For holiday songs to be released during the holidays, they must be written well in advance. Many times, that’s led to holiday songs being recorded in the summer.
One such song is “The Christmas Song,” co-written in 1945 by singer Mel Torme and songwriter Bob Wells. Torme once explained it this way:
“Get this — we did it on the hottest day of the year in July. It was a way to cool down.”
That story comes via writer-producer Mark Evanier in a wonderful blog post he shares every year. I know it by heart. You ought to go read it.
Fast forward to more than 40 years later. One night in the late ’80s, I taped a radio show from WORT, 89.9 FM, in Madison, Wisconsin. It was — and is — listener-sponsored, volunteer-run, free-form Back Porch Radio. They spin a staggeringly diverse mix of music.
The DJ called himself Willie Wonder, and he played R&B, soul and jazz late at night once a week on a show called “Cross Currents.” One December night, he dropped Christmas tunes into the usual mix.
I probably was listening to the show as I drove home from work, started digging it and popped in a blank tape when I got home. I’ve listened to that tape — I called it “Willie’s Hot Christmas” — every year since. It’s one of my faves.
For years afterward, I collected the tracks from that tape on vinyl, on CD or as a digital rip. I identified all but one track — a 6-minute-long instrumental version of “The Christmas Song” with a wonderful sax performance. For years afterward, I had no idea who’d done it.
Earlier this month, that 35-year-old mystery was solved. I played the song I’d taped long ago into the Shazam music identification app. It came up with …
“The Christmas Song,” the Arthur Blythe Quartet, from “God Rest Ye Merry Jazzmen,” 1981.
Arthur Blythe was one of the great jazz alto sax players. He was slightly more than a decade into his career when he recorded this.
The six cuts on “God Rest Ye Merry Jazzmen” were combined with eight others from “Jingle Bell Jazz,” a 1962 release, for a 1985 CD also called “Jingle Bell Jazz.”