Playlist:
Better Than That Fl!p Breskin 1:54
Jungle Bells Les Paul and Mary Ford 2:18
To Shorten Winter’s Sadness The Deller Consort 2:02
Let Us Hang the Holly Anna Russell 2:40
Papa St. Nick Beausoleil avec Michael Doucet 3:02
Corn, Water and Wood Riders in the Sky 3:16
Music notes
Better Than That Fl!p Breskin and Zeke Hoskins, who live in Bellingham Washington, are familiar voices at Pacific Northwest folk music festivals, camps and retreats as well as folk music clubs. Mandolin-playing Zeke is a songwriter renowned for his ability to see the absurd side of everything and putting it into songs that elicit belly laughs. Fl!p is almost the opposite. Besides being a music teacher, slack-key guitar master, and social justice activist, she’s a song-catcher who loves introducing people to little-known musical gems. This one is by The Berrymans - Lou and Peter, a Madison Wisconsin duo whose songwriting style is much like Zeke’s.
I got this song from one of their very low-key (plastic sleeve; no liner notes) CDs from the merch table at a music camp that they and I attended, dated 2003 with the title being of one of Zeke’s songs The Lizard Who Ate Vancouver.
Jungle Bells Les Paul and Mary Ford were among the biggest pop music stars in the pre-rock & roll 1950s. In 1951 they had more top ten hits than Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and the Andrews sisters combined! However, their popularity faded as rock and roll blossomed. In some ways they were the architects of their own downfall because they had developed technologies that became the heart of the new music. Besides Les Paul's invention of the solid body electric guitar, the couple were pioneers in such techniques as multitrack recording, overdubbing, and delay and phasing effects.
Most of the selections in my Samplers come from albums that I have collected. Several years ago, thanks to the Internet I discovered that I am not the only person who collects Christmas songs and shares them with others either through non-commercial CDs like mine or via blog websites. Many of these people have collections of Christmas music that are much more extensive than mine! This has led to annual exchanges of our "comps", and especially when my samplers have a light-hearted theme I re-gift wonderful songs to you that I received this way.
This is the A side of their 1953 Christmas release, a 45 rpm single with their version of the ever-popular White Christmas on the B side. But I got it from one of my fellow Christmas record collectors (I can’t remember which one.)
To Shorten Winter’s Sadness The madrigal form of vocal polyphony was brought to England from Italy in the 1590s. It was a musical fad, quickly becoming very popular among the Elizabethan gentry, and just as quickly fading to oblivion before 1620. English counter-tenor Alfred Deller, who formed the Deller Consort in 1948, was instrumental in a 20th century rediscovery and revival of what had become a long-forgotten form on music. I got this from a CD re-release of the Deller Consort’s 1955 Vanguard album that did that; The English Madrigal School.
Thomas Weelkes, the writer of this winter madrigal for 5 voices, was among the most prolific of the English madrigal writers. The words are:
To shorten winter's sadness, See where the nymphs with gladness
Disguiséd, all are coming, Right wantonly a-mumming
Though masks encloud their beauty, Yet give the eye her duty,
When Heav'n is dark it shineth, And unto love inclineth.
Let Us Hang the Holly Anna Russell (1911-2006) was an English-Canadian who had the finest of operatic training at the Royal College of Music, then a short career as an opera singer and a long career as a comedienne. The transition came after she got her movie-style “big break” while with a British touring production of Cavalleria rusticana. The opera’s diva fell ill and Anna was the understudy for the starring role of Santuzza. She nervously but confidently stepped into the part and it was going well until she tripped and pulled the whole set down. Of course, people laughed. She then reconsidered her career choice. She knew that her knack for making people laugh was stronger than her singing voice.
I downloaded this brief lecture/demonstration on English madrigals from Ernie (not Bert)'s wonderful Christmas music blog site, which has been "cluttering up the Internet since 2005." It was on his 2009 Best of Christmas in July compilation.
Papa St. Nick As you can hear, Michael Doucet and his band Beausoleil perform Cajun music – the folk music of the late-18th century French and Acadian settlers in Louisiana. The National Endowment for the Arts describes Doucet as “perhaps the single most important figure in the revitalization of Cajun music in the United States.”
The Acadians (Cajuns) had been expelled in 1759 to 1764 from what are now Canada’s maritime east coast provinces after England conquered Quebec. I don’t know why the British thought it necessary to eject the Acadians, and not the much more numerous Quebecois, but they found it more expedient to transport them to what was then still a French North American colony rather than back to France.
This song is another that I got from a fellow Christmas music collector; from a 2007 JohnsCD compilation called Louisiana Christmas. I don’t know where he got it but I can guess: It isn’t on Beausoleil’s 1986 album Christmas Bayou but it is on a 2004 regional compilation album called Christmas Gumbo.
I found listener-supplied lyrics for this song here, but we all know how gaps and (sometimes humourous) errors can arise when trying to transcribe from listening to a song. But here they are (with a few changes from me, such as putting in the word “toys” to fill two of the gaps):
Papa Saint Nick's comin' up the bayou (Ho, ho, ho, ho ho ho)
Got a mountain full of toys on a red bâteau (Ho, ho, ho, ho ho ho)
From [?] all the way to [?]
Gonna pay a visit to you and me
Better hope you haven't been mauvais no no...
Yes, Papa Saint Nick is comin' up, is comin' up the bayou!
Alligator [Ruth?] has got a light on his nose (Ho, ho, ho, ho ho ho)
Showing Papa Saint Nick which way to go (Ho, ho, ho, ho ho ho)
He passes through the water while he sits and dreams
Of a cold glass of milk and a plate of pralines
And if he's-a lucky get a cup of gumbo...
Yes, Papa Saint Nick is comin' up, is comin' up the bayou![instrumental break]
Papa Saint Nick, you can't see him, no
Sneakin' 'round the tugs and the old shrimp boats
He knows he can't do it all by himself
So he brings along a bunch of Cajun elves
To find every [toupoche???] and row to shore...
Yes, Papa Saint Nick is comin' up, is comin' up the bayou!
Papa Saint Nick's comin' up the bayou (Ho, ho, ho, ho ho ho)
Got a mountain full of [?] on the red bâteau (Ho, ho, ho, ho ho ho)
From [?] all the way to [?]
Gonna pay a visit to you and me
Better hope you haven't been mauvais no no...
Yes, Papa Saint Nick is comin' up, is comin' up the bayou!
Yes, Papa Saint Nick is comin' up, is comin' up the bayou!
Oh! Ho ho ho ho ho!
Corn, Water and Wood The Riders in the Sky have been creating a unique blend of cowboy hokum and fine singing and musicianship for over 44 years. Even more amazing, the group is still comprised of the same four members - Ranger Doug, Too Slim, Woody Paul, and Joey the Cowpolka King. During that time they have released over 40 full-length albums, made over 7200 concert appearances in all 50 states and ten countries, and for the past 35 years they have been frequent performer’s at Nashville’s Grand Ol’ Opry. This comes from their 1999 Rounder album Christmas the Cowboy Way.
Sampler-making recollections
I intended this sampler to be a follow-up to my 2004 children’s-album-for-grownups. I wanted the same light-hearted mood, but where that first one had evolved into a highly-structured high-concept depiction of children’s musical experience of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, this one has a much looser structure than that. I returned to my original concept of it being like a musical equivalent of pulling treats from a Christmas stocking, where you can never guess what’s coming next (although my daughters did know that there was going to be a new toothbrush in there somewhere.) It includes humorous as well as meaningful secular songs as well as a few nativity ones in the mix. They were selected to be festive but not frantic.
There’s nothing more to say about this Sampler so I’ll tell you about my annual production process during the CD era, before I retired in 2014. After my retirement I did not have access to the office printer so I had the liner notes professionally printed, collated and cut. They had printing machines that were more suitable for this kind of print job as well as staff who knew what they were doing. I had never gotten a price estimate earlier. It turns out that cost of printing, collating and cutting 250 booklets, was only about $50-70 plus the price of high-quality paper. They had a cutting shear machine that could slice through hundreds of sheets of paper at a time, so charge for cutting was only $3. I still needed to do the folding but if I had known that I never would have had to learn about and do most of what I am about to tell you.
Every year from 2001 to 2013, in addition to selecting the music, researching and writing the liner notes, and choosing a cover image, the process of self-publishing my samplers was a major undertaking. And it all had to be done before my self-imposed deadline of December 1. I knew that most people’s tolerance for Christmas music ends on Dec. 25, so I needed to get my musical Christmas cards into the mail as early as possible so they could be enjoyed when such music might be appreciated.
Quite separately from writing and editing the liner notes, making them took a lot of time. They were CD case sized booklets of 8, 12 or 16 pages, depending on the year. I could print them by going into the office on a Saturday or Sunday and use our office photocopier (the use of which for personal projects was permitted under our component’s union contract) but I bought special expensive paper. I always wanted my sampler CDs to become family heirlooms, so my liner notes were made from the same heavyweight archival-quality paper that was used only for the Minister’s correspondence. I bought the paper at cost from the Ministry – Thank-you to Hazel and whichever manager gave the final approval for that!
I was used to making photocopies for myself at work, but not this kind of production line printing had to be learning-by-doing. If the office printer had a way to do two-sided printing for a job like this I didn’t know about it. I learned from trial and error what size of margins my pages had to have to be reduced to fit into a jewel case - 53%. It took a few years to get it right without trial and error.
The printing process itself involved making reduced master copies with two pages on each side. The printing on one side of the paper need to be in a different corner from the other side if the reduced printing was to be back-to-back. And of course, all the pages needed to be in their proper order for making folded booklets.
After making the masters I always made a test-run booklet on regular paper to make sure the pages lined up properly and the printing was centred. Sometimes my margins at the top of the page were too tall, making the bottom margin too small. This was always the most nerve-wracking part of the process, after which I moved into the tedious printing and cutting stage.
Once I began making long runs of printing on the expensive paper the printing itself was fairly straightforward, but the machine did need some tending. That included making sure that the master sheets were properly positioned whenever I was starting a new side (and running another test page on regular paper), removing the printed pages from the printer’s output slot when it began to fill up, and refilling the paper supply when it ran out.
Once I had one of the pages printed properly on both sides I could begin cutting in parallel with printer-tending. The paper had to be trimmed to size using the office’s large and sharp guillotine style paper cutter. I had penciled little guide-marks onto the cutter to help the process the first year. (They are probably still there.)
The printed part was only about 60% of each page. I always saved the trimmed off bits. (I may be one of the few people whose shopping lists and notes-to-self are printed on archival paper.) Printing and cutting took three or more hours because I could cut up to only 7 sheets at a time. I always came home from printing day with a sore lower back since I was not used to repetitive physical labour. Collating and folding was another time-consuming job but at least I could do that at home while watching TV.
Burning the CDs was the easy part. I first rubber-stamped the titles onto blank CDs and then would burn them, also while watching TV, interrupted every 9 minutes or so to take a burnt CD out of my computer, putting it on a spindle (so I wouldn’t mix up the burnt and unburnt ones), and put in a blank one from their spindle. The process became quite automatic.
It was then just a matter of combining the CDs with the folded booklets and putting them into either a paper sleeve or a plastic CD “jewel case.” I got a lot of like-new plastic ones for free because a scientist acquaintance from the choir of which I was a member was replacing them with paper sleeves, to save space for storing many years of seismic data that rarely needs to be accessed. – Thanks, Richard!
My mailed ones were always in paper because then I could mail them for the same first-class postage rate as regular Christmas cards. When selling, I gave people a choice but most people went for the classy look of the jewel-case ones. I was happy to be part of getting them reused rather than having the plastic be recycled.
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