[78-L] Christmas Music

[Harold Aherne]

There's also "At the Christmas Ball" by Bessie Smith (18 Nov 1925), but which
doesn't seem to have been issued until 1940--at least I couldn't find it in the 
14000-D series. Bessie sounds *much* cheerier than usual on that recording.
 
Otherwise, it does seem that the catalysts for "popular" Christmas music as 
we're thinking of the term are "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and "Winter 
Wonderland" in 1934, although I'm not aware of many other such songs 
until the early 40s. And from then to at least the early 60s there's quite a lot of them.
 
-Harold

--- On Sat, 12/27/08, kil at roadrunner.com <kil at roadrunner.com> wrote:

From: kil at roadrunner.com <kil at roadrunner.com>
Subject: Re: [78-L] Christmas Music
To: 78-l at 78online.com
Date: Saturday, December 27, 2008, 11:21 AM

I just relistened to it, I think I have dl's CD.  It has no American (or
Canadian)Christmas songs in the medley.  No surprise as this was a British band.
 It did include bits of Christmas carols THE FIRST NOEL, GOOD KING WENCESLAS,
and GOD REST YE MERRY, GENTLEMEN, yes in dance tempo.  So Don's estimate of
1935 for the U.S. still seems right.
RayK