As we continue in 1946 with our playlist, we run across out first non-standard when we flip over Les Brown's record of "The Christmas Song" to find the so much more obscure "When You Trim Your Christmas Tree" featuring vocalist Jack Haskell:
I really like records like this where you have an obscure but good Christmas song done by an artist you like!
I think the standards are great and they've earned that distinction, but it's sometimes nice to hear a different song rather than a different version of a song that's been recorded hundreds of times.
This review from "Billboard" is interesting:
It's interesting to look back at a time when "The Christmas Song" hadn't hit pay-dirt yet and Doris Day was on more-or-less equal footing with Jack Haskell, Doris's last name being easier to spell not withstanding!
Jack Haskell had a pretty good career, appearing on TV a lot, but he couldn't compete with Doris Day - who could?
Jack still fared better than "When You Trim Your Christmas Tree," which went nowhere.
In fact, I can only unearth one other recording of the song, but at least it was by Bing Crosby!
It wasn't until 1971, on Bing's last full-length Christmas album, "A Time to Be Jolly" on Daybreak Records:
Bing sounds just fine (he never lost it), but that arrangement is so early 1970s! It reminds me of the soundtrack of a Rankin-Bass holiday special. (Too bad Bing never did one of those. Remind me to mention to to R-B when I go back in time for my "The Stingiest Man in Town" pitch!
The obvious question is why Bing would record a song that had gone nowhere 25 years earlier?
The answer is also obvious: the producer of the 1971 album was veteran arranger/songwriter Sonny Burke, whose composing credits include... "When You Trim Your Christmas Tree!"
Hey, it's a nice song, so why not include it on the album and get Sonny some royalties!
Oh, and the musical accompaniment on Bing's album was Les Brown, so now we're officially stuck in a loop between 1946 and 1971!
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