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Rusty: Betty would like to know if you were in the shower when you recorded "christmas". You sound fantastic.......

I think one of the great ironies of this song is that Irving Berlin was jewish.

This is not meant to be anti-semetic, just interesting trivia.

quote:

Originally posted by carlflack:
Rusty: Betty would like to know if you were in the shower when you recorded "christmas". You sound fantastic.......

quote:

Originally posted by Gary Carter:
I think one of the great ironies of this song is that Irving Berlin was jewish.

This is not meant to be anti-semetic, just interesting trivia.

Actually, so much of Tin Pan Alley was populated by Jewish writers that it is no wonder that a composer of Berlin's stature wrote a classic.

The most-played Christmas song of all time, The Christmas Song, was co-written by Robert Wells, a Jew.

Side note..........I used to park my airplane near Mel Tormé's, and we became friends. He once mused that he had spent his whole life working hard, singing, teaching, flying to Vegas every weekend, etc, and one hour's work produced more income than the rest of his career put together.

Mel Torme' is still my all-time favorite male vocalist. It began with The Christmas Song as I awaited shipment overseas, Christmas 1946. Then I saw him in a long-forgotten movie in an open-air GI theater in Tokyo, the summer of 1947. Never had any of his LPs, but I've downloaded a number of his recordings from I-tunes.

The outdoor theater was right next to an open-air GI beer hall so you could go to the beer hall & get crocked before the movie started. It didn't work the other way, though, the beer hall was closed by the time the movie was finished. Those were both strictly summer time operations.

I've forgotten what they called that open-air theater, though I remember the Ernie Pyle Theater, Hibiya Hall, & Army Hall, three Japanese theaters that had been taken over by the US Army. I have memories of specific movies I viewed in each one of them.

Tokyo also had the Royal Australian Army Beer Hall. Now there was a beer hall. None of that U.S 3.2 near beer. I witnessed some marvelous physical disagreements in that place.

quote:

Originally posted by olroy:
Mel Torme' is still my all-time favorite male vocalist.

Yeah, he is a favorite, here, too.

Funny thing is, I really don't like his voice, but he wrote the book on style. I remember a Christmas program on TV that featured him and several other notables. Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and another I don't remember. His solo numbers blew the others out of the water. Game over. They might as well have gone home. I think we have it on tape somewhere.

Perry Como was mine. Very smooth and Italian, just like me. He was a barber and I was a steelmaker.
BTW, thanks to Bill, we have a White Christmas every time we go on this great site. You can be in Alaska or Florida, but here it's snow, snow, snow

quote:

Originally posted by Jim and Tere:
Perry Como was mine. Very smooth and Italian, just like me. He was a barber and I was a steelmaker.

Actually, a lot of the popular (standard) singers of the late '40s and '50s were Italian. Italians seem to have a thing about singing.

I can't open "Christmas" offered by Rusty, is it the Drifters singing White Christmas?

Heck no, it's Rusty,Maggie and Casey

And Norman on the falsetto

quote:

Originally posted by Gary Carter:
I think one of the great ironies of this song is that Irving Berlin was jewish.

This is not meant to be anti-semetic, just interesting trivia.

A little more information on the same subject.

Link to article in yesterday's El Lay Times re: Jewish songwriters and musicians and Christmas music.