Merry Christmas
I hope you have a white one, but for me it's blue
Blue Christmas, that's the way you see it when you're feeling blue
Blue Xmas, when you're blue at Christmastime
you see right through,
All the waste, all the sham, all the haste
and plain old bad taste
Sidewalk Santy Clauses are much, much, much too thin
They're wearing fancy rented costumes, false beards and big fat phony grins
And nearly everybody's standing round holding out their empty hand or tin cup
Gimme gimme gimme gimme, gimme gimme gimme
Fill my stocking up
All the way up
It's a time when the greedy give a dime to the needy
Blue Christmas, all the paper, tinsel and the fal-de-ral
Blue Xmas, people trading gifts that matter not at all
What I call
Fal-de-ral
Bitter gall.......Fal-de-ral
Written by a gent named Bob Dorough, who recorded the song with the Miles Davis Quintet; he could be the only vocalist to feature on a Miles Davis recording. Dorough's singing is something of an acquired taste and I haven't acquired it yet. Still, you can't knock a musician who worked with Allan Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce, Sugar Ray Robinson, Blossom Dearie, as well as miserable, miserly Miles. I would have thought that these lyrics would have appealed to the old ratbag, but, whatever his opinion of them, he is said to have dismissed Bob D. as "a silly singer". But then how many white Americans did Davis have a good word for?
I have to register an opinion that this potlatch cultural version of Christmas that's taken hold is not to my taste - the feast of the Happy Shopper. Almost makes you long for a little of that old time religion - almost.
I suppose a person would have to be at least 55 years old to remember a different kind of Christmas. Better? I don't know, but more to my taste.
Right, as soon as the soaps are out of the way it's back to the booze and the crappy telly. Well, one programme about big Orson Welles that's a must, even though I saw it years ago.
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