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Tampa Red - Christmas & New Years Blues - 1934

Hudson Whittaker (born Hudson Woodbridge, January 8, 1903 – March 19, 1981), known as Tampa Red, was an American Chicago blues musician. Tampa Red is best known as a blues guitarist who had a distinctive single-string slide style. His songwriting and his bottleneck technique influenced other leading Chicago blues guitarists, such as Big Bill Broonzy, Robert Nighthawk and Muddy Waters, and many others, including Elmore James and Mose Allison. In a career spanning over 30 years he also recorded pop, R&B and hokum songs. His best-known recordings include "Anna Lou Blues", "Black Angel Blues", "Crying Won't Help You", "It Hurts Me Too", and "Love Her with a Feeling".

He was "rediscovered" in the blues revival of the late 1950s, like many other surviving early-recorded blues artists, such as Son House and Skip James. He made his last recordings in 1960. He became an alcoholic after his wife's death in 1953. He died destitute in Chicago, aged 77.

In 1934, he gave us this sad lament about a bleak holiday week.

Presented by A Cool Yule! The place to hear all the coolest seasonal sounds: https://coolyule.tumblr.com/

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#1930's #blues #new years #tampa red #sad

Visage - White Christmas - 2012

Visager, aka Josie Brechner (they/them, she/her pronouns) is a 28 year old trans, nonbinary composer, sound designer, and budding programmer living and working in Brooklyn. Visager has been creating music and audio experiences for games, film, dance, and interactive theater projects since 2012.

As an independent musician, Visager has toured the US and performed internationally, combining sample-based electronic sounds with analog instrumentation.

In video games, Visager has found a niche in making sound worlds for games where the music and audio seek to tell their own story to deepen the player experience. Visager seeks to work with other developers and artists with unique creative visions, especially those shining a focus on underrepresented folx and ideas. They are currently working on Extreme Meatpunks Forever. Music from Visager’s three open-source Songs from an Unmade World albums have been used in hundreds of projects around the world.

In 2012, the artist gave us this fine deconstruction of a seasonal classic.

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#2020's #experimental #collage #electronic #tape collage

Viv Stanshall - Christmas At Rawlinson End - 1975

Vivian Stanshall (born Victor Anthony Stanshall; 21 March 1943 – 5 March 1995) was an English singer-songwriter, musician, author, poet and wit, best known for his work with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, for his exploration of the British upper classes in Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (as a radio series for John Peel, as an audio recording, as a book and as a film), and for acting as Master of Ceremonies on Mike Oldfield's album Tubular Bells.

Stanshall had developed what many consider to be his seminal work, Rawlinson End, as a spoken word performance piece during the first few years of the 1970s, recording an early version as part of the Bonzo Dog Band's Let's Make Up And Be Friendly reunion project. Beginning in 1975 he expanded upon the concept as an episodic surrealist radio serial for BBC Radio 1's John Peel show, elaborating further upon the weird and wonderful adventures of the inebriated and blimpish Sir Henry Rawlinson, his dotty wife Great Aunt Florrie, his "unusual" brother Hubert, old Scrotum 'the wrinkled retainer', Mrs E, the rambling and unhygienic cook; and many other inhabitants of the crumbling Rawlinson End and its environs.

From 1975, here is the holiday episode of the serialization for the BBC Radio-1 John Peel Show

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#spoken word #comedy #vintage radio #1970's

Nicky Hopkins (Jerry Garcia Band) - Jingle Bells - 12/20/75

Many different players came and went during the various incarnations of Grateful Dead co-founder’s long standing side project, the Jerry Garcia Band and one of the finest was British keyboard wizard, Nicky Hopkins. He was only with the group for the last six months of 1975 but that was long enough for him to be featured at their show at San Francisco’s Winterland on December 20.

For his solo showcase spot that evening he treated the audience to this impromptu version of one of Santa’s faves.

Presented by A Cool Yule! The place to hear all the coolest seasonal sounds: https://coolyule.tumblr.com/

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#rock #classic rock #1970's #grateful dead #jerry garcia

Merzbow - Silent Night - 1996

Merzbow is a Japanese noise project started in 1979 by Masami Akita. He is best known for a style of harsh, confrontational noise as exemplified on the 1996 release Pulse Demon. Since 1980, Akita has released over 400 recordings and has collaborated with various artists.

The name comes from the German dada artist Kurt Schwitters' artwork Merzbau, in which Schwitters transformed the interior of his house using found objects. The name was chosen to reflect Akita's dada influence and junk art aesthetic. In addition to this, Akita has cited a wide range of musical influences from progressive rock, heavy metal, free jazz, and early electronic music to non-musical influences like dadaism, surrealism, and fetish culture. Since the early 2000s, he has been inspired by animal rights and environmentalism, and began to follow a vegan, straight edge lifestyle.

As well as being a prolific musician, he has been a writer and editor for several books and magazines in Japan, and has written several books of his own. He has written about a variety of subjects, mostly about music, modern art, and underground culture. His more renowned works were on the topics of BDSM and Japanese bondage. Other art forms Akita has been interested in include painting, photography, filmmaking, and Butoh dance.

In 1996 he took this approach to the holidays with his interpretation of a seasonal classic.

Presented by A Cool Yule! The place to hear all the coolest seasonal sounds: https://coolyule.tumblr.com/

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#experimental #noise #industrial #1990's #anti-music

Count Basie Orchestra - GOOD MORNING BLUES - 1937 (vocal by James Rushing)

James Rushing was an R&B vocalist and band leader in his own right but he is perhaps best known for his time as the featured vocalist with the Count Basie Orchestra during the late 1930’s and early 40’s

In 1937, along with Basie, he cut this fine tale of yuletide woe.

Presented by A Cool Yule! The place to hear all the coolest seasonal sounds: https://coolyule.tumblr.com/

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#blues #big band #1930's #sad #jazz

Hair Stylistics - Sleigh Ride - 1996

Hair Stylistics is a handle used by Japanese noise music artist, Masaya Nakahara (June 4, 1970 -). He is a musician, film critic, novelist, essayist, painter, illustrator.

A Cultural Academy High school dropout, he started his music activities around 1988, launched Noise Unit Violence Hot Spring Geisha in 1990, and also operates outside Japan through overseas performances. He also worked on film criticism in parallel with music activities, debuted as a novelist in 1998, in 2001 "Yakuo Mishima Award for" Bouquet everywhere ... ", in 2006" Nominate Orphan's Tomb "by Noma Received the Literary Newcomer Award. From 2009 onwards, music activities under the name of Hair Stylistics and art activities as a painter / illustrator are central.

Presented by A Cool Yule! The place to hear all the coolest seasonal sounds: https://coolyule.tumblr.com/

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#experimental #noise #electronic #collage #avantgarde #1990's #musique concrete

The Kinks - Father Christmas - 1977

These days it’s common practice for rock musicians to record Christmas songs and sometimes, even pretty good ones… Back in 1977 though it was still something of a rare occurrence. Maybe most rockers thought it was just too “establishment” to do seasonal tunes or perhaps that it was just “uncool”. Still, a few did but with mostly mixed results. Elton John, Slade, ELP, and T-Rex, were among those who earlier had issued Christmas singles and unfortunately, those songs didn’t really rank among the artist’s better works. So it is a genuine treat to note that one iconic band of the era, when their turn came, blew the roof off the joint in grand style. In the competition for the rightful title of the second greatest rock & roll Christmas song of all time, this one is certainly one of the top contenders.

One of the finest rock Christmas singles of the 1970’s was not-so-surprisingly, the work of a band which just happened to know a thing or two about cooking up a kick-ass rocking 45.

The Kinks had almost as many hits as the Beatles and the Stones and frontman Ray Davies was (and still is) a one man tour de force of a songwriter. He brought all his best hooks and chops to the table in 1977 when the band decided it was time to offer up a bona fide seasonal classic. Not only one of the best rock Christmas records ever but one of the Kinks finest ever - seasonal or otherwise…

Here they are on a German TV show from that year, lip-synching to it and mugging it up nicely for the holidays.

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And here, from a few years later is an actual non-lip-synched live version (mugging it up intact):

Ray Davies playing the Kinks' "Father Christmas at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City, December 12, 2008:

#rock #classic rock #all time greatest #hard rock #1970's #kinks #father christmas

Melt-Banana - White Christmas - 2011

Melt-Banana is a Japanese noise rock band that is known for playing extremely fast grindcore and noise music mixed with experimental, electronica and pop-based song structures. Since forming in 1992 the band has released ten albums and toured worldwide extensively.

Presented by A Cool Yule! The place to hear all the coolest seasonal sounds: https://coolyule.tumblr.com/

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#2010's #noise #grindcore #anti-music #experimental #punk #post-punk

Kay Starr - The Man With The Bag - 1950

Most of the Christmas music recorded by the stars of the Big Band/Swing era were just phoned in “big band-i-zations” of tired old seasonal standards. Not so with this one.

Katherine Laverne Starks, better known as Kay Starr, was one of the most successful pop/jazz singers of the 1940’s & 50’s. Her biggest hits were “Wheel Of Fortune” and “The Rock & Roll Waltz”. She recorded with Bob Crosby, Glen Miller, Pat Boone, Tony Bennet & Spike Jones.

In 1950, with the Frank DeVol Orchestra, she brought us this bit of yuletide cheer that is the very definition of swing.

Presented by A Cool Yule!  The place to hear all the coolest seasonal sounds:  https://coolyule.tumblr.com/

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#1950's #big band #swing #crooners

Funk Machine - Soul Santa - 1973

A dive into the pool of 70’s soul, New York urban soul/funk act, The Funk Machine, from 1973 make the strongest case yet for Santa being a straight up brotha’

Presented by A Cool Yule! The place to hear all the coolest seasonal sounds: https://coolyule.tumblr.com/

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#soul #r&b #funk #1970's

John Lee Hooker - Christmas Time Blues - 1949

John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1917 – June 21, 2001) was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi Hill country blues. He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie.

Some of his best known songs include "Boogie Chillen'" (1948), "Crawling King Snake" (1949), "Dimples" (1956), "Boom Boom" (1962), and "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer" (1966).

From 1949, one of the best blues xmas songs ever. John Lee Hooker in his golden prime - "Christmas Time Blues"..

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#blues #1940's

Lord Beginner - Christmas Morning The Rum Had Me Yawning - 1944

Lord Beginner (born Egbert Moore) was a popular exponent of the Caribbean musical form Calypso, helping to spark a renaissance of the genre in the 1940s and '50s. Hailing from Port of Spain in Trinidad, Beginner recorded and toured in New York with other leading members of Trinidad's "Old Brigade" of calypsonians, before emigrating to England with fellow calypsonian Lord Kitchener in 1948. The pair arrived near London on the Empire Windrush, the first of many voyages conveying West Indians wishing to start a new life in Britain.

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#calypso #1940's cy

Saturday’s Children - Deck Five - 1966

Garage band rockers Saturday’s Children, were popular in the Chicago club and dance circuit in the mid 60’s. There wasn’t much to distinguish them from any of the hundreds of other McCoys/Nazz/Remains wanna-bees of the era but they did do something fairly unique with their lone foray into the murky waters of Christmas recordings.

Their 1966 seasonal ornament on the tree was a strange mix of Deck The Halls, We Three Kings, and the Dave Brubeck hit “Take Five”. It doesn’t quite qualify as great but it is odd and quirky and kinda grows on you;

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#rock #60's rock #garage rock #1960's #novelty

Stevie Wonder - Someday At Christmas - 1967

There is quite a lot of seasonal recordings by pop/soul artists of the 50’s, 60’s & 70’s but as is already starting to sound like broken Christmas record, most of them are pretty much along the cookie cutter pattern lines of just doing slightly soul-o-fied readings of the same old same olds.

Like most of Motown's roster of artists at the time, Stevie Wonder was corralled into contributing to Barry Gordy's multiple Christmas LP projects. Sadly most of the resulting tunes were little more than syrupy "Motown-i-zations" of already well worn seasonal standards. The endlessly creative Stevie had some other ideas though. In 1967 he turned in this way-ahead-of-its-time paean in opposition to war and to bigotry.

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#soul #r&b #lush #1960's #pop

V/VM - Erald Hark Angel - 1997

V/Vm is a handle used by experimental/avante-garde, sound sculptor, James Kirby. He formed the V/Vm Test Records Label and the netlabel Vukzid as a means to release his own works, as well as those of like-minded artists and collaborators.

As V/Vm, he specializes in noise-music and “plunderphonics” ( a term he coined to describe his use of “found sounds” and samples from already existing works, such as pop records) although his catalogue under this name is eclectic, with a wide range of approaches. His works tend to be harsh, highly experimental or otherwise confrontational.

From 1997, here is a fine seasonal example of this approach: CLICK HERE TO LISTEN:

#1990's #experimental #collage #avantgarde #deconstruction

Otis Redding & Carla Thomas - New Year's Resolution - 1968‬

In 1967 Stax Records producer Jim Stewart, inspired by the success of Motown’s hit pairing of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, got the idea to team up two of their labels biggest stars, Otis Redding and Carla Thomas. The result was a classic album of superb soulful duets backed by the stellar talents of Booker T & The MG’s, Isaac Hayes, and the Memphis Horns.

Tragically it was to be among the last studio work Redding would do before he was killed in a plane crash on December 10, 1967.

One of the LP’s standout cut was this fine New Year’s pledge.

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#new years #soul #r&b #1960's

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