"Do You Hear What I Hear?" Last Week's Slightly Delayed Christmas Album Roundup

I was contemplating a Dreamtime podcast on the "Christmas in the Heart" samples that appeared on the Amazon U.K. site last week. But I found I just couldn't get my head around writing about Christmas music when Summer has barely left the room. You can only imagine the difficulty Mr. D. and company must have had keeping the Christmas spirit bright while recording in Santa Monica in May.

In any case, 30-second audio snippets from the fifteen "Christmas in the Heart" tracks appeared on the album's mp3 page last Wednesday to the delight, amusement, and consternation of Dylan fans everywhere. Within a day the samples had disappeared from Amazon, but nothing ever really disappears on these here interwebs, as you can see/hear in the above video.

If one were a suspicious soul, one might contemplate whether the samples' mysterious appearance/disappearance and now release into the wild might be a masterful marketing move by someone who wants the drum beating loud. But in keeping with the spirit of the season to come, we won't get into that.

Reaction to the samples was, let us say, ah, "mixed," with many commentators noting that the overall feeling of the music was reminiscent of an Andy Williams or Perry Como holiday special. An examiner.com columnist came up with this clumsy but accurate fantasy:

Imagine it’s the late fifties. Dean Martin has a Christmas TV show going on, and he brought over the Lawrence Welk orchestra and singers for the occasion. The womens' hair is all done up in stiff, perfect perms, they’re wearing white chiffon dresses and red bows, the men are in tuxes and their hair is slicked back with Vitalis, there’s a sleigh and fake snow all around, Dino is pretending to be slightly drunk when he does the scene around the fireplace with the Christmas tree and presents.

Then he announces his special guest. “Here’s a cat whose music I really dig. He’s from the future. Crazy, huh?" Dino takes a drink and rolls his eyes. "Ooo, that's nice. Ladies and genltemen, the one and only, Bob Dylan.”

Bob hesitantly steps out, at his current age, thin mustache, wearing an ill-fitting white tux, set off with a red bow tie. He's weating a Santa hat. He shuffles nervously. The band starts up and Bob begins croaking out “Here Comes Santa Claus,” trading lines back and forth with the Lawrence Welk singers. A glockenspiel plays little descending notes to make it extra Christmassy. At the end, the audience applauds warnly. He goes on to croak-croon “The Little Drummer Boy,” singing it sincerely, doing the par-ump-a-pum-pums. He finishes his set with a duet with Dean, of Dean’s hit, “The Christmas Blues.”

I've been waiting for something from way out of left field... something like an all-instrumental Christmas CD, or Dylan and the band backing guest vocalists. I figured it was a long shot that he was actually going to tackle the songs himself. But a lesson you should learn if you follow Mr. D. is the one taught by Mr. William of Ockham, that the simplest answer is usually the right one. Bob Dylan said he was doing a Christmas album. Here we have samples from a Bob Dylan Christmas album.

From a personal perspective, I went from initial horror ("My God," I thought. "Dylan has recorded something that's going to get played annually on the Dr. Demento show."), to grudging acceptance that some of the clips weren't so bad, to the point where I've come to like a few for their sheer goofiness and Dylan's chutzpah if nothing else.

The Perry Como and Andy Williams comparisons are on the mark. But what the clips remind me of more than anything else is one of Ray Coniff's or Mitch Miller's holiday albums. Go listen to "Christmas with Coniff" or "Holiday Sing-Along with Mitch" to hear what I mean. Same retro arrangements; same use of male and female backing singers. Same overall feel. There's a point in "I'll Be Home for Christmas" where Dylan sings, "if only in mah dreams..." and the chorus comes in with "oooo, oooo, oooo" that brought me back to my family's living room in 1965 and listening to that same arrangement playing on my father's monolithic piece-of-furniture Electrohome transistor-based stereo system (with the sliding doors to hide the speakers).

That's not a bad thing, and I agree with the various opinions I've read that "Christmas in the Heart" is going to appeal mainly to people who have fond memories - as I do and as Bob Dylan apparently does - of that era and that type of music. There's an interesting case presented in The Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog, among others, that "Christmas in the Heart" is an extension of the same spirit and tastes that brought us Theme Time Radio Hour... and perhaps it is.

Do I think everything works? No. The traditional songs such as "Come All Ye Faithful" sound like they could be a train wreck in the making from the 30 seconds we have of them so far. But, I remember talking to a friend about why we both liked Jonathan Richman, an artist with his own quirky style. "He's just so damn earnest, Fred," she said. And that's another thing that comes across from the "Christmas in the Heart" clips. Bad or not, a pose or not, Dylan sounds so damn earnest. Sometimes greatness of soul is measured by what you're willing to tackle, even when you suspect you'll fail.

I've gone from thinking I'd take a pass on "Christmas in the Heart" and just donate the full album price to Feeding America (and we're doing matching donations for those who buy it through the Dreamtime Amazon links to your right) to now thinking I might pick up a few of the mp3s for use in homemade Christmas compilations.

And who knows? By Christmas I may want the whole album.