John Soss’ Christmas records/Photo: John Soss
After quite a few decades of collecting holiday music, last month I found myself in the position of having to move a piece of furniture that contained all of my vinyl Christmas albums, and it happened at just the right time. I’d recently sought out and confirmed a couple of opportunities to play some of those records in a public setting, and I hadn’t really looked at them since pre-pandemic. Now I was faced with figuring out which ones—and how many of them—I’d need to play in order to fill up a few hours behind a two-turntable deejay rig. It was time to take stock.
I’m the keeper of many collections and this particular fixation began when I was nineteen years old. I was working part-time in a retail store while attending college, and during the holidays, there was a constant rotation of eight-track tapes being played on the overhead speaker system. Naturally, in December the focus was on Christmas music. Most of the singers featured in that stack of tapes had recorded generic, easy-listening, mainstream tunes that lacked any sense of individuality or originality, but there was one that went against the grain.
It was Elvis Presley’s “The Wonderful World of Christmas,” recorded not long after his famous comeback TV special. He was working with some of Nashville’s top players who had the kind of versatile stylistic chops that allowed them to blend Southern white gospel with seventies country music, old-school rock ‘n’ roll and Memphis R&B. Besides a few common holiday standards, they focused on lesser-known Christmas compositions that felt fresh and unconventional compared to most holiday records from those times. The standout track, the one that elevates this album above most others, is a smoky, down-home reinterpretation of Charles Brown’s “Merry Christmas Baby.” It runs for almost six minutes and has the feel of something recorded late at night, which it actually was, since supposedly the bass player had become so tired that he actually fell asleep during the session.
That record essentially served as the entry point to my infatuation with Christmas music, and I never quite recovered. Within a couple of years, while still in college, I joined the staff at Chicago’s heritage concert-promotion company Jam Productions, and through the network of music-loving obsessives that I started to rub elbows with, I found other like-minded fans of holiday music. Knowing there were other music nerds like me out in the world gave me the license to really dive deep into the genre. And it was—and still is—a genre unto itself. Since at least the 1930s, musicians from all walks of life have been singing, writing and recording Christmas songs, many of them in search of the kind of mass popularity that could sustain them and provide some degree of stardom (and income).
Now, all these years later, my collection stands at 625 LPs, 530 seven-inch singles, 825 CDs, a handful of cassettes, a bunch of Spotify playlists, more MP3 files than I can count and a stack of 78 rpm records that my turntable can’t even play. All told, there are well over 20,000 tracks in the collection.
Just to put things into perspective, it would take about six weeks—around the clock—to listen to that many songs, which no one should be subject to. Like most collections though, if you search long enough and maintain a sense of persistence and resourcefulness, you are bound to have that “diamond in the rough” moment, where something unexpectedly reveals itself to be miles ahead of everything else.
Those extra-special recordings are usually the anchors for the annual mixes that I put together each year, and they tend to come in all shapes and forms and genres. There are loads of excellent covers of traditional holiday songs, but it’s always a gas to hear an original composition that can stand alongside the standards and maintain the requisite degree of holiday spirit.
“Christmas Road” by Allen Keller is a great example of the latter. It was the sole Christmas-themed track on a 1962 album of all-original songs on Charlie Parker’s record label. The backing band is a small jazz combo with a first-rate horn section, and musically—as well as lyrically—it’s a real gem. I didn’t discover it until 2011, and it’s become one of my absolute favorites, from the opening bass line to the ending verse: “So weary traveler/ Put down your load/ And start to live/ On Christmas road.”
Speaking of Charlie Parker, the jazz icon’s seemingly off-the-cuff cover of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” stands as one of the most free-spirited versions of that song and provides undisputed proof that holiday songs cannot be bound by any single musical genre. I first heard this on a Christmas compilation album called “Mr. Santa’s Boogie,” released by the Savoy Jazz label in 1985, and it’s since landed on other similar collections. The track was recorded live on stage in 1948 at the Royal Roost in New York City, a joint that’s been called the birthplace of bebop, though at the time it was best known as “The Home of Savory Golden Southern Fried Chicken.” Bonus fact: the recording took place on Christmas Day!
Those are just two examples of holiday records that have really stood the test of time for me, and both will find their way onto my setlists for those deejay gigs I mentioned earlier.
I have since moved all of my Christmas albums to another room in the house, and that chore set me on a task to revisit many of the standout tracks I’ve listened to over the years, plenty of which have landed on my annual mixes. Some of those records are long out of print, but a surprising number are still in circulation and can even be found on streaming services. To that end, I’ve compiled a few dozen of those recordings, the best-of-the-best, and created a shareable Spotify playlist. It’s a great soundtrack for trimming the tree and I hope it adds a touch of jingle jangle to your holiday season.
John Soss will be playing a vinyl collection with fellow Christmatologist Andy Cirzan on Saturday, December 20, 2pm-6pm at Gman Tavern, 3740 North Clark. Free. More information here. RSVP here.
