The winding path to a merry little Christmas

Our favorite Christmas song has long been Mel Tormé and Bob Wells’ The Christmas Song, made famous by Nat “King” Cole (and really, no one else need tackle the song—every other artist who’s taken a stab at it has fallen short, in our eyes), but coming in a close second is Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, credited to Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane (though Martin has since claimed he wrote it alone, with Blane’s encouragement) and introduced by Judy Garland in Vincent Minnelli‘s Meet Me in St. Louis (1944).

From its familiar opening lyrics—Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose, yuletide carols being sung by a choir, and folks dressed up like Eskimos—”The Christmas Song” celebrates an idyllic holiday season, but let’s face it, for many, the holidays carry with them a tinge of melancholy—especially in difficult times like these—and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” openly acknowledges the bluer side of the yuletide.

In the lyrics as we know them, that melancholy is leavened by a certain “keep-your-chin-up sticktuitiveness,” but it wasn’t always so.

The first set of lyrics Martin delivered, which I found in this very informative 2007 Entertain Weekly story by Chris Willman, were downright maudlin, intended to fit the mood of Garland’s character, who, at the point in the picture at which she sings the song, is upset that her father is moving the family from her beloved St. Louis to New York City.

The story has it that director Minnelli and Garland urged Martin to come up with something just a bit less gloomy, and he agreed, soon delivering a second set of lyrics, the ones Garland sings to young sister Margaret O’Brien in the movie.

Then, in 1957, Frank Sinatra, who was recording a Christmas album called A Jolly Christmas, asked Martin to kick the the christmas cheer up yet another notch. He specifically asked the composer to revisit the line in the final verse about “muddling through,” and that’s how we came to have the line about hanging a shining star upon the highest bough in yet a third set of lyrics to the song.

Most folks are familiar with versions two and three—Linda Rondstadt melds the two sets of lyrics in her recording of the song—if not with the original gloomy lyrics.

But did you know Martin wrote a fourth set of lyrics? In 2001, the composer, then 86 years old, wrote an overtly religious set of lyrics to the song, entitled “Have Yourself a Blessed Little Christmas.”

Judy Garland — Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
Frank Sinatra — Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Fridays with Rudy

Longtime listeners to and readers of Cladrite Radio know we’re awfully fond of Rudy Vallée. We’ve come to very much enjoy his music over the years, as our appreciation for the music of that era has increased, and we get a kick out of his odd, often salacious personality. He really seems to have been kind of bonkers, in a not unpleasing way, like the weird but entertaining uncle who threatens every November to spoil Thanksgiving (in the eyes of the ladies, anyway) with an inappropriate tales of his wilder days.

It’s not widely understood today just how big a star Vallée was at one time. He was the first crooner, the one who started that craze, and this new style of vocalizing was viewed as very intimate, very seductive—even transgressive. It’s not a huge leap to say that Vallée was the first Elvis Presley, in that he was singing in a style that much of the old guard discounted entirely and that many elements of society viewed as inappropriate and even shocking.

It’s understandable that most listeners wouldn’t quite “get” Vallée today (we don’t mean you, gentle reader—the Cladrite Clan gets it) and most modern listeners certainly wouldn’t find Vallée’s singing sexy and seductive, but it was certainly viewed as such when he first hit the scene. Vallée even described himself, late in life, as having had “a cock in my voice” (see? we told you he was a weird uncle). He was breaking the rules of popular singing and making young women swoon—causing, as Vallée once wrote, “all flapperdom to become stirred as it has never been stirred before”—in much the same way Frank Sinatra, Presley, Otis Redding, The Beatles, and so many others would do in the ensuing decades (Vallée even performed a song or two that might be considered risqué by some today), but he was arguably the first to do so. As such, it’s intriguing to ponder what was considered sensual and sexy in 1929, as opposed to today.

Beginning next Friday, we’ll explore Vallée’s first memoir, published in 1930, called Vagabond Dreams Come True, but this week, we thought we’d share with you a humorous poem written back when Rudy was at his most popular. This very funny ditty was penned by one Marjorie C. Diven, about whom we’ve been able to ascertain not a darned thing. Anyone out there know anything about Ms. Diven’s life and work? (We’ve provided some additional info about certain of the references in the poem; just place your mouse over the highlighted words—no need to click—and you’ll see the text in a pop-up.)

HUSBAND’S LAMENT

FROM the day my wife Sally first heard Rudy Vallée, I’m here to announce that my troubles began; We dress to his crooning, we eat to his spooning; I tell you there’s no getting rid of the man. We can’t even sleep nights because of his “Deep Nights” That wing through the air from the Villa Vallee, And “Vagabond Lover” I often discover, Is cheering my darling when I am away. While I’m making money he radios “Honey,” “I wonder,” says Sally, “Just whom does he mean?” We are asked out to dine and does she answer “Fine?” Oh no—”You forget, dear, tonight is Clopin.” You can’t toss a hat any place in the flat, Without hitting Rudy in this pose or that, I ask you what chance has a regular spouse, When some other guy lives all over the house? When that didn’t suit her, my wife turned commuter, And followed this baby out into the sticks, I know from her blushing, she’s been out to Flushing, The Bronx or to Brooklyn for him and his tricks. If dinner is tardy, she’s at the Lombardy, His megaponetics intriguing her so. Where Rudy is playing, that’s where she is straying; I look in the papers to see and I know. She bought a new dress for the Villa, I guess; We danced to his music and ate quite a bit, And on leaving “Ten East” I was thinking, at least, Life must be worth while for a fellow with “It.” His records—we buy them, at all hours we try them; Of course I protest, and it’s always in vain. She hates being bossed, though it isn’t the cost But the upkeep of Vallée that drives me insane. Now ever since Sally first saw Rudy Vallée, She’s been rather love; perhaps she is foxy. There’s nothing distressing about her caressing, But sometimes I think I am Rudy by proxy.

MARJORIE C. DIVEN

The Karen Files, pt. 7

Another in an ongoing series of posts celebrating the life of our mother:

It’s easy, sometimes, to think of our parents as somehow older than they are. We too often were guilty of thinking of Karen as being of the Greatest Generation, of imagining her listening and dancing to the big bands during the height of the Swing Era.

But she was born in 1933. She was just a child when Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, and the rest were flying high. Heck, she was just 11 when Glenn Miller died.

She remembered and enjoyed that music, sure, much as we remember and enjoy the pop music of the 1960s, when we were kids. But it wasn’t the music of her adolescence and young adulthood. She grew into young womanhood during the post-big band era, when the focus moved to vocalists. Big bands were still around, sure, but they weren’t the dominant force they had been.

Hers was the era of pre-rock ‘n’ roll vocalists like Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Nat “King” Cole, Patti Page, and Margaret Whiting.

For that matter, Karen wasn’t so old when rock ‘n’ roll began to capture the nation’s attention. She was 21 when Bill Haley and the Comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock” in 1954 and 23 when Elvis Presley‘s recording of “Heartbreak Hotel” became a No. 1 hit in 1956. She wasn’t likely to be found among the squealing teens at a Presley performance, but she wasn’t necessarily old enough to view the young rock-n-roller with the alarmed disapproval so many of her elders did. Presley was, after all, less than two years younger than Karen.

Similarly, we’re often a bit surprised to be reminded that Karen was just a kid during World War II and the events that preceded the United States’ involvement in it. This was brought home to me by the documents that make up this week’s installment of The Karen Files, which we found while sorting through the thousands of snapshots and documents Karen left behind.

The documents accompanying this text are pages from ration books. Until coming across these, we had no idea that children received ration booklets, too. It makes sense, though; obviously, a family of ten would have greater needs than a family of three, so assigning each child their own ration books (to be used, no doubt, by their parents) seems the ideal way to assure that each family gets what’s coming to it.

We’ve scanned and posted all the pages of the ration books for your consideration here. Perhaps many of you have seen ration books before—after all, every American had one, and of those millions of books, surely not a few got stashed when they were no longer needed, for later generations to come across, as we did, in dusty cartons long stowed away in attics or basements.

We learned a few not terribly weighty details about Karen’s life in May, 1942, from these documents. She lived at 509 South 4th Street in Okemah, Oklahoma (we knew she had grown up in a different house than the one where we visited our grandparents, but we didn’t know where it was). She was nine years old, stood four feet and one-half inches tall, and weighed 68 pounds. Her eyes were blue then, as always, and her hair was listed as blonde (light brown, we’d have to call it). Again, these details have no real import, but small things can have an impact when you’re trying to imagine loved ones at particular points in their lives.

We wish we’d thought to ask Karen what the heck she thought of Elvis Presley when he hit the national stage or how it felt to be a child during World War II. There are so many questions that we don’t think to ask our folks, even when we spend a lot of time thinking about the old days. Then a loved one’s mind grows feeble, due to illness or advanced age, or a life comes unexpectedly to an end, and it’s too late to ask.

View all this week’s Karen Files images.

Great music at popular prices

We have no interest in being bargain spotters — there are too many sites that already cover that ground — but occasionally, when we find a really top-notch deal that fits nicely here at Cladrite Radio, we’ll share it with you.

Les Voix d’or d’Hollywood is a five-disc CD collection of tunes taken from the golden age of Hollywood musicals. It’s from the French label Marianne Melodie, and, so far as we can ascertain, is available in the United States only in the form of downloadable MP3s. The set includes 126 tracks, covering the thirty-year period from 1927 to 1957 and performed by artists ranging from Al Jolsen to Fred Astaire, the Benny Goodman Orchestra, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, and Elvis Presley, among dozens of others.

iTunes sells the set for $54.99, which is not so bad, really, for a five-disc compilation with so many tracks — it’s just over 41 cents a song. But Amazon is offering the entire set as MP3 downloads for just $19.98, or just under 16 cents a song. That’s pretty hard to beat (you have to buy the whole set to get that price, mind you — individual songs are much more).

Here’s the link; take a look at the full lineup and see what you think. And tell ‘em your pals at Cladrite Radio sent you.