TT 336: Xmas Music in Brief
Sounds of the Holiday
One of my most successful articles is Xmas-themed, “Deck the Halls with Vince Guaraldi” for The New Yorker.
Outstanding melodic and harmonic qualities have kept great Christmas carols in circulation for well over a century. Carols are also one of the friendliest ways for a novice to learn European voice-leading.
On my socials this year I am planning on posting a few carols “straight.” Yesterday I put “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” (Brooks/Redner, 1868) on my feeds.
Most of the Xmas background music I hear everywhere is jazz, or at least has added-note harmony to the carols. While my personal preference is the pure, more “classical” carols from the musical wallpaper of yore, it’s also true that Americans currently hear a jazzy tonic 6/9 chord at least once a year thanks to Xmas.
Keith Jarrett brought up this topic when I interviewed him for DownBeat:
I was listening to the radio at Christmastime, and there were horrible jazz versions of horrible Christmas tunes. I was going to turn it off, but then Sonny Rollins came on with “Winter Wonderland.” I said to myself, “There’s no way I can turn it off now!”
Sonny put so much of himself into this piece. It was something that was only Sonny, and that something made the little tune transcendent.
I always thought that it would be have been good for Jarrett himself to record an album of carols, as the purity of that comparatively antique expression seems like a fit with the “Köln” side of Jarrett.
Some people like Nate Chinen collate all holiday jazz. (The pictures of Nate holding the CDs are a good reminder of the simple power of an impressive record collection.) My own “musts” in this genre are comparatively few in number:
“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” by Bill Evans, Gary Peacock, and Paul Motian. This is it: the best Bill and the best “casually swinging Xmas piano trio” with Bill’s most raucous rhythm section.
Dexter Gordon’s stately-but-casual performance of “Have Yourself a Merry Christmas.”
Jimmy Smith and Wes Montgomery’s “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” replete with swinging sleigh-bells.
Charlie Parker’s incandescent “White Christmas.” Bird even has a little syncopated arrangement (playing harmony with Kenny Dorham) that foreshadows hard bop. He also quotes “Jingle Bells” when blowing. I just listened to this right now. Damn, Bird. As Dewey Redman told me, “Charlie Parker sounds better every day.”
Last week my brother Spencer visited Brooklyn and we hung out with our cousin Owen. “The Iverson Clan,” a photo by my old friend Wilson Hall, features Spencer, Owen, and myself under a painting by father Sherman. In the painting is a bit of self-portrait and the house Spencer and I grew up in. The automobile is a 1957 Oldsmobile.
A lovely start to the holiday.
Thank you. The Bird piece was especially terrific.