I had fun assembling the songs in some of the recent posts, so I thought I'd look in depth at some of the most popular Christmas songs, kind of following the evolution in more or less chronological order.
We start off with perhaps the most famous song ever, "Jingle Bells."
While it's a seasonal song and not specifically a Christmas song, it's become indelibly linked to the holiday season. Just a couple of notes puts you right in the Christmas spirit!
The song was written by James L. Pierpont in 1857 with the original title of "The One Horse Open Sleigh," but has long been known as "Jingle Bells," based on the chorus.
You can read a lot about the origin of the song on the Internet (with plenty of fanciful speculation), but we're concerned with recordings of the song.
There are a ton, so it will take a while!
My aim is not to discuss every version I can find, but ones that are of interest to me for various reasons.
We start off with a couple of recordings of historical interest.
The first recording of "Jingle Bells" that still exists is a cylinder from 1898 by the Edison Male Quartette under the title of "The Sleigh Ride Party":
Pretty fun. Records are such little windows into the past - you can imagine how great it was for people at the time to be able to listen to recorded music in their homes!
That record has a winter vibe, but nothing Christmassy!
Here's another version. It's 27 years later, but the Shannon Quartet is still pretty old-school:
That's pretty fun and a good refence point as a traditional version of the song with all three verses.
Next: We move into the 1930s!
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