When we got into the car yesterday, we asked my son what he wanted to listen to and he said "Christmas tree music" (for him, Christmas is all about the tree still). I have a Christmas mix CD in the car which starts off with "Skating," one of Vince Guaraldi's jazz songs from A Charlie Brown Christmas, but even when I play jazz that's not Christmas-themed, he calls it "Christmas tree music." Well anyway, my wife had just finished burning a CD with a different Christmas mix, so she popped that in but the first track wasn't jazzy. Lo and behold, my son cried out, "That's not Christmas tree music!" So from the mouth of babes, Christmas is jazz. Just in case you didn't know. And that's really interesting to me because for a lot of kids that grew up on A Charlie Brown Christmas, that's probably true. But even if you hated those holiday specials like I did, there's still all the jazz crooners that seem to dominate Christmas: Dean, Ella, Frank, Louis, and Sammy. Okay, maybe not so much "dominated" by Louis Armstrong, but since his name has come up here, it gives me a great segue into the final CD, Wynton Marsalis' Christmas Jazz Jam. You see, when most people think about jazz, they think about Louis Armstrong, but whenever I hear the name Louis Armstrong, I'm always reminded of Wynton Marsalis. That's because everything I know about Louis Armstrong, I learned from the Ken Burns Jazz documentary, which is mostly about Armstrong and relies heavily on interviews with Marsalis, who pronounces Louis with an "s" instead of "Louie," like everyone else I've heard talk about him. Modern jazz purists criticize the Burns doc for only covering the music before 1960, much the same way they criticise Marsalis for being "stuck in the past" musically. I personally don't care that his Christmas album is mostly Dixieland jazz. It's sure happier than a Charlie Brown TV special is. But if you're looking for sad and slow, there's a bluesly take on "Blue Christmas." If you're looking for something more modern, at least give his "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" a try. When I bought this CD, it had a sticker on the wrapper that said it was a Target exclusive, like two other awesome mix CDs that I already owned, A Holly Jolly Christmas: 15 Kids' Christmas Classics and Santa Baby: A Romantic Christmas. Now I see that Christmas Jazz Jam is available on iTunes and I feel a little cheated. I'll get over it though because I know Christmas isn't actually about trees or even jazz, it's about sharing. So thank you for sharing the Twelve Days of Christmas with me while I shared my favorite CDs.
As a bonus, here is a list of my top ten Christmas songs, regardless of artist or style (in alphabetical order, with the number of versions I own):
1. "Ave Maria" (5)
2. "Carol of the Bells" (10; betcha can't guess which song is my popular favorite; for a version that's scarier than the tubular bells on The Exorcist, check out the sustained dissonance at the end of Ray Conniff's "Ring Christmas Bells")
3. "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" (4)
4. "The Little Drummer Boy" (8)
5. "Mary's Lullaby" (the two that I own are two completely different songs; there's the LDS Children's Songbook song and the John Rutter one that I sang in choir at the University of Utah; yes, I can be heard on iTunes, albeit in a sea of voices)
6. "Merry Christmas Baby" (5)
7. "O Holy Night" (7)
8. "Silver Bells" (7)
9. "Sleigh Ride" (6; this is probably my personal favorite, even though I don't own that many versions of it; the only contender would be "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" and I own even less versions of that; for a very contemporary sound, check out KT Tunstall's new release)
10. "This Christmas" (5)
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