Twelve Christmas Wishes (Plus Three!)

15 artists who really should have made Christmas albums

Dec 22, 2023

Happy Solstice, Jagged Time Lapsers!

First, I want to thank all of you who have subscribed (or continued your subscriptions) to JTL in 2023, and everyone who has shared my posts and otherwise spread the word. It has been tremendously gratifying to see my audience quadruple in size since this time last year, and I profoundly appreciate your readership and support.

Second, while I had one last big Christmas music post in the works for this year, COVID completely took my legs out from under me in the last week and a half, and I just wasn’t able to get it across the finish line. So I hope you won’t mind me revamping this popular post from last December; after all, many of you didn’t see it at the time — and for those of you who did, I’ve added a few new entries to my original dozen…

As you may have gleaned from many of my posts this past month, I’ve always been a big fan of Christmas music — even the really stiff and schmaltzy stuff. In fact, the stiff and schmaltzy stuff is pretty much what I grew up on; with the exception of John Fahey’s incredible The New Possibility and maybe one or two choral albums, nobody in my family owned much in the way of Christmas records, so the background music for wrapping and unwrapping usually came via whatever local radio station was ladling out the musical eggnog. Which is probably one of the reasons I have such a soft spot for holiday muzak from long-gone department stores…

I was in my teens when I first learned about A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records, a.k.a. Phil Spector’s Christmas Album, a record which led me into the wonderful (and often quite weird) world of Christmas albums made by pop and rock artists. Further revelation came in the form of The Ventures’ Christmas Album, on which everyone’s favorite guitar-instro foursome twanged and jangled all the way through ten Christmas classics and a couple of holiday-themed originals. It’s still one of my all-time favorite Christmas albums, both because of the perfect brilliance of its concept and execution, and because it really motivated me to find out what other Christmas albums from my musical heroes might be lurking out there…

When my brilliant pal Rachel Lichtman posted the above fake Christmas album cover above on her Instagram account last year, I laughed heartily at the idea of Scott Walker — the man MOJO magazine once aptly described as “Ingmar Sinatra” — crooning those holiday favorites in his existentially devastated baritone. (Rachel and her Programme Four cohorts recently whipped up an audio simulation of the above album that totally delivers the goods.)

But Rachel’s handiwork also struck a nerve with me, because this is the time of year when I inevitably spend way too much time obsessing about how I wish this artist or that one had actually made a Christmas album.

Setting aside the folks who released one great Christmas single and left it at that (Slade, Elton John, Otis Redding, Roy Wood, etc.), here’s my dream list of Christmas albums that don’t exist:

Ahmad Jamal

A friend of mine quite correctly opined that there’s no such thing as a bad Ahmad Jamal album, which is pretty amazing considering that the jazz pianist made records from 1951 to 2019. However, none of his sixty-plus albums as a bandleader were devoted to Christmas, which is a real shame — especially when his gorgeous 1961 rendition of Claude Thornhill’s “Snowfall” points to what might have been.

Herbie Mann

Jazz flautist Herbie Mann has a considerably more checkered discography than Jamal, though some of that was due to his willingness to really stretch out into unfamiliar musical territory. But a Christmas album was apparently too much of a stretch for a nice Jewish boy like Herbie; thus we were not only denied the the pleasure of hearing his languid, cognac-dipped flute renditions of various Yuletide classics, but we also missed out on the inevitable album cover portraying him as a stripped-to-the-waist Santa.

Grant Green

If I could play guitar like anyone, it would be the late, great Grant Green. His fat tone, his funky swing, his conversational way with a melody, his nimble yet tasteful excursions around the fretboard… hearing him is always truly inspiring and soul-warming. Kenny Burrell, whose playing is in a similar bag, made a fantastic holiday LP (1966’s Have Yourself a Soulful Little Christmas) — which makes me think of how fantastic Grant’s could have been. I mean, just listen to his sublime take on “My Favorite Things”!

ABBA

Sweden’s greatest musical export finally got around to releasing a Christmas song in 2022 as part of Voyage, the foursome’s first new album in 40 years. The song is nice, if a little on the sleepy side; but if they’d applied their Phil Spector obsessions, lush harmonies and falling-icicle piano bits to a Christmas album back in their peppier mid/late-70s heyday, it could have resulted in something truly wondrous.

KISS

Considering that these guys will do just about anything for money — and that they did a holiday-themed photo session for CREEM magazine’s January 1977 cover (which hit the newsstands in December ‘76) — it’s kind of amazing that they never went the Merry Kissmas route. Personally, I would love to hear Paul Stanley belting out “FROTH-tee the THNOW-man” in full-on arena drag queen mode, and I’m sure Gene and Paul could have easily cooked up a few good double-entendre originals regarding candy canes, Yule logs and stuffed stockings for good measure. Check out Paul getting in the holiday spirit, mid-’80s MTV style…

Billy Stewart

An incredible singer who still doesn’t get his full due, the late, great Billy Stewart was truly one of those “could sing the phone book” types. And if you’ve heard his transcendent George Gershwin cover, you can just imagine what he would have done with Irving Berlin.

Dusty Springfield

Speaking of people who could make even the phone book sing… Dusty did record this lovely Christmas single for charity in 1964, which has since been repackaged into an album with several earlier Christmas songs cut by her folk-pop trio The Springfields. Still, I really wish she would have cut an entire Christmas album in her late-60s Dusty In Memphis prime.

Schoolly D

My favorite old-school rapper — best known nowadays for his theme from Aqua Teen Hunger Force — could easily have made the dopest Christmas hip-hop album ever, complete with gritty tales of Santa stick-ups and elf-administered beatdowns. I mean, “Same White Bitch (Got You Strung Out On Candy Canes)” seems like it would have been an easy enough jumping-off point, but alas…

Link Wray

Another guitarist I never tire of listening to — though for completely different reasons than Grant Green — ol’ one-lung Link and his growling guitar could have severely roughed up any Christmas classic in their path. But he also had an endearingly tender side, as heard on “Golden Strings (Based on a Chopin Etude)”. I can easily imagine Link delivering a similarly sweet “Silent Night” or “Silver Bells” along with bruising renditions of “Here Comes Santa Claus” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”.

Doug Sahm

Christmas is an emotionally loaded time of year. It’s supposed to be all about “Joy to the World,” but it brings up all kinds of sadness and trauma for a lot of folks. Which is why it’s too bad that Sir Doug’s Far-Out Christmas does not actually exist. The late, great Sir Douglas Quintet leader had a knack for injecting a warm sense of low-key cosmic joy into just about everything he every recorded, and I can easily envision him making a gently uplifting album of psilocybin-laced originals recasting Santa’s North Pole workshop as a groover’s paradise.

Bo Diddley

An excellent suggestion from my friends and colleagues James Porter and

Joe Bonomo

: Bo Diddley would have undoubtedly made a killer Christmas album if he’d ever put his mind to it. Just think of the fun the 500% More Santa LP could have been, and how funky something like “Sleigh Ride” might have sounded harnessed to a greezy-ass Bo Diddley beat. Not to mention the myriad “getting with my friend’s wife while dressed as Santa” possibilities…

Lou Christie

The king of the keening falsetto stuck to his tenor range for the lovely version of “O Holy Night” he recorded back in the ‘90s with the University of Pittsburgh Men’s Glee Club. But I would have really loved to hear ol’ Lugee deck the halls with some high-pitched “Ay-Yi-Yis” for a Santa’s Sacco LP containing the likes of “Two Egg Nogs Have I,” “Rhapsody with the Reindeer” and “If My Sleigh Could Only Talk”.

Tony Joe White

I’m dreaming of a Tony Joe White Christmas, just like the funky swamp-rock ones I used to know. Well, no, I’ve never actually had a swamp-rock Christmas (save for one miserably rain-drenched holiday visit to New Orleans) — and aside from “Real Swampy Christmas,” which was apparently given away as a free download on his website back in 2009, the late, great TJW never recorded any holiday material. Which is too damn bad, because his combination of innate groove, down-home warmth and knack for spinning entrancing musical tales could have resulted in a seriously killer Christmas album. “Snowy Night in Georgia”? “Lustful Elf and the Married Woman”? “They Caught Santa and Put Him in Jail in Eudora, Arkansas”? I would have been here for all of it.

The Troggs

The Troggs are one of my all-time favorite bands, but it’s probably for the best that they never made a Christmas album. Though they could/should have made a stomping, eyebrow-singeing collection of rocked-up carols and leering originals inviting you to sit on Santa’s lap (or his beard), it’s far too likely that their soppy side would have come front and center on such a project — think “Christmas is All Around Me” from that cinematic excrescence Love Actually. Therefore, my alternate-reality suggestion would be for Reg Presley and the boys from Andover to narrate/star in a fairy-dusted audio version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, with Reg starring as Ebeneezer Scrooge. “You there, boy,” he’d cry out, “What feckin’ day is today?” “Why, it’s Christmas, you big pranny,” Ronnie Bond would respond.

Tom Jones

ToJo’s 1969-1971 TV variety series This Is Tom Jones was massively entertaining on the whole, but the show’s Christmas specials were unfortunately pretty rough sledding. A straitlaced reading of Dylan Thomas’s “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” backed by the Treorchy Male Choir? Er, no thanks. I would much rather hear the Pontypridd Powerpack putting his priapic pipes into raunchy, hip-thrusting Christmas fare like “Back Door Santa” or “Santa Claus is Back in Town,” ideally as part of an album entitled, say, Wendell in a Winter Wonderland (if you know, you know). There’s still time, Sir Tom — put down those Leonard Cohen songs and get festive for us!