Holiday Jazz 2019: Plenty of tasty stocking-stuffers

[Web master’s note: Northern California film critic Derrick Bang — still the eldest, youngest and only son of this site’s primary jazz guru, Ric Bang — has surveyed the holiday jazz scene for 23 years, with lengthy columns that just keep growing. Check out previous columns by clicking on the CHRISTMAS label below.]

Let’s start with a blast from the past, finally (finally!) making its debut on CD.

Longtime holiday jazz fans have always prized the Ramsey Lewis Trio’s two classic albums: 1961’s Sound of Christmas and 1964’s More Sounds of Christmas. Both initially were released by Argo and then reissued by Cadet and Chess; the first one went digital in 1989, first on Chess/MCA, and then on Verve. The second album logically should have hit CD simultaneously … but that didn’t happen.

Three decades passed (!). Then, just a few months ago, Verve quietly issued More Sounds of Christmas on CD. Modern listeners now can delight in the trio’s droll handling of “Snowbound,” “We Three Kings” and “Jingle Bells” — the latter a particularly saucy arrangement — and numerous other seasonal chestnuts, along with a couple of originals (“Egg Nog” and “Plum Puddin’ ”). 

The hitch: Five of the 10 tracks are accompanied by syrupy strings, which’ll raise an eyebrow or two. (Oh, well.)

Folks just starting a holiday jazz collection will be delighted by New Continent’s Christmas Hits: Jazz, Lounge and Rhythm & Blues. This three-disc anthology offers 25 iconic tracks in each of the three genres. The Christmas Jazz CD features classics by Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Kenton, Mel Tormé, Chet Baker and many others. Christmas Lounge is laden with vocals by Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, Johnny Mathis, Judy Garland, Eartha Kitt, Julie London and others. Christmas Rhythm & Blues, finally, is a smorgasbord featuring The Cadillacs, Brenda Lee, Elvis, Chuck Berry, The Drifters and much more.

With 75 tracks for slightly less than $13, you can’t go wrong!

As this survey was going to bed, Santa dropped a copy of up-and-coming vocalist Rebecca Angel’s CD single cover of “Santa Baby.”Considerable bravery is required to tackle this classic, in the wake of Eartha Kitt’s iconic 1953 version, along with respectable later covers by Kylie Minogue and Madonna. To her credit, Angel has the appropriate little-girl coo, and her flirty reading is backed by a tasty quintet: Dennis Angel (Flugelhorn), Jason Miles (keyboards), Jonah Prendergast (guitar), Reggie Washington (bass) and Brian Dunne (drums).

But will it stand the test of time? Hard to say. 

Now, let’s see what else Santa brought jazz fans this year (or recently, anyway) …

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Holiday Jazz 2012: Swing Ye Noel!

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.11.12

[Web master’s note: Northern California film critic Derrick Bang — still the eldest, youngest and only son of this site’s jazz guru, Ric Bang — has surveyed the holiday jazz scene for roughly 17 years, with lengthy columns that just keep growing. Check out previous columns by clicking on the CHRISTMAS label below.]

It’s getting harder to find this stuff.

Time was, I’d start haunting the holiday section at music stores shortly before Thanksgiving; the better brick-and-mortar outlets would be laden, with some even giving holiday jazz its own sub-category. Berkeley’s marvelous Amoeba Music continues that practice to this day, and therefore remains an essential part of my annual December rituals.

Closer to home, alas, the options aren’t nearly as diverse. Or rewarding.

Which brings us to the ever-more-ubiquitous online alternative. Although Amazon’s search engines continue to improve, one still can’t get reliable results from the phrases “Christmas jazz,” “holiday jazz” or similar choices. CDBaby is a bit better, although I still wade through a lot of non-jazz while hunting for the good stuff. Sadly, EJazzlines.com, once a great source for hard-to-find holiday jazz, no longer sells CDs.

On the other hand, being able to hear samples — at both Amazon and CDBaby — is a treasure.

Take comfort, then, from the fact that I’ve done the legwork and returned with tidings of jazzy comfort and joy. Patience may have been required, but it turned out to be a good year. Nog those eggs, don a Santa hat and prepare to swing!

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The season’s prize is a 2011 release that arrived too late for last year’s column: the Marcus Roberts Trio’s Celebrating Christmas (J-Master Records). This is what jazz is all about: a tightly arranged melodic dance between Roberts, on piano; Rodney Jordan, bass; and Jason Marsalis, drums.

I’m hard-pressed to cite a favorite track, although this group’s inventive approach to “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is first among equals: The tune, often redundant as an instrumental, is delivered here in 12 different styles, and with each day represented by one of the 12 major keys. That’s simply brilliant.

The trio’s handling of “Little Drummer Boy” is equally clever, with Marsalis establishing a peppy march beat that Roberts initially refuses to follow, choosing instead to play “behind” the beat at a much slower tempo. Roberts gradually picks up speed as the song continues, until finally all three musicians are in synch.

Jordan’s walking bass is the highlight of a velvet-smooth “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” and he also dominates a short but deliciously whimsical cover of “Frosty, the Snowman.” “Let It Snow” has a south-of-the-border ambiance, with some great keyboard wandering and another nice bass solo.

“Winter Wonderland” blends striking percussion with Roberts’ New Orleans grease; “Jingle Bells” has a similar bouncy, New Orleans-style strut, with some more fabulous bass and drums action. This cut features one of Roberts’ many signatures: He fails to complete the line as the song concludes, leaving us a few chords shy.

“Silent Night” is delivered at a slow 6/4, with an achingly sweet call-and-response between piano and bass; later in the song, Roberts delivers similar counterpoint between his left and right hands. Sheer genius.

Three tracks are solo piano: “We Three Kings,” “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Joy to the World.” Each is slow, deliberate and lyrical: a bit extemporaneous, with a touch of ragtime on “Joy to the World.” Stylistically, these evoke memories of Roberts’ earlier Christmas release, 1991’s “Prayer for Peace,” a solo keyboard album that was far more solemn.

“Celebrating Christmas,” in great contrast, is lively, vibrant and fun: an album that demands close attention because it’s so creative and joyous.

Holiday Jazz: How it all began

By Derrick Bang

[Web master’s note: Northern California film critic Derrick Bang — the eldest, youngest and only son of this site’s jazz guru, Ric Bang — began writing about the annual holiday jazz scene in 1997. His interest in the sub-genre began many years earlier, however, as the following essay explains. Quick links to these annual columns — archived within this blog — can be obtained by clicking on CHRISTMAS in the list of labels at the bottom of this post.]

It started reasonably enough.

Back in the Stone Age of the 1970s, years before our local National Public Radio outlet (KXPR) begat a sister station (KXJZ), the former catered primarily to local classical music enthusiasts. Jazz fans were restricted to the late evening hours, when most sensible people would be getting ready for bed. (I could argue that jazz fans rarely are sensible people, but that’s another discussion.)

Aside from the occasional one or two tunes that might pop up in the middle of otherwise conventional sets, jazz covers of familiar Christmas songs were restricted to a two-hour, 10 p.m. to midnight timeslot on Christmas Eve, appropriately dubbed Jingle Bell Jazz.

I lived for those two hours.

Although I grew up enjoying the holidays, and particularly its melodies, there was something faintly ... well ... corny about most Christmas music being played in the ’70s. It was the stuff of Muzak and easy-listening schlock, with gag-me choruses and more damn strings than you’d find in most symphony orchestras. Much like some aspects of the holiday itself, most Christmas music had become gaudy, overly commercialized, lowest-common-denominator pap.

Christmas jazz, though ... now that had an edge: some genuine bite and enough musicality that you’d stop and really listen to the stuff, instead of tuning it out the way you’d desperately ignore the junk you heard in department store elevators.

No seasonal trauma is too great that it can’t be alleviated by a warm fire, a warmer companion and a soulful interpretation of “Silent Night” or “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” by the likes of Oscar Peterson or Dave Brubeck.

And for an all-too-short 120 minutes every Dec. 24th, host Gary Vercelli played a tasty and delectable selection of hip holiday tunes, drawing from a woefully limited supply. Options were few back then: CDs weren’t even a dream on the horizon, let alone iTunes and other Internet downloading sources. LPs still ruled the roost, and many of those had gone out of print. That’s what made radio both good and bad: Avid listeners often heard things they didn’t own, but at the same time might have little chance of purchasing, short of a lucky find in a used-record store.

Holiday Jazz 2000: ’Tis the season to be wary

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.14.00

[Web master’s note: Northern California film critic Derrick Bang — the eldest, youngest and only son of this site’s jazz guru, Ric Bang — has surveyed the holiday jazz scene since the late 1990s, with lengthy columns that just keep growing.]


I got word, a month back, that music labels would be considerably more cautious with holiday releases this year, because sales were “flat” in 1999. No surprise, really; after enjoying a level of modest popularity and producing smallish — but reliable — profits for several decades, seasonal releases exploded in 1998 and ’99. Everybody had to release a holiday album, and of course many didn’t find the listeners they deserved.

That’s what happens when the market gets flooded: We all drown, artist and fan alike.

This year’s seasonal music releases are fewer and further between, and that’s particularly true of holiday jazz, where a couple of labels have adopted the tactic employed by the U.S. Postal Service, which simply recycled last year’s reindeer stamps.

Thus, Concord has resurrected two 1997 releases, spruced ’em up with new cover art and new titles, and released them anew.

I call that pretty damn sneaky.

In fairness, both are worth adding to your library; just make sure you don’t already own them.

Piano fans can’t do better than Dave McKenna’s Christmas Party: Holiday Piano Spiked with Swing (Concord CCD 4923-2, previously issued as Christmas Ivory, CCD-4772-2), an ambitious, one-man collection of superb solo work: blues, stride, swing rag and anything else the then-67-year-old acoustic phenomenon set his mind to. It’s a grand series of cuts by a guy who knows he doesn’t need to impress listeners with needless flash; his renditions of “Silver Bells’’ and “Silent Night,’’ in particular, are poignant in their quiet clarity.

But this isn’t a sedate album by any means; McKenna swings and boogies his way through plenty of up-tempo covers of everything from “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” to “Sleigh Ride,” while including a perky original dubbed “An Eggnog, Some Mistletoe and You.” Good stuff.