Nat King Cole

Christmas Hangover Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

I had a really strange Christmas Day, being a guest of two strangers as I was asked to play the role of surrogate father to a fiftyish neighbor who wanted me to be her guest at dinner with her new boyfriend and his incredibly old mother. My neighbor would not take “no” for an answer, so what the hell. It was better than sitting around in a bleak house having a lot of memories sitting around staring at me.

I had neglected to include Nat King Cole’s signature Christmas song among the ones I highlighted this month, but it’s one that’s appropriate for the whole holiday season, so here it is. I wonder if anyone else noticed that “The Christmas Song,” by Nat, the Carpenters, Dean Martin, among others, or its author, Mel Torme (How must it feel when you are a renowned singer in your own right and the best song you ever wrote is identified with a rival singer?) seemed to get less play on this year than usual. Please tell me it isn’t because the song has been “cancelled” due to political correctness. You know: “Eskimos.”

I once tried to come up with a minimally disruptive lyric change to accommodate “Folks dressed up like Inuits” but the best I could come up with was “Jack Frost nipping at your tits…”

Uh, no.

Nat King Cole is another brilliant, unique vocal artist whose only hold on the culture’s memory is his single Christmas classic. Future generations won’t know what they’re missing. Cole died in 1965, still in great voice at 45. Here’s this marvelous balladeer at his best without chestnuts…

But I digress. If you had any disturbing or amusing encounters with the Trump Deranged yesterday, this would be a good place to relate them. (I did!)

Tales of “White Christmas”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I didn’t expect a white Christmas in Northern Virginia this morning, and there wasn’t one. It’s a good thing too: a snow-covered vista would have probably made me cry, and that’s been happening too often this holiday season. (My mother, who made up Christmas traditions and legends as an avocation, once told my sister and me that it was bad luck for the whole year to come if you cried on Christmas.) The song “White Christmas” is supposed to make you cry, however, or at least get a bit misty.

I co-wrote two Christmas revues for my late, lamented (by me, anyway) professional theater company in Arlington, Virginia, The American Century Theater. The most popular of the two was called “If Only In My Dreams,” taken from the lyrics of another wistful Christmas song, “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” by lyricist Kim Gannon and composer Walter Kent and introduced by Bing Crosby in 1943. The show was constructed around the letters written by GIs overseas during World War II to their families or  girlfriends as Christmas loomed, alternating those stories with narration and the popular Christmas songs of the period.

The most famous and important of these songs was, of course, “White Christmas.” Bing Crosby’s version was the best selling single record of all time for half a century. When Irving Berlin handed the song over to the musician who transcribed his melodies (Irv could not read music and composed by ear, just like another brilliant and prolific tune-smith, Paul McCartney), he  famously announced that he had written, not just the best song he had ever written, but the best song that anyone had ever written.  Continue reading →

My Favorite Christmas Story Of 2018: The Magic Of “White Christmas”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

It looked like it was going to be a bloody Christmas tragedy. Nathaniel R. Lewis, 34, of East Vincent Township in Pennsylvania, had snapped on Christmas night.

He barricaded himself inside his home, about 42 miles west of Philadelphia, and fired shots at eleven police officers with his rifle during a 10-hour standoff. Lewis was distraught after separating from his wife before Christmas.  Nobody had been hurt in the exchange of gunfire, but the tense confrontation lasted from approximately 7:30 p.m. on Christmas until 7:00 am the next morning, and a peaceful ending was hardly a certainty. Then Lewis told the SWAT  team that he might calm down and surrender if the negotiator would sing “Nat King Cole’s version” of “White Christmas” for him.

So the  officer sang “White Christmas,” not quite like Nat, presumably—nobody sang like Nat—but close enough. Lewis  came out of the house and surrendered to police. He now faces 11 charges of attempted homicide of a police officer. Continue reading →