Tonight’s song comes from a program I taped off the radio way back in the late ’80s, just as last night’s song did.
The DJ — Willie Wonder — played R&B, soul and jazz on a Saturday night show called “Cross Currents” on WORT-FM in Madison, Wisconsin. One late December night — maybe it was 1987, maybe 1988, maybe 1989 — he dropped Christmas tunes into the usual mix.
One of the last cuts was this elegant solo jazz piano piece.
“I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” McCoy Tyner, from “God Rest Ye Merry Jazzmen,” 1981.
In 1985, a Columbia CD titled “Jingle Bell Jazz” combined all six cuts from “God Rest Ye Merry Jazzmen” with eight others from “Jingle Bell Jazz,” a 1962 LP release.
In 2001, NPR spun that “Jingle Bell Jazz” CD for its Basic Jazz Record Library feature.
“McCoy took this hopeful ballad of wartime absence seriously. His version moves from languid lyricism to intense passion. It’s a concerto of crescendo and release,” said A.B. Spellman of the National Endowment for the Arts. (“I’ll Be Home For Christmas” was written and released in 1943.)
Not McCoy Tyner’s version, but still noteworthy …
Starting in the late ’70s, Miller High Life beer used another elegant piano arrangement of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” for holiday TV commercials that evoked warmth and nostalgia.
A friend who worked at Miller Brewing in Milwaukee told us people so loved these commercials that they’d start calling the brewery in November to try to find out when they were going to air.
Fun fact: Filmed in the Mad River Valley of northern Vermont.