[Tip: Unless you understand Spanish. after listening to the whole set be sure to read the translation of today’s second song (below) .]
Midnight at the North Pole is from Fl!p Breskin and Zeke Hoskin’s 2003 “homebrewed” children’s album The Lizard that Ate Vancouver. The album is simply packaged in a plastic CD sleeve. It has no liner notes but it’s “cover” has this Parental Warning:
This album contains dirty underwear, snot, spit, vomit, mutant lizards, underwater romance, rapacious vacuum cleaners, an earthquake, accidently severed body parts, the creative avoidance of naughty words, and cheerful mayhem with a liberal smattering of gore! But it can’t be worse than TV.
Actually, the first part of that statement isn’t true but beginning with the reference to the title track’s mutant lizards it is a reasonable description of Zeke’s contributions to the album.
Zeke and Fl!p met at a music camp in 1992. Zeke used to live in Vancouver, BC but Fl!p is an American. They got married in 1998 and settled down in Bellingham WA, about as close to Vancouver you can get while living in the US. The two are a common feature at music festivals and folk music clubs around British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest and their sets always draw a large crowd of fans. Zeke’s humorous songs are balanced by Fl!p’s warm-hearted ones. She sometimes writes them herself but more frequently gets them from other song-writers (and she always has an infectious smile!)
I found three websites for them online but they all look pretty dated (i.e., I suggest calling or e-mailing before ordering), but Zeke’s Facebook account is current and they have some relatively-recent home-made videos on YouTube.
The fine conjunto/Tejano accordian player Guadalupe “Wally” Gonzales was often thought of as a Tex-Mex version of Weird Al Yankovic. Santa Claus y sus Venaditos is written and sung by him. The song is from his 1996 children’s album The Christmas Bandito, which I got from Vancouver Island squeezebox player and folklore collector Eric Oscar.
Back in 2004 when I used another of his songs from this album on one of my annual Christmas Sampler CDs I found a very interesting article about him and how he got into comedic performances of his music. Unfortunately that article is now a dead link. As I recall, he lived most of his life in Brownsville, Texas, on the Gulf Coast right near the Mexican border. He came from a very poor family. When he was quite young his mother gave him a cast-off used broken accordion as his Christmas present. He took to it so enthusiastically that a few years later she scrimped and saved to be able to buy him an unbroken used one.
Wally was quite diminutive in stature. When he was giving a school performance at the age of 13 the other students did not pay attention to his playing – they just laughed at his size behind a large accordion. He knew from experience how to deal with that. His response was to intersperse jokes about his size with his playing. Then they laughed at the jokes but also quieted down and began to enjoy the performance. He realized that with comedy he could turn his stature into a performance strength.
When he quit school he became a farm worker, bringing his accordion along both to entertain himself and his co-workers but also to earn a few dollars on the side. He continued to blend comedy with his musicianship. After a few years he was able to find local Tejano record company that was willing both to publish his albums and give him a day-job with very flexible working hours to accommodate his schedule as a regionally-touring musician.
All I could find about him online now are some photos (as in the above image), this brief 2011 article, and this short interview that he gave in 2013 for a University of Texas border music oral history project.
As for the song itself, although I cannot speak or read Spanish I recognized that a few of the words and sensed that there was more to it than a typical jolly Christmas children’s song. The sister-in-way of a friend transcribed and translated it for me:
Santa Claus Y Sus Venaditos
Santa Claus tiene miedo venir al valle
Piensa que se va quedar,
cuida bien sus venaditos porque se los pueden robar,La otra vez que vino al valle por Molina fue invitado
Se empezaron de tamales, supo que eran de venado
En el tiempo del invierno sube el precio del ganado
Y la raza tiene el valle, siempre se hartan de venado.Chorus:
Venado en la parrilla, venado hecho en mole,
Venado con frijoles y su rico guacamole.
Tamales de venado, chorizo de venado,
Caldo de venado y menudo de venado.
HO HO HO! Not my venaditos, man. No way, man. HO HO HO!
ChorusHO HO HO! Cut North on 281, Rudolph, not South. HO HO HO
Chorus
HO HO HO! Merry Christmas everybody! HOHOHO!***
Santa Claus and His DeerSanta Claus is afraid of coming to the valley
He thinks he will stay,
Take good care of his deer because they can get stolen.The other time he came to the valley he was invited by Molina.
They had tamales as a starter, he knew they were deer (meat).
At Wintertime the price of cattle goes up,
Mexicans [are in] the valley, they eat their fill of deer.Chorus:
Deer on the grill, deer made into mole,
Deer with beans and delicious guacamole.
Deer tamales, deer chorizo,
Deer broth and deer tripe stew.
Country comedic music performer Cledus T. Judd who leads the third song Don’t Serve Beans is better documented. He even has a Wikipedia entry and there are a lot of articles about him online. Actually, his real name is Barry Poole but I’ll continue with his stage persona. Cledus is another musician who is often compared with Weird Al.
He began performing professionally in 1993 and had a moderately successful musical career, with several of his albums and singles making it onto the Billboard country charts, but none were a breakthrough hit. He supplemented being a performer by doing some acting and emceeing on Country TV and radio. He retired from performing three times. This time it might stick – he has closed down his Cledus website and started up a home renovation business using his real name.
This song is from his 2002 album Cledus Navidad. Technically, I suppose, it isn’t a children’s album but this is the kind of humour that my 7 year old grandson Reid and 4 year-old granddaughter Vera absolutely love!
This set closes with Christmas Is Coming by performers everyone has heard of – the Muppets! So I don’t need to tell you who they are. I ripped this song from my copy of their vinyl album A Christmas Together, which is the music from a Christmas television special they did with John Denver in 1979. It is a very good Christmas album, and definitely fits into the not-only-for-kids category! It is available on CD but inexplicably the CD does not include three of the best songs from the TV show that were on the vinyl version – great versions of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, When the River Meets the Sea, and Little Saint Nick.
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