This year Coronavirus restrictions have whetted
the appetite for some Christmas Season joy. We really do want the world to begin to look
a lot like Christmas!
There are many subsets in the category
of the Golden Age of American Popular
Christmas Song. One might be called
the secular Advent songs—tunes that
conjure up the growing excitement of the Holiday
season invoking winter scenes, decorations, shopping, and general merriment. At their best they deftly mixed daubs of nostalgia,
with a snappy, jazzy modernity. They could
evoke the rustic past, but were most
at home in bustling urban streets.
Perhaps the most beloved of the genre is It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like
Christmas written in 1951 by Meredith
Willson, then a prolific pop composer and the musical director of poplar radio programs like The
Big Show hosted by actress Tallulah
Bankhead and the Jack Benny Show. Later he would become best known for his mega-hit Broadway shows, The Music Man and The
Unsinkable Molly Brown.
The original hit recording was laid down on September 18, 1951 by Perry Como and The Fontaine Sisters with Mitchell
Ayres and His Orchestra. Less than two weeks later the ultra-prolific Bing Crosby, who seemingly recorded
every promising new song and was already carving out a special niche as the voice of Christmas, made his own version which also charted that season.
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