at the commercial viability of recorded poetry by the authors rather than celebrity actors or vocalists. Cohen and Roney created Caedmon to release it and that proved to be a very wise move on their part.

.....The title of the essay was shortened to "A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES" for the recording which, along with the poem "FERN HILL", filled side one of the LP. Caedmon got off the ground that same year, 1952, and after a few more albums of his readings that first album was reissued in 1957 as READINGS VOLUME 1. The essay and the poems continued to be repackaged together and separately for years, even after the Caedmon label was sold in the early 1970's. It changed hands a few times and is now at home with Harper Audio at HarperCollins. The CD I cited above reproduced the album in its original form and program order including both the original cover artwork and 1985 illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman. Contemporary NPR coverage of the release can be found here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=866406

.....Dylan Thomas died of pneumonia at the Chelsea Hotel on November 9, 1953. Despite his short association with Caedmon, he left behind a wealth of recordings in that deep, Welsh accent that finally won him an American audience. On November 9, 2004 Harper released the 11CD boxed set DYLAN THOMAS: THE CAEDMON COLLECTION [UNABRIDGED] (ISBN# 978-00607-9083-7), containing not only all the tracks from the first and subsequent albums but also some material from the BBC and CBC.

1959- "Five Pound Box Of Money"

.....Although over fifty years old, this number could easily find an audience today. The B-side, I mean.

• 02:18 JINGLE BELLS CHA CHA CHA (Pearl Bailey)
• 02:35 b/w FIVE POUND BOX OF MONEY (J. Barker, P. Bailey)
• original source: 7" Roulette R-4206 (US) 1959
• and my source: (for the B-side) VACD HIPSTERS' HOLIDAY Rhino R2 70910 (US) 1989

.....Rhino Records compiled a number of excellent Christmas collections from the mid-1980's to the mid-1990's, often with different configurations on vinyl and CD. HIPSTERS' HOLIDAY was one of the best, with a cross-section of jazz acts from 1946-1966 and one horrible kitsch lounge act recorded less than a year before the compilation came out. Unlike many of their compilations, HIPSTERS' HOLIDAY provided detailed personnel and exact recording dates for most of the tracks. For jazz bands that could mean upwards of a dozen musicians on some performances. "FIVE POUND BOX OF MONEY" is one of the few for which there is "No session information available". Jazz isn't my strong suit and my resources are not nearly as extensive as Rhino's, but my guess is that their suggested date of release on the jewel case may be a typo. The year '1958' follows the songwriting credit, and that may be when the song was recorded or when the sheet music was copyrighted, but a discography of Roulette's singles maintained by Global Dog Productions places the single in 1959, as does an article in a music industry publication (Billboard, December 14th, 1959) announcing that several radio stations would be holding contests asking listeners to guess the dollar amount of a five pound box of mixed coins, specifically tying it to the release of the single. That said, the internet abounds with sites offering mp3's of the song identified (if by any date at all) as coming from 1958, which I guess tells us from where these tenth generation copies were ultimately stol-- uh, acquired. Both sides have actually resurfaced periodically in the CD age and I may dig around next year for "JINGLE BELLS CHA CHA CHA" and revisit this post or simply leave a link to any new post in the comment area.

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.

1932- "Christmas Message To The Empire, 1932"

.....This first entry is actually a spoken word piece, but one with a strange pedigree.

• 03:06 "CHRISTMAS MESSAGE TO THE EMPIRE, 1932" (Rudyard Kipling)
• performed by His Majesty King George V (of England)
• original source: BBC Empire Service broadcast, 25th December, 1932
• commercial debut: 10"[78RPM] His Master's Voice R.B.S. 4359(UK) 01/33 [one-sided]
• and my source: CD THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS PAST Living Era ASV Ltd. CDAJA5178 (UK) 1995

.....The liner notes for the CD suggest that this item's catalog number is OB 4598-3, which I can't find listed on any website. I did find one auction house which described their copy as having a matrix number OB 4398 IIIIT3, so there may simply be a typo somewhere.

.....The BBC had been broadcasting domestically since 1927 when the Empire Service (today known as the World Service, I believe) commenced in December 1932. This would broadcast to member countries of the United Kingdom all over the globe. The participation of the King early on would inspire confidence in the ambitious project and Christmas or New Year's Day would seem the ideal special occasion to provide the maximum audience. The text of the address was provided by Rudyard Kipling:

....."Through one of the marvels of modern science, I am enabled this Christmas day to speak to all my peoples throughout the Empire. I take it as a good omen that wireless should have reached its present perfection at a time when the Empire has been linked in closer union, for it offers us immense possibilities to make that union closer still. It may be that our future will lay upon us more than one stern test. Our past will have taught us how to meet it unshaken. For the present, the work to which we are all equally bound is to arrive at a reasoned tranquility within our borders, to regain prosperity without self-seeking and to carry with us those whom the burden of past years has disheartened or overborne. My life's aim has been to serve, as I might, towards those ends. Your loyalty, your confidence in me has been my abundant reward. I speak now from my home and from my heart to you all. To men and women so cut off by the snows, the desert or the sea that only voices out of the air can reach them; to those cut off from fuller life by blindness, sickness or infirmity; and to those who are celebrating this day with their children and their grandchildren; to all, to each I wish a happy Christmas. God Bless You."

.....Records pressed of the recorded speech were sold after the New Year to benefit the "Wireless For The Blind Fund". George V made one more Christmas address in 1935. Both he and Kipling died the following year. Although successors to the crown continued the tradition of a Christmas radio address almost annually, not all were released commercially. The story behind the 1936 delivery begins with the motion picture "The King's Speech", soon to be in theaters.