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Rhythm & Blues ChristmasDuring the late 1960's and early 1970's, rock 'n' roll experienced its first-ever "revival" - in no small part because the kids who grew up on Elvis Presley in the 1950's were now adults with real jobs and real incomes, and they had grown disaffected with the long-haired psychedelic rock that developed in the wake of the Beatles. Bands like Sha Na Na, musicals like Grease, movies like American Graffiti, and TV shows like Happy Days cashed in. Songs like Don McLean's "American Pie," B.J. Thomas' "Rock 'n' Roll Lullaby," and Elton John's "Crocodile Rock" zoomed up the charts by leveraging nostalgia for rock's early days. Old-school rockers like Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis (and pop stars like Paul Anka and Neil Sedaka) had hit singles again. And, we got our first serious rock reissues with landmark collections like Nuggets, The Motown Story, Chuck Berry's Golden Decade, the Beach Boys' Endless Summer, and the Legendary Masters series from United Artists Records - precursors of the modern deluxe edition and boxed set.

In the wake of that revival, legendary producer Snuff Garrett compiled what I think are the first serious Christmas music reissues for United Artists in 1976. Record labels had been slapping together collections of holiday favorites for nearly as long as there had been record labels, but Rhythm & Blues Christmas and The 12 Hits Of Christmas represented a new level of curation - a thoughtful, annotated selection of great songs from multiple labels. More conspicuously, the albums were aimed at those aforementioned adults who had grown up with this music - and were only too happy to purchase the golden holiday oldies they'd heard on the radio during the halcyon days of rock 'n' roll.

Well, sort of. Neither of the albums were hits - at least, neither charted - and only one of them, The 12 Hits Of Christmas, included a lot of Billboard Top 40 singles. But, Snuff Garrett was coming off a hot streak that included #1 hits by Vicki Lawrence ("The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia") and Cher ("Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves"), which had earned him enough cachet in the music industry to pursue vanity projects like these two albums. And, thank goodness! Every one of the 22 cumulative tracks is essential listening, and most of them appear in my Top 100 Songs - especially those on Rhythm & Blues Christmas. In 1981, critic David McGee listed both collections as Essential Christmas Albums in The Book Of Rock Lists, and that's where I first learned about them. Between McGee's list and these two albums, my obsession was born.

The 12 Hits Of ChristmasRhythm & Blues Christmas

As I've implied, I consider Rhythm & Blues Christmas to be the more important of the two albums. For a guy with a website called Hip Christmas, this is no big surprise. The 12 Hits Of Christmas certainly contains more famous names and titles, but Rhythm & Blues Christmas is practically the magna carta of hip Christmas music. It starts with Charles Brown's "Merry Christmas Baby" (the definitive 1956 Aladdin recording) and goes on to spotlight all-time classics by B.B. King ("Christmas Celebration"), Chuck Berry ("Run Rudolph Run"), and the Drifters ("White Christmas").

And, "White Christmas" was the song that really blew my mind when I heard it the first time. The song starts out almost as a parody of Bing Crosby's famous 1942 version, with bass singer Bill Pinckney doing his best imitation of Der Bingle. But, when the group's star tenor Clyde McPhatter makes his entrance, we are treated to a startling, mesmerizing moment of utter originality. It's a legendary, unmatched performance. Elvis Presley's 1957 attempt to duplicate McPhatter's lines sounds positively emasculated in comparison - and that's saying something!

But, the greatest treasures on Rhythm & Blues Christmas are the lesser-known, equally fabulous songs like Marvin & Johnny's "It's Christmas," the Five Keys' "It's Christmas Time Again," and the Orioles' "(It's Gonna Be A) Lonely Christmas." Serious Christmas music aficionados will already be well aware of these songs, but most people won't - and I certainly wasn't until I first tracked down a copy of the LP many years ago. And, to be fair, many of these songs were hits - several of them reached the Top 10 of Billboard's R&B chart. But, only one - the Chuck Berry track - appeared on the pop charts, and most would not have aired on the pop airwaves during those racially segregated times. So, to a mainstream (i.e. white) audience, these would have been new discoveries in 1976. Thankfully, pretty much all of the Rhythm & Blues Christmas tracks - however rare at the time - have become widely acknowledged classics among Christmas collectors, so none are too hard to find these days.

To my ears, only one of these songs - Baby Washington's "Silent Night" - is less than classic. It's a fairly straight-ahead cover of the tired old religious carol so, admittedly, it's an uphill climb. All the same, it's a fine, soulful performance that wouldn't've sounded out of place on an album as awesome as Soul Christmas. Interestingly, Washington - a soul singer who charted songs from the 1950's through the 1970's and stayed active well into the 21st century - originally recorded the song in 1966 for the Sue label. The version on Rhythm & Blues Christmas was released the following year on Veep (a United Artists subsidiary). After comparing the two, I'm 99% sure the Veep recording is the Sue master with edits and overdubs - much improved, by the way. But, the historical record is just too thin, and I can't prove my theory. Snuff Garrett's liner notes merely say it was recorded on November 15, 1967 - without further specifics.

The 12 Hits Of Christmas

Where Rhythm & Blues Christmas seemed to me like a window into a deeply secret, impossibly cool world, The 12 Hits Of Christmas was a document of well-known facts - even if those facts were rather unhip to listeners in the 1970's. The roster of artists reads like a who's who of holiday icons, including Gene Autry, Brenda Lee, Bobby Helms, and Nat King Cole, crossing country, rock, and pop genres while including a mumber of famous novelties like "The Chipmunk Song" and "All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)." All of the songs on 12 Hits were, in fact, major chart hits, including several that reached #1 on the pop charts - tellingly, none later than 1963. Almost all of the songs are well acknowledged popular classics, though Eartha Kitt's saucy "Santa Baby" was fairly obscure at this point; it would remain obscure until Madonna covered it for A Very Special Christmas in 1987.

At this late date, The 12 Hits Of Christmas seems interesting only has an historical document. Indeed, most of its 12 tracks are commonplace these days. But, they weren't nearly as commonplace in 1976, and they certainly were not easily found on one album. The 12 Hits Of Christmas isn't quite definitive since Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" - the preeminent modern holiday song, thoughnot quite the first - is absent. But, no one album can meet that standard, and it comes as close as any album ever has. In retrospect The 12 Hits Of Christmas was a singularly important signpost in the development of the modern canon of Christmas pop.

Consumer Notes

Despite their cultural significance, neither Rhythm & Blues Christmas nor The 12 Hits Of Christmas has ever been reissued in any format. All of the 22 tracks included have been reissued on other albums, however. Perhaps the most notable are EMI's Legends Of Christmas Past and MCA's Rockin' Little Christmas, but those are just two of a dozen or so discs you'd have to hunt down to recreate the original LP's in a digital world.

Vinyl copies are a different story. Both Rhythm & Blues Christmas and The 12 Hits Of Christmas are listed in Amazon, but the price and availability varies wildly. Your purchases there support this website. That said, Discogs is my favorite emporium for out-of-print albums, and copies of both Rhythm & Blues Christmas and The 12 Hits Of Christmas pop up regularly.

I'm of the generation that replaced most of their vinyl LP's with compact discs. I couldn't do that with either of these United Artists albums, though all of the tracks showed up on CD's that I subsequently purchased. Still, I held on to my vinyl, because they represented such an important inflection point in the development of the genre. For me, Rhythm & Blues Christmas and 12 Hits Of Christmas made a statement: Holiday music matters, and it can rock, roll, swing, and twang. [top of page]

Albums Albums

SongsEssential Songs

  • - Rhythm & Blues Christmas (1976)
  • Christmas Celebration (B.B. King, 1966)
  • I Wanna Spend Christmas With You (aka Lonesome Christmas) (Lowell Fulson, 1967)
  • It's Christmas (Marvin & Johnny, 1957)
  • It's Christmas Time (The Five Keys, 1951)
  • (It's Gonna Be) A Lonely Christmas (The Orioles, 1949)
  • Let's Make Christmas Merry, Baby (Amos Milburn, 1949)
  • Merry Christmas, Baby (Charles Brown, 1956)
  • Run, Rudolph Run (Chuck Berry, 1958)
  • Silent Night (Baby Washington, 1967)
  • White Christmas (Clyde McPhatter & The Drifters, 1954)
  • - The 12 Hits Of Christmas (1976)
  • All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth) (Spike Jones, 1948)
  • The Chipmunk Song (David Seville & The Chipmunks, 1958)
  • The Christmas Song (Nat "King" Cole, 1946)
  • Do You Hear What I Hear (Bing Crosby, 1963)
  • Here Comes Santa Claus (Gene Autry, 1947)
  • I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus (Jimmy Boyd, 1952)
  • Jingle Bell Rock (Bobby Helms, 1957)
  • The Little Drummer Boy (The Harry Simeone Chorale, 1958)
  • Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree (Brenda Lee, 1958)
  • Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (Gene Autry, 1949)
  • Santa Baby (Eartha Kitt, 1953)
  • Sleigh Ride (Leroy Anderson, 1952)

Further ListeningFurther Listening

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