'What are you doing New Year's Eve?'

 We all love that wistful song "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve"? Today I began thinking about it. I was wondering who wrote it. I did not know.

It turns out it was Frank Loesser, who wrote "Guys and Dolls."

Loesser apparently wrote the words and the music, as was his wont. He was a genius, you know? His songs were wonderful and he wrote them all on his own.

On Wikipedia I read that Loesser did not intend the song as a holiday song. He imagined it being sung by someone madly in love who wanted to nail down New Year's Eve early.

The lyric does go, "Maybe it's much too early in the game."

And: "Here comes the jackpot question in advance."

So you could imagine the person singing this song in, say, April or May. I met my husband in March or April, thereabouts, so I think of that. It would be as if I asked Howard when I met him what he was doing New Year's Eve.

Wikipedia said that Loesser would get mad if someone sang the song at holiday time.

Whatever, I like the song in December.

Who doesn't?

The ghost of Christmas past

  

 I am leaning toward the old 1950s Christmas records. Like my old Carmen Dragon Capitol Records Christmas.

And this one!

This 1956 album is not like Carmen Dragon. Carmen Dragon was pretty adventurous. These arrangements by an outfit called the National Concert Orchestra are pretty straightforward. It is not like Carmen Dragon's "O Tannenbaum" that sounds like something out of the 1939 "Wuthering Heights."

However this album has a nobility about it as great Christmas albums do. There is nothing wrong with not reinventing the wheel. Just play the song.

OK, wait, "The First Noel" kind of goes off the tracks. They are messing with the harmonization. However they got back on track.

It is so soothing!

Speaking of which, a lot of people in the comments love the old Christmas cards on the record jacket cover. They miss those old-fashioned Christmas cards.

You know what, just start sending them again.

Let's turn back the clock!

A Mantovani Christmas

 There is this really enjoyable YouTube channel I came across and immediately subscribed to.

It is "Christmas Records"!

I was listening to one record on that channel and way led on to way and I ended up with this one by the Mantovani orchestra.

This is funny, originally the video I listened to was the entire album. Now I can only find this snip, at least on this channel. It does not even sound very Christmas! However you do get that wheezy old Organ and Chimes sound. Although I did not grow up with that I have grown affectionate toward it.

There, that's better. Scratches and skips, but still ... Mantovani, Christmas carols!

People back in the day, I mean the 1940s and 1950s, they would sneer at Mantovani. I know that from my research on Leonard Pennario. I learned a lot about attitudes of that era. Josef Krips, when he was the music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, he would sneer at Mantovani. Everyone did.

However now I will tell you this: I adore it!

The "Hark the Herald," the second song on this album, it sounds like out of an old movie. A wonderful burnished nostalgic sound!

Mantovani was classified as Easy Listening. This music is more subdued than the beautiful Carmen Dragon Christmas album I refer to often on this Web log. 

However the arrangements are creative and well done. Plus we could use more easy listening these days. At the Hyatt on Friday as Howard is setting up to play happy hour, I am subjected to the kind of "holiday" music on the sound system that, I do not even know how to describe it. I guess it is modern, I mean "artists" who are active this year. I hate to complain however after the fourth or fifth number it gets to me -- I mean, you have no hope at all that the next so-called song will be better, and it just goes on and on.

"Christmas .... Christmas ...." These awful songs. You just want to hit these people!

Everyone talks about the predictions of the book "1984" but nobody ever mentions the tinny horrible music. Orwell specifically mentioned that. That particular prediction has come true, that is for sure.

I think it was actually designed to ruin Christmas, to make us hate it and want it to be over. But anyway.

At least we have these old records! And they are all over the Internet.

It would be fun to go through some of these old Christmas records and listen to them and talk about them. I think I will do that now and then. Even though right now does seem early to me. Because I run Etsy shops and they are busy at this time of year, also because I go to the Latin Mass where we follow a medieval calendar, I think it has finally gotten into my bones that Christmas does not start until Dec. 25. However that horse is out of the barn. Christmas music is all around us. If you cannot beat them join them. 

We have bigger problems, you know?