Tuesday, December 29, 2020
KSFR, Santa Fe, NM
Webcasting!
1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays Mountain Time
Substitute Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
On this Christmas Eve, I'd like to share a beautiful, spooky song that my brother, Jack Clift, first made me aware of back in the 1980s.
Jack recorded this old song under the title "It Being Nearly Christmas Time" for a compilation called A New Mexico Christmas, produced by the good folks at Kludgit Sound in 1986.
But don't expect much ho-ho-ho and mistletoe from this one. It's about a mother who sends her three sons off to sea where they meet their doom. Mom is so distraught she calls on the wind and sea to return her children. And sure enough, right around Christmas they return -- as ghosts. They can't even eat the nice Christmas dinner she made them. Then they have to go back to Heaven -- or wherever their new home is.
Jack's song is a version of an old British folk song called "The Wife of Usher's Well." Like most respectable old folk songs there are countless versions that popped up in the British Isles and the US. Steeleye Span even did a version in the '70s (though, as much as I love Steeleye, I never liked their take on this song.)
But here's a fairly recent version, with a Classics Comics style video, sung by a woman named Marilyn Cowan. Note, in this, as in the case of the earliest British versions of the song, the three children don't return at Christmas. Instead, they come back at Martinmas, the feast of St. Martin, which is in November.
But my favorite version is another one that's connected to my brother. In 2009, my brother and John Carter Cash collaborated with a small army of Nashville stars and Uzbek musicians for an album called Pale Imperfect Diamond. On that record Jack revisited the song, this time under its proper title and with the Peasall Sisters providing vocals.
Merry Christmas and hoping any ghostly visitors are friendly.
Someone told me that it's almost Christmas.
Woah, if true!
So here are a few choice musical Christmas treats from the magical realm of blues and rhythm and blues.
Let's start with Reverend Edward Clayborn, aka "The Guitar Evangelist," with a 1928 release called "The Wrong Way to Celebrate Christmas," in which he declares, "While the church is praying, on Christmas day / Other people are roamin' the streets and drinkin' their soul away ..."
Leroy Carr apparently tried to celebrate Christmas in the wrong way. Here's a 1929 tune called "Christmas in Jail."
Skipping ahead a few decades, a doo-wop called The Youngsters had a hit with a song of the same title.
Back in the '30s, Bumble Bee Slim had a specific request of Santa Claus:
Here's a tune from 1954 from a singer named Jimmy Butler who only wants to trim your tree:
Finally, here's some holiday cheer from 1962 by Huey "Piano" Smith & The Clowns, "Doing the Santa Claus":
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