Published on Dec 23, 2000
Over the past few holiday seasons here at “The Daily Vault,”
I’ve occasionally pulled out an album which I grew up with, and I
consider to be a true holiday standard. I’ve talked about the music
boxes of Rita Ford, and the jazz stylings of Vince Guaraldi; in
time, I’ll talk about the Harry Simeone Chorale… that is, once I
get an idea of what the actual track listing of
The Little Drummer Boy is. (I’ve seen several copies of that
album, all of them with different track listings. It’s enough to
make a grown man cry.)
Johnny Mathis is an artist who falls into my persoanl “holiday
standard” definition. When I was a little boy, my mother had two of
Mathis’s Christmas albums in the house –
The Sound Of Christmas (which is long out of print) and
Merry Christmas, Mathis’s 1958 collection with Percy Faith
and his Orchestra.
What’s interesting about this album is not that it’s still
available 42 years after its original release… but that it can
have so much material which still seems fresh next to material that
hasn’t aged as well.
This particular album will probably be forever remembered for
four songs. The first, “Winter Wonderland,” is the one I’ll always
remember when I think about Christmas. Faith’s orchestral
arrangement, especially at the bridge, is worthy of the highest
praise. Likewise, “Sleigh Ride” is still a lot of fun to listen to.
“The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas To You)” is delivered with
love and tenderness, as if Mathis were singing one of his own
songs. And Mathis’s version of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas”
probably still makes eyes well up.
Yet
Merry Christmas hits a few ice patches along the way. The
drawn-out version of “The First Noel” was probably very noteworthy
back in a time when Christmas wasn’t a marketing department’s
ultimate wet dream; now, hearing the song performed in its entirety
makes it feel a lot longer than the time it takes for the track to
complete. Likewise, “It Came Upon The Midnight Clear,” “Silver
Bells” and “Blue Christmas” are delivered with a melancholy backing
arrangement, making these tracks sound a little lazy. I’m not
saying that Mathis or Faith should have embraced the rock style
which was still in its infancy back then, but “Winter Wonderland”
and “Sleigh Ride” had exciting arrangements. Why couldn’t some of
these tracks have been given that kind of treatment?
So does this mean I don’t like
Merry Christmas? Of course not; it’s still very much a
holiday standard in my book, and faithfully I dust it off each
Christmas and give it a listen, especially when I sit wrapping
gifts. But with each passing year, I find this album gets a little
older-sounding… and, for a timeless standard, that’s not a good
thing.