You Got a Sweet Potato Nose

The Jaynetts — "Snowman, Snowman, Sweet Potato Nose" (1963)

Just a quick Christmas post for today, since we both probably have better things to do than being on the internet.

First of all, I wanted to wish all my Jagged Time Lapse subscribers a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Saturnalia or whatever you’re celebrating at the moment. Thank you so much for your support of this page — it was really one of the best presents I could have gotten this year.

Second, I wanted to further brighten your hopefully already-bright day with one of my favorite “Christmas songs” that doesn’t actually mention Christmas. It’s a weird little number — it’s basically the backing track from The Jaynetts’ 1963 girl-group classic “Sally Go ‘Round the Roses” with new lyrics and ocarina, Jew’s harp and tambourine overdubs.

While the cryptic lyrics of “Sally Go ‘Round the Roses” have been interpreted as being about everything from drug use to lesbian love, no one could ever ascribe a deeper meaning to “Snowman…” — it’s just a delightfully loopy song in which The Jaynetts talk some mildly flirtatious shit with a local snowman who has a nose made from a sweet potato, which also apparently possesses some musical qualities.

Credited to songwriter Lona Stevens, who would later become the wife of the record’s producer, Chess A&R guy Abner Spector, “Snowman…” is on the one hand the very definition of cheap, cynical music-biz product: “Hey, let’s recycle this backing track and see if we can squeeze another hit out of it!” On the other hand, it’s an unpretentious Christmas joy, one completely devoid of ponderous religious overtones or the off-putting whiff of an attempted holiday standard a la “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”. And that “Sally” groove is so woozily infectious, why not air it out again?

I have no memory at all of when I first discovered this song, but it’s only been in the past five years or so that it really got my attention, then gradually got under my skin to the point that I even had to track down a copy of the 45 on Discogs. It always makes me smile; hopefully it’ll do the same for you today. See ya next week…

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