Posted on 12/17/2017 7:03:46 PM PST by Twotone
We began our celebration of the big hits from the Christmas songbook with Mark and Irving Berlin's daughter gathered around her father's piano to recall the family tragedy behind "White Christmas". This week's song is one of many written in the wake of "White Christmas" and in the shadow of war, as Mark and Linda Purl note in the video below. Linda has been a fixture on American TV screens from "Happy Days" to "The Office", "Matlock" to "Homeland". Click here to see Linda's marvelous performance, and afterwards Mark will tell the story behind the song:
(audio at site)
If you had to pin a precise date to the dawn of the Golden Age of American Christmas Songs, it would probably be December 1942. Irving Berlin had written "White Christmas" a couple of years earlier, and was reasonably confident about it. But, as canny as he was, he didn't foresee how the song would be transformed by a single event: Pearl Harbor. Twelve months after the attack, American servicemen were far away in the south Pacific and contemplating their first Christmas at war, under glorious tropical skies that only made home seem even more distant:
I'm dreaming of a White Christmas Just like the ones I used to know...
"White Christmas" isn't a song about snow, it's a song about home. And Berlin wasn't the only songwriter to understand there was a huge audience for that at a time when most families had at least one empty chair round the Christmas table. For example:
I'll Be Home For Christmas You can plan on me Please have snow And mistletoe And presents on the tree...
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Mark
Bookmark
The Golden Age of American Christmas Songs didn't last very long--it appears to have ended in 1963, when Pretty Paper by Roy Orbison, Allan Sherman's version of The Twelve Days of Christmas and Phil Spector's album "A Christmas Gift for You" came out.
Although an occasional Christmas release such as Snoopy's Christmas by the Royal Guardsmen (1966) would come out in subsequent years, the era when one could expect to hear new Christmas songs each year was essentially over.
Wonderful rendition by Linda Purl.
The intro says she is the daughter of Irving Berlin, but I find no documentation of that anywhere. She has done shows that are tributes to Irving Berlin.
Mark loves Christmas
IMO outside the Carpenters, the only newer songs or versions of Christmas songs worth anything since I was born are “All I Want for Christmas is You” (NOT the terrible dull tuneless Mariah Carey thing), and Bon-E-M’s awesome “Mary’s Boy Child”.
:)
For example, A Spaceman Came Travelling.
The Guitar sounds very much like Wes Montgomery
Thanks
That was great. A real Lulu..
Chris Rea is awesome.
Bump.....
Was awesome RIP
He’s had a lot of health issues, but he’s still with us, and performing.
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