Once a year they come out. We hear the ghosts in the background music at the grocery stores and the big box stores. Singers that a few of us old people remember when they were alive, but no young’uns do. They used to sing other stuff, often on their own weekly TV variety shows. (Young’un asks, “What’s a variety show?”), but now we only hear them at Christmas time. Of course, I’m talking about Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Andy Williams, John Gary, Burl Ives. Only one woman specifically remembered for a Christmas song comes to mind, Brenda Lee for “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” And one non-human species, The Chipmunks.
This Pinterest page with vintage Christmas album covers is fun to look at.
Julie Andrews was on several Firestone and Goodyear Christmas albums. Did a version of “The Christmas Song” that blows Nat King Cole out of the water (not an easy task). Not to mention “The Bells of Christmas”.
This thread wasn’t meant to be about any and every person who ever recorded a Christmas song. The idea came to me this morning in the grocery store when I heard Christmas songs sung by Perry Como, Andy Williams, and Brenda Lee over the store’s music system. Yeah, I recognized their voices. I thought, “Gee, we only ever hear these people now at Christmas time. They’re immortal in a way… they’re the Ghosts of Christmas music.”
BTW, that Pinterest page I linked to shows that the Beatles recorded a couple of Christmas albums. That I did not know.
Here’s more: he’s the cousin of Pulitzer Prize winning author William Saroyan. Collectively they wrote the hit single “Come on-a my House,” making Saroyan the only Pulitzer Prize winner the have a #1 hit that wasn’t part of a musical.
