.
Christmas comes but once a year,
And to me it brings good cheer,
And to everyone…. Who likes wine and beer.
. ...Bessie Smith. with a blues-singer’s view of Christmas - party time!
Down through the years many other blues artists have followed her example and, in 'spirit' at least, blow squeakers,. put on party hats, and generally booze on. As Jimmy McCracklin shouted in his 'Christmas Time’ blues.
Christmas time is here, let’s party all night long!
I know you know Christmas can’t last too long.
Although songs like these highlight the popular. upbeat side of a blues Christmas, the blues community hasn’t always been able to look forward to a festive time with the family,. lots of good cheer around the old blazing homestead hearth.
The blues come falling,
They fall like drops of rain,
I’ve got to spend my Christmas locked up in jail again.
In jail again on Christmas Day again – ain’t that a pain ?
For many black Americans, Christmas has not been very different from the rest of the year, maybe a day off work, but it's unlikely that there would be enough money to put extras on the Chrismas table.. Mostly, Christmas was a time to dream, to. think about comforts which were. mostly out of the reach of poor black families.
.It would be hard to think of a better symbol that represents the WASP American than the red and white suited Father Christmas,. created in his present form in red suit and whiskers by the Coca Cola Company. Yet surprisingly, many blues singers gladly enlisted the old man into their Christmas fantasies.. I'm sure you can. imagine the coded sexual messages that many. blues singers would add to the red nosed image of Santa slipping down the chimney to deliver surprise presents. As Lightnin’ Hopkins advises his girlfriend:
Hang up your stocking, ol’ Santa Claus gonna come to you ….
But while Christmas blues, similar to Christmas pop songs and 'Coke', invariably reflects the consumer society around it, there continues to be a place in the music for simple common warm and resilient human impulses that. reunite. As Charles Brown, the Yuletide poet of the blues, sings in Please come Home For Christmas
Friends and relations send salutations,
true as the stars shine above,
It’s Christmas time, my dear,
the time of year,
to be with the one you love.
Although
Charles Brown's early recordings were a bizarre mixture of blues, boogie, pop ballads and
light classical, it was 'Merry Chrismas Baby' that sold well and brought Brown to
prominence. He first recorded it for the 1947 holiday season and like Bing Crosby's 'White
Christmas' has been in print ever since. For at least one generation of Americans, Charles
Brown and Christmas go together like turkey and cranberry sauce. Brown’s Come Home For
Christmas has been revived periodically over the years, notably by the Eagles in 1978.
.
Cool - Christmas Blues
Charles Brown
.
Even despite the fact that so many blues musos have not, for various reosons.
Brown's golden hit is just one of the highlights on his 1994 Christmas album, along with Merry Christmas, Baby, a blues tune almost as popular as Please Come Home .... Some of the newer tunes he's written for this record are almost as savory, including Christmas Comes but Once a Year, a rockin' little number featuring the legendary Johnny Otis on vibes, the jazzy, six-minute. meditation on the holiday A Song for Christmas, and a couple of forthright love songs, not to mention Christmas in Heaven, and Bringing In a Brand New Year.