On Happy Holidays!, The Dave Palmer Trio brings together their collective world-class musicianship to deliver tasteful jazz interpretations of holiday classics. The result is a record that sounds both spontaneous and timeless, performed and arranged with an emphasis on the trio’s penchant for swing-oriented, composition-driven jazz. We spoke with Palmer about the making of Happy Holidays!, his favorite Christmas albums, jazz artists he’s been digging, and the Philadelphia music scene.
Category: Holiday
West Indies Christmas (A Mixtape)
The holidays, West Indies style. With the expansion of record distribution from the UK, the US, and Canada during the 1960s, Christmas music experienced a notable surge, mirroring developments in Jamaica. The following twenty track all vinyl mixtape covers most of that time period, from the early 60s through the late 70s.
A John Waters Christmas (2004)
Christmas provides the perfect setting for Waters to juxtapose with his subversive authorship: taking something cheerful, domestic, and sentimental and gleefully deforming it into tawdry anarchy. So it should come as no surprise that when New Line Records asked the cult icon to compile a Christmas album, Waters curated a track listing far off the beaten path of Bing Crosby and Andy Williams. “I think a few of these songs are awful,” Waters would say. “But they’re so awful, they’re perfect.”
Videodrome :: Christmas Evil (1980)
Christmas Evil may seem like a hokey slasher film done up in garland and wreaths, but it’s a tragic character study that speaks directly to the motifs of the holiday season. With the thematic tissue of a Christmas film and the derangement of a horror film, filmmakers such as John Waters have referred to Christmas Evil as “the greatest Christmas film of all time.”
Joel Paterson :: Hi-Fi Christmas Guitar
Harkening back to a bygone era of multi-tracking techniques, Hi-Fi Christmas Guitar finds guitarist Joel Paterson paying tribute to Les Paul and Chet Atkins through the vessel of Christmas standards. Hang the mistletoe, crank up the Echoplex, and let the yuletide spirit roll.
John Zorn :: A Dreamers Christmas
The Dreamers have always been John Zorn’s most immediately appealing project. With The Dreamers, Zorn finally set aside the kabbalistic solemnity that suffused so much of his late 90s work in favor of the pulpier, less austere sounds of exotica, surf, lounge, library music and mod jazz. When Zorn’s combo applied their considerable skills to classic holiday fare in 2011, they managed to make one of the greatest and grooviest Christmas albums of all time.
An Oscar Peterson Christmas
Released in 1995, An Oscar Peterson Christmas finds the seventy-year-old jazz veteran comfortably gliding through fourteen Christmas standards. It’s cozy, warm, and familiar — everything one could hope for from a jazz record to soundtrack the holiday season.
The Kate Bush Christmas Special feat. Peter Gabriel (1979)
Amongst the plethora of classic televised Christmas specials are lesser-known outliers that haven’t become ubiquitous holiday viewing. Case in point: The Kate Bush Christmas Special (1979).
Videodrome :: Metropolitan (1990)
In Metropolitan, The Ghost of Christmas Past and The Ghost of Christmas Future are the same, and the characters are so caught up in their bubble of affluence that they fail to reckon with The Ghost of Christmas Present.
Songs of Christmas, Midwinter, & New Year :: From the Alan Lomax Collection
Hark! The arrival of a late in the year gift: Songs of Christmas, Midwinter & New Year: From the Alan Lomax Collection. Collecting material the legendary archivist recorded in the Caribbean, Italy, Spain, Scotland, the American South, and Harlem, this compilation presents a variety of Yuletide sounds, both playful and sacred, from around the globe.
Warner Jepson :: Buchla Christmas
For those who’ve reached their sanity threshold for cloying Christmas fare, here is an album that will wipe the screen clean. An ethereal, odd masterpiece from 1969 — “Buchla Christmas” by the fascinating Warner Jepson, electronic musician and video art pioneer.
Videodrome :: Less Than Zero (1987)
There are two ways to evaluate Less Than Zero: a standalone film that functions on its own cinematic merits, or the adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel. Like most pieces of media that live in various forms, the appreciation or dissatisfaction largely stems from which one was encountered first, and the personal sentimentality placed upon that experience. But there’s a third way to approach Less Than Zero, and that is as a holiday film.
Bob Dylan :: Christmas In The Heart
When Bob Dylan’s Christmas album appeared in 2009, it was both totally unexpected and 44 years overdue. In this instance, we’re glad he waited. Christmas in the Heart features Dylan singing songs you know by heart in a voice without restraint. There’s fun for the whole family, and all for a good cause. It’s enough to make a believer out of anyone.
The Gospel Of Fahey’s Christmas Soli
As the Turkey-fare winds down and the boxes of Christmas decor make their way from the basement, a transition is needed. Ringing in the holiday season in subtlety requires a look no further than America’s finest composer and most innovative maestro of steel string. With a discography expanding beyond 40 titles, it’s possible to overlook the holiday offerings among masterworks like Fare Forward Voyagers, The Yellow Princess, and those first five Takoma releases. Smack dab in the middle of John Fahey’s first decade shifting around the tectonic plates of traditional music came The New Possibility.
The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album
Imagine songs like “Merry Christmas, Baby” or “Christmas Day,” but with new titles and lyrics removed from Christmas, delivered on a record that didn’t bear a kitschy cover of the band putting ornaments on a tree. If this was the case, would the Christmas Album get the respect it deserves?