Though he did not celebrate Christmas, it was a day that held special meaning to Berlin, who had spent each Christmas Day visiting the grave of his late son, Irving Berlin, Jr., who died at just 3 weeks old on December 25, 1928. This was certainly true of the immigrant Russian Jewish songwriter Irving Berlin. As Jody Rosen, author of the 2002 book White Christmas: The Story of an American Song, told National Public Radio, “It’s very melancholy….And I think this really makes it stand out amongst kind of chirpy seasonal standards ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ or ‘Let It Snow.’….I think that’s one of the reasons why people keep responding to it, because our feelings over the holiday season are ambivalent.” Unlike other perennial holiday hits, however, “White Christmas” strikes a mood that isn’t necessarily jolly. It also returned to the Hit Parade pop chart in every subsequent Christmas season for the next 20 years. The song’s success couldn’t have surprised Berlin, who despite having already written such songs as “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “Cheek To Cheek” and “God Bless America,” had raced into his Manhattan office in January 1940 and asked his musical secretary to transcribe “The best song I ever wrote…the best song anybody ever wrote.” It was nearly two years later, however, that Crosby finally premiered the song on live radio, and a year after that that Crosby’s recording of “White Christmas” became a smash pop hit.Ĭrosby’s October 1942 recording of “White Christmas” received heavy airplay on Armed Forces Radio as well as on commercial radio during its first Christmas season, becoming an instant #1 pop hit. “White Christmas” took its first steps toward becoming a bedrock standard in the American songbook when Crosby first performed it publicly on Christmas Day, 1941. It went on to become one of the most commercially successful singles of all time. Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review.“White Christmas,” written by the formidable composer and lyricist Irving Berlin receives its world premiere on Decemon Bing Crosby’s weekly NBC radio program, The Kraft Music Hall. Providing the cheerful, winsome, moving background music of the holiday is these artists’ enduring gift to all of us. It invokes chestnuts on an open fire, Jack Frost, Yuletide carols, turkey and mistletoe, tiny tots bursting with anticipation and, of course, Santa and his reindeer. “The Christmas Song,” written in 1945 and recorded most famously by Nat King Cole (although Bing Crosby, Judy Garland and Mel Torme performed it, too), is typical in this regard. The Christmas of this music is less explicitly religious and more markedly American, a holiday of snowy vistas, of hearth and home, of cheerful sounds and merrymaking, of Santa and his sleigh, and of fond memories. Christmas loomed large in the culture, and the songs reflected it and defined it. So heartfelt sentiments could be expressed unembarrassedly, and they still touch us today. What, besides the quality of the songs, accounts for the dominance of this era? It was a time prior to the onset of cynicism and irony. Autry also gave us “Frosty the Snowman” (1950) and “Here Comes Santa Claus” (1947). A bunch of singers passed on “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” until Gene Autry recorded the instant classic in 1949. Not all the numbers from this time were particularly serious. 1 and returning to the charts repeatedly over the next two decades. It lifted into the stratosphere, hitting No. The transcendent “White Christmas,” written by Irving Berlin and performed by Bing Crosby, came in 1942. This era was a high point of American popular music generally, when the quality of the lyrics and of the music was exceptional, and we still hear it - and love it - in the most recognizable Christmas songs. An annual analysis of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers found that 16 of the 25 most popular Christmas songs last year dated from the 1930s, 1940s or 1950s. between the 1860s and the early 1930s, when the genre exploded and put an indelible imprint on our culture. There was a lull in the production of popular Christmas songs in the U.S. With honorable exceptions - most notably Mariah Carey’s 1994 classic “All I Want for Christmas Is You” - the most-played and most-beloved Christmas songs date from the 1930s and the couple of decades thereafter.Įveryone knows Bruce Springsteen’s energetic version of “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town.” He recorded it in 1975, but the song was written and first performed in the 1930s, making it utterly characteristic. The great performer Bing Crosby reached the height of his stardom about 80 years ago, but every Christmas season he makes a triumphant return to American radio and malls and other public places.Īmerican tastes have drastically changed over the decades, yet our Christmas songbook has remained largely the same.
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