Every Thursday, Paste puts out its weekly best new songs roundup. But it’s December, which means there isn’t much new music happening right now. That’s especially true this week. With no new stuff to write about, I thought I’d make a playlist for our readers anyway. From my library I’ve pulled ten Christmas songs I love dearly but never see on anyone’s lists or mixes. I’ve linked a YouTube video for every song featured here and written a few words to with them. We’ll see you in January for the next best new songs installment. Until then, happy holidays to you and yours from us.
Ben Hinds: “All I Want For Christmas (Is a Go Go Girl)”
There’s not much info out there about Ben Hinds, but I discovered him through a Christmas compilation Numero Group put out a few years ago. His tune “All I Want For Christmas (Is a Go Go Girl)” is tucked into Christmas Dreamers: Yuletide Country (1960-1972) and it’s my favorite entry on a project that also features Don McGinnis and Charlie Stewart. I’m a sucker for pedal steel and Hinds and his players deliver that glissandi in spades. Hinds only has one thing on his Santa wishlist, a go-go girl. “I don’t want a train, don’t want a plane, I don’t want a pink Cadillac,” he protests. “If you bring ‘em to me underneath my tree, I’m just gonna send them back.” Santa, won’t you honor his request?
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Booker T. & The M.G.’s: “Winter Wonderland”
We lost Steve Cropper recently and I’ve been going back through a lot of those Booker T. & The M.G.’s records. In the Christmas Spirit is an all-time take on the Christmas carols we’re used to. A few of the instrumentals could slot in here, especially “Silver Bells” and “Merry Christmas Baby,” but I’ll take “Winter Wonderland” today. The combination of Booker’s Hammond organ and Cropper’s slinky guitar riff gives Felix Bernard and Richard Bernhard Smith’s original some needed finesse. The only version of this song I like better is Darlene Love’s from the Spector Christmas record.
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Chet Baker & Christopher Mason: “Silent Nights”
Silent Nights isn’t on streaming. I actually didn’t find out about this record until about a year ago, when I stumbled across it during a manic YouTube rabbit-hole episode. Trumpeter Chet Baker and altoist Christopher Mason recorded it together during one New Orleans night in 1986, just two years before Baker’s passing. Baker and Mason assembled a quintet and played sublimely, doling out the holiday classics with clams and fascination. Two versions of “Silent Night” bookend the music, and the second track is especially beautiful. You can hear the band finding its pocket, thanks to a piano solo from Mike Pellera that nearly uncorks the whole arrangement. Silent Nights sounds like five brilliant guys entered a room and cobbled together a jazz album. “Silent Night” captures the moment the configuration finally made sense.
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Clarence Carter: “Back Door Santa”
This list needed some raunch, so let me get Clarence Carter’s “Back Door Santa” under the needle. You might recognize the funk because Run-DMC sampled it for “Christmas in Hollis.” Carter makes a grand gesture about his prowess, declaring that he “ain’t like old Saint Nick. He don’t come but once a year.” The single came out in 1968, the same year Carter dropped one of the blues songs ever (“Slip Away”), and showed up on the Atco label’s Soul Christmas comp alongside Joe Tex, Solomon Burke, and Otis Redding (accompanied by Booker T. & The M.G.’s), and this thing swings. “Back Door Santa” has that kind of motion that could make a car bounce off the tar. Most folks can’t buy a groove this good.
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Jimmy Jules & The Nuclear Soul System: “Xmas Done Got Funky”
You can’t really get any better than Numero Group’s description of Jimmy Jules and The Nuclear Soul System: “1970s mutated mistletoe-finessed funk.” I mean, that’s it, right? Discovering Xmas Done Got Funky, a solid gold funk record lost in the shuffle of disco music—was a revelation. Man, what a mad and exciting song that title track is. Don’t overlook Jackie Spencer’s delicious backup accompaniment. She can absolutely wail (and even takes the lead on side two of the album). Captivating stuff. The story goes that Sharon Jones got so much inspiration out of the album that she tasked her Dap-Kings to record a collection of her own holiday songs after hearing it. Hell, who could blame her?
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Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra ft. Sonny Parker: “Boogie Woogie Santa Claus”
I heard somebody say recently that Christmas music is only good if a big band is performing it. I don’t totally agree, but it’s hard to argue with how good the holidays sound in the hands of a jazz ensemble. The greats have all left their mark in the genre: Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Vince Guaraldi, Bill Evans. The list goes on and on. But one cut I particularly love is “Boogie Woogie Santa Claus,” performed by the great Lionel Hampton and his accompanying orchestra. And on the mic is Sonny Parker, the son of vaudeville performers who, after relocating to Los Angeles from Cincinnati, Ohio, replaced Rubell Blakely in Hampton’s group. There’s a whole lot of swing going on here, with Parker spilling the ink on the infamous Kris Kringle: “He lives up in the mountain like a hermit in the cave. He never had a haircut, never took a shave.” The song doesn’t tell a lie: Parker’s performance, with the drama of Hampton and his bandmates falling in behind him, will boogie all your blues away.
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Ramsey Lewis Trio: “Egg Nog”
Which Christmas song featuring a celeste is the best one? It’s gotta be “Egg Nog” by the Ramsey Lewis Trio. The song, which is the only original composition on Lewis’ More Sounds of Christmas album from 1964, is a total gas thanks to that bell-piano. Structurally, “Egg Nog” is very cool, as Lewis’ celeste and piano nearly duet with each other. El Dee Young’s bass vibrates and walks like a burlesque dancer, you can even hear one of the players yell out in the back of the mix—because “Egg Nog” is just too hot to watch float by in silence.
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Rotary Connection: “Christmas Love”
If you recognize that whistle singing near the top of Rotary Connection’s “Christmas Love,” it’s because you’ve heard it before. That’s the great Minnie Riperton, who joins her bandmates Mitch Aliotta and Sidney Barnes on a soul melody filled with Christmas, not the other way around. Rotary Connection sings about people all over the world—in Vietnam, Chicago, D.C., Mississippi. In times of violence, cousins, friends, children are showered with love, peace, and choirs singing “songs of goodwill.” Charles Stepney and Marshall Chess’ mix sounds perfect, but Riperton sounds especially heavenly when stillness befalls her band’s stirring, psychedelic soul and she lets go of a needful prayer: “Give each other a little love.”
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Smokey Hogg: “I Want My Baby for Christmas”
While the rumors of Smokey Hogg being a cousin to Lightnin’ Hopkins and Texas Alexander have never been confirmed, we can close the book on one thing about him: that’s a damn great name he carried around. Hogg was a bluesman from East Texas, who roamed the state’s juke joints, dance halls, and logging camps and recorded a couple R&B hits after World War II. My favorite single of his, “I Want My Baby for Christmas,” came out on the Specialty label in 1989, as a B-side to Jimmy Liggins & His Drops of Joy’s own recording of the song. As ever, Hogg’s picking happens sideways, rarely on beat but always rhythmically fascinating. Hell of a tune, the type to burn a hole in your pocket.
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Tammy Wynette: “(Merry Christmas) We Must Be Having One”
There are thousands, maybe millions of Christmas tunes out there to sift through. Tammy Wynette is by no means an obscure name amongst that crop, but how many folks are putting “(Merry Christmas) We Must Be Having One” on their December playlists? Maybe it’s only me. Christmas With Tammy came out in 1970 and topped out at #30 on Billboard’s now-retired Best Bets for Christmas chart (they really should bring back a “Best Bets” chart). Most of side one is traditional music arranged by Billy Sherrill, but side two finds Wynette doing renditions of Irving Berlin and George Jones classics. Her take on Danny Walls and Norro Wilson’s “(Merry Christmas) We Must Be Having One” is a country dime backed by the Jordanaires. The song is a packet of sugar—a melody for dusted treetops and jingling bells. “The snow is falling just outside my window, and the children are having so much fun,” Wynette sings, every word written in cursive by a nearby pedal steel. “If this is what you call a merry Christmas, well, darling, we must be having one.”
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