White Christmas

White Christmas was written by Irving Berlin around 1940 and it was first performed by Bing Crosby on his radio show on Christmas day 1941. On the 29th of May 1942, Bing recorded the song with the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers and it was released on July 30 as part of an album of 3 discs containing songs from the film Holiday Inn. 

Now you know why 12-inch LP's were called "albums" in the USA. The original 78 rpm albums contained multiple 10-inch singles just as a photo album contains multiple photo's. When Columbia Records introduced the 33 rpm 12-inch long playing disk that contained multiple songs on a single disc, the name carried over.

Anyway, the film Holiday Inn was released on August 4, 1942 and in the film Bing sings the song with actress Marjorie Reynolds, only Reynolds is only lip syncing to what was actually sung by Martha Mears. You can view the clip on youtube.

Bing Crosby & Marjorie Reynolds in Holiday Inn

Helped by the exposure of the song in the film, the record became a big hit from late October 1942 into early January 1943 and won the Academy Award for best new original song that year. With tens of thousands of military personnel in the South Pacific and other bases and displaced workers in factories and shipyards, the lyrics had a special meaning to many people during the war years. 

Bing didn't go it alone in 1942 though. He had competition. There were about another half-dozen or so releases of the song by other people too. 

This one, by Gordon Jenkins & His Orch. featuring Bob Carroll, reached #16 on the hit parade. It was recorded the day the Bing Crosby record was released.

 

Reaching #18 in Billboard was this version done by Charlie Spivak & His Orch. featuring Garry Stevens, reportedly recorded the same day as Bing's version, May 30.

 

Freddy Martin & His Orch. featuring Clyde Rogers made it to #20 in Billboard.

 

There were other recordings as well, but with materials shortages due to the war and a long musician's union ban on recording, there wasn't much done with the song until after the war.

Frank Sinatra managed to record it on 14 November 1944 and it was popular Christmas hit that year as well as the following two years. I'm going to skip over that record though.

In 1946 Jo Stafford was probably the first woman to record the song (although Kay Thompson performed it on CBS radio in 1945).

 

Following that holiday season, Decca Records realized that the metal master of Bing's 1942 recording was wearing out, so on the 18th of March 1947 Decca once again brought together Bing with the same John Scott Trotter Orchestra and Ken Darby Singers, plus added some flutes and a celesta to brighten up the opening, and recorded the song again attempting to make it sound like the original recording as much as possible. This is the recording you hear every Christmas season since.

 

Around this time many of the big singers began recording the song and it became a Christmas standard. It's been recorded hundreds of times since and nearly all the recordings do not stray far from the very first one. However, there are always those out there looking to give something a new twist. Charlie Parker was performing a jazzed-up version by 1948 and in October of that year the vocal group The Ravens, featuring the bass vocal of Jimmy Ricks (top left in the photo) and the tenor of Maithe Marshall, recorded an excellent rhythm version of the song.

 

That record was very influential on The Drifters when they recorded the song on 4 February 1954 featuring the bass vocal of Bill Pinkney and the tenor of Clyde McPhatter. The song became a big hit on R&B radio stations and among R&B enthusiasts for many years and then hit the pop mainstream big time in 1990 when it was featured in the holiday movie Home Alone.

 

Ernest Tubb had a hit on the Country & Western charts with White Christmas in 1949, but he sang it pretty straight and only the pedal steel guitar and lead guitar gave it a C&W feel, so I'll skip over that in favor of this 1954 recording by Red Foley which really gives it a hillbilly bop workout.

 

Things changed a lot in the mid-50's with the development of rock 'n' roll and the commercialization of the previously untapped teenage market. Certainly the best known version of White Christmas to come out of that era is the 1963 recording by Darlene Love from what's become known as the Phil Spector Christmas Album. What makes this version unique is the use of the seldom ever heard opening Irving Berlin wrote for the song - only Darlene uses it as a bridge in the middle of the song.

 

White Christmas continues to be featured on every Tom, Dick  & Mary's Christmas CD. A search of my music hard drive turned up 77 versions. 

Today.......some 72 Christmas seasons down the road from 1942, Bing Crosby's record remains the all-time best selling single record - according to Guinness World Records. That's not Christmas records.....that's all records.