The Dapper Christmas Play List for 2011 (And Beyond!!!!) - Part One

Is this another Douglas Crockwell original?  I think it might
be!  And I don't think that it's just the 7-Up or the tiny
weenies on a stick that's making this couple so happy...
They must be listening to my Christmas playlist!

Dreamy and I have some different tastes in Christmas music.  We agree on Burl Ives, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Nat King Cole and the Brady Bunch, but then she tends to go a little modern on me.  It's not that I don't like Jessica Simpson for Christmas, but give me Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians or Harry Simeone, and I'm much happier.

There's also one other problem with my love of Christmas music, at least in the view of 99.9% of the rest of the population...  I don't really like Silent Night and White Christmas gets on my nerves after awhile.  If it's part of watching Holiday Inn or White Christmas, I'm fine.  But I never include it in my own personal playlist.

Here in Oregon, Christmas music is playing on the radio 24/7, and I am delighted.  I usually hate commercial radio, but from mid-November through December, NPR loses out to any form of yuletide celebration.  There are times, however, when I just can't listen to any more of the world's worst Christmas compositions...  Christmas Shoes, Christmas in the Northwest, I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas and just about anything by Clay Aiken or Mariah Carey.  That's when I turn to my huge collection of real Christmas records and CD's.

For some reason, like everything else, my taste in Yuletide tunes runs from the 40's through the early 60's.  I'm just that kind of guy.  Big Band Christmas music is fabulous, Christmas swing is fun, and Burl Ives is my idea of Christmas incarnate.  And now, for your listening pleasure, is part of my playlist for 2011...

Holly Jolly Christmas is, perhaps, the one song that instantly, perhaps even faster, gives me that Christmas feeling, no matter where I am or what I am doing...  We always listened to this record as we decorated the tree when I was young, and still do today!

You all know of my love for the great Ray Conniff, at least his holiday hits.  This is one of my favorite of his medleys...

Now I am not entirely against new Christmas tunes...  Check out the Barenaked Ladies and Elf's Lament...

Remember Kate Smith?  Of course you don't...  But, for years and years, she was sort of the "voice of America" to many.  Most famous for her stirring rendition of God Bless America, here's a Christmas favorite...  Christmas Eve in My Hometown.

Now, Christmas can't be Christmas without this next composition.  The great Yogi Yorgesson is long forgotten, but his haunting tribute to Christmas will live on...

The Brady Bunch is, certainly, one of America's favorite families.  So, who else would you want to share the sounds of Christmas with?  Look out Mariah Carey...  You haven't heard O, Holy Night until you've heard Greg and Marcia Brady sing it...

No joke here...  This version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has been an absolute favorite at our house for years.  When we first found it back in 1997, it only took the first notes to get our little kids moving.  Even our baby would dance crazily in his high chair when this came on.

I know it's a little early for Christmas music.  Many purists don't want anything to do with the red and the green until after Thanksgiving.  I understand that.  But, for me and my family, there's just too much Christmas to pack into four measly weeks!  I'll hold off on the decorations until a more "appropriate" time, but there's never a bad time for these songs, if you ask me.

A final sugar plum or two of music until next time...  Both from a period after my officially sanctioned Christmas music era, but classics all the same...

Talk about a one-hit wonder!  It's hard to see why Boney M didn't make more of a splash...