Part 2 of my exclusive interview with Tim Neely, Christmas Music Collector All-Star and author of the Goldmine Christmas Record Price Guide.
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MB: Ok, let’s get to
some nuts and bolts, or should I say chestnuts and peppermint sticks, of
Christmas music. In 1997 your book, the
Goldmine Christmas Record Price Guide, was published. Even now, 25+ years later, it’s still an
indispensable guide for the serious collector.
How did the Goldmine guide come about?
TN: First, thanks for
the compliment.
The Christmas Record Price Guide came about
for two reasons. First, when I was hired at Krause Publications, the publisher
of Goldmine in those days, I was
brought onboard to put together a database that eventually became the source
for the Goldmine Standard Catalog of American Records, a mammoth
1,200-plus-page price guide that finally hit the market in 1998. Second, to
lead up to that event, I was given leeway to create books that would help beef
up the database en route to the final goal. Christmas records were a strong
interest of mine, and of course, a general guide to records would have to have
some Christmas records in it. So why not a separate guide to Christmas music?
MB: You should be
very proud of the Guide. I refer to it
many times every year.
TN: Thank you. It
didn't sell very well, but those people who did buy it, such as you, treat it
with great reverence. I haven't checked lately, but I once noticed that old
price guides don't have much interest as collectibles in their own right. The
exception was the Christmas Record Price
Guide.
I've been asked many
times by fans to do an updated version, but I don't know how viable it would
be. When I worked at Krause, it was out of the question because of the poor
sales of the first edition. It's now been more than 15 years since my last
price guide of any kind and more than a quarter century since the Christmas
guide came out. I find it surprising, but flattering, that there is still
interest all these years later.
TN: I have two
primary considerations for each Christmas Song of the Day. First, does this
song deserve greater attention from mainstream radio? And second, do I at least
like it? Beyond that, if the song has an interesting story, that makes it
better.
I always worry that some of the entries get way too personal. In real life, my past stays close to the vest until I can trust someone. But I'm usually more open and vulnerable when I write. Many Christmas songs remind me of early Christmases, lost loves, people who have passed away, and other things that don't always come up in conversation, and adding those impressions makes the story more meaningful to me. I'm glad at least some other people get something out of them.
MB: I’ve been
introduced to so many songs and artists through your annual CSotD lists (as a
collector nerd, I have them all listed in a spreadsheet). Sharing under-appreciated songs to our
community is one of the very special things about being in the collector
family. Are there a couple standouts
from that list of 279 songs that you’d like to mention?
TN: You're more
organized with my Christmas Songs of the Day than I am! I sometimes have to
search my old entries to make sure that I've not done a song in the past. All
my old entries still exist, so newcomers to the CSotD can see what I've done
previously. I'm thinking of making it easier to find past years' entries, if I
can do so.
Since 2015, when I
moved the feature to my blog rather than posting it only on Facebook, only a
handful of my entries have made it to mainstream radio; it's more common that
my choices used to be on the radio
but have been shunted aside.
I could mention so
many of the songs I've posted. Because you also asked what songs I think would
work great on regular rotation on Christmas radio, I'll pick a couple that
might not because of the emotions they may evoke.
In 2007, when she was
merely an up-and-coming country singer and not yet a cultural phenomenon,
Taylor Swift did an EP for Target, and one of the songs on it is the
heartbreaking "Christmases When You Were Mine." A couple of the
covers on the disc are in regular radio rotation, but not this one, a song she
co-wrote. I was more than a year and a half past my first serious relationship,
and it still made me cry the first
time I heard it. The line "When you were putting up the lights this year,
did you notice one less pair of hands?" really hit hard. I'd imagine that
anyone who'd had a great Christmas with a now-gone romantic partner could
relate.
In a similar vein is
"The Heartache Can Wait" by Brandi Carlile, which I find devastating.
She's desperately trying to avoid breaking up with a romantic partner during
the Christmas season because she knows what would happen.
On a more cheery
note, I've really come to like those songs in which, to paraphrase
"Amazing Grace," Christmas is lost, but now it's found. Three of
different types that immediately come to mind are "Santa Will Find
You" by Mindy Smith, "Christmas Always Finds Me" by Ingrid
Andress, and "When My Heart Finds Christmas" by Harry Connick, Jr.
The last of those used to be played regularly on Christmas radio, but I
realized how rarely I'd heard it in the past several years, so I wrote a CSotD
entry on it in 2022. To me, it's the greatest Frank Sinatra Christmas song that
Ol' Blue Eyes never recorded.
MB: I’m often asked
“What is your favorite Christmas song?”, and my answer usually includes five or
six songs in rapid response. But, I’ll
pose that question to you: Do you have a
favorite Christmas song? How about an
album?
TN: I still have a
soft spot, more than 50 years after I first heard it, for "The Christmas
Song" by Nat King Cole. I didn't know what it was called when I was a kid;
it was the "chestnuts roasting on an open fire" or "kids from
one to 92" or the "many times, many ways" song. I think it says
just about everything secular that makes Christmas wonderful. And with all the
covers of the song, though none has surpassed Cole's several versions, none has
been an embarrassment, either. There are some great covers.
As far as more sacred
songs, there's something about "Silent Night" sung by candlelight in
a Christmas service, especially on Christmas Eve, that still gets to me,
whether in English or German or with wordless vocals or as an instrumental.
It's popular in the Christmas-music community to be unkind to Mannheim
Steamroller, but its version of "Stille Nacht," with just a voice or
voices singing "ooh" instead of the words, is otherworldly. Few other
songs make me feel how lonely a pre-dawn Christmas morning can be.
A more
"contemporary," or post-1980s, song I love is "Breath of Heaven
(Mary's Song)" by Amy Grant. I happen to think that the 1990s were a
golden decade for new Christmas songs, and this might be the most golden of
all. I rarely hear it except on Christian stations, but when that piano intro
comes on, I get goosebumps. And the part at the end of the second verse where a
word is dropped each time is some great writing: "Help me be strong. Help
me be. Help me."
Albums? That's even
tougher. As I've written in my blog almost annually, I have a soft spot for the
1967 W.T. Grant compilation A Very Merry
Christmas, mostly because it was the first "grown-up" album my
parents let me play. But it also has some truly unusual selections that rarely
have appeared on other Christmas albums, such as "The Star Carol" by
Simon and Garfunkel and "Sweetest Dreams Be Thine" by Theodore Bikel.
I also love A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector, as
it is called these days. That pretty much speaks for itself, though there's a
misconception that it was a noble flop when it was first released. In reality,
it was pretty successful in 1963, but it did go out of print from about 1967 to
1972, which added to its mystique. Overall, the year 1963 was an unusually
strong year for both new and reissued Christmas music. Perhaps a blog entry is
in order to flesh this out some more.
A single-artist
Christmas album that never gets old is A
Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. I didn't even know this
album existed until 1990. It's so omnipresent today that it can be hard to
believe that, for quite a long time, the only easy way to hear the music was to
watch the TV show once a year.
MB: If you could pick
one or two unheralded Christmas songs that no one in the general public has
heard and get them into the top 10 Christmas song radio rotations, what would
they be?
TN: Just one or two?
If you insist … (smile)
Let me start with one
I first heard on a hyper-local radio station some years ago. It was so obscure
that I couldn't Shazam it, nor could I find the lyrics online, when I first
heard it. I ended up emailing the radio station, and they told me what the song
was. I then discovered that I had it in my collection! It's "Your
Christmas Day" by Laura Allan – another great new Christmas song from the
1990s. I just love the lines "And though the road be long and winding /
There's a Christmas star a-shining / And the angel's gonna help you find your
Christmas day." It's a very optimistic song.
The other one is one
of the many Christmas songs without which the season in England would be
incomplete, but Americans don't know at all – "Driving Home for
Christmas" by Chris Rea. Most people who go somewhere for Christmas drive
there, and Rea sings of the anticipation and the memories, and of the other
drivers around him who are also driving home for Christmas. If I were
programming a holiday radio station, I'd immediately find a place for this. I
think American audiences would love it.
OK, here's a third, if you'll indulge me. The alt-rock band Better Than Ezra was basically a one-hit wonder with their 1995 Top 40 hit "Good." But before they vanished, they put out a wonderful non-album cut called "Merry Christmas Eve," which is like "The Christmas Song" for the 1990s, because it mentions so many things that make the holiday great. And it even mentions "a midnight Mass for a birthday" in its lyrics. I've heard it on the radio only a handful of times since the first time I heard it around 1997, but I love it, and I think radio would, too.
MB: Do you have a
‘holy grail’ of Christmas records you want for your collection? At a screening of “Jingle Bell Rocks” a few
years ago, I asked that question to Mitchell Kezin, and his response at that
time was one of Jimmy McGriff’s albums (since found and acquired). Is there anything on your list?
TN: I stopped
actively buying "vintage" Christmas music once I lost track of what I
owned and what I didn't. But if I ever decided to come out of retirement, so to
speak, a couple albums I don't own and have never owned that I'd like to get
are both the mono and stereo original 1965 editions of A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. They were
expensive 20 years ago and are probably even more expensive now, despite almost
annual reissues (though I don't think it's ever been reissued in mono).
On CD: When I moved
to Virginia in 2013, a good portion of my CD collection never made it onto the
moving truck. Though most of the missing albums and singles were non-Christmas,
I did lose a couple hundred Christmas CDs. To this day, I haven't completely
assessed what was lost, but I know I have several holes in what used to be
complete runs of several series, including the True Value Hardware Happy Holidays series and the Hallmark
series (the Sheryl Crow and James Taylor discs, at least, are missing). So I'd
want to re-obtain those.
As for discs I never
had, I remember getting outbid on eBay on a promo copy of the Kimberley Locke
Christmas CD back when it was released, and I've never encountered another one.
On 45: The
full-volume mix of "Gaudete" by Steeleye Span. It's on the original
British 45, and it's not that rare over there, but it has eluded my grasp. The
song was released twice in the U.S. on 45, but I don't know if either one
contains the British single mix or was lifted from the album, which fades in,
peaks in volume halfway through, then gradually fades out. Unless someone here
in the States has one, it would cost me more in postage than the record is
worth.
I'd also like the
Beatles' Christmas 45 box set from a few years back; I was broke when that came
out, and of course it's now out of print and very expensive. I'd love to hear
those in decent sound. I've had a bootleg LP with muddy sound since 1980 or so.
And there's one more
45: "Blue Christmas" by Seymour Swine and the Squeelers (sic) on the
Swine Productions label. This is the famous "Porky Pig" version
recorded by a DJ in, I think, Charlotte, N.C. in the 1980s. I first heard it on
a mix CD someone sent me in the 1990s, but I've since learned that it was
edited and sped up, so I want the real McCoy.
MB: What type of
Christmas songs do you not care for? Is
there a particular music genre or songwriting style that just doesn’t jingle
your bells?
TN: I have a very
high tolerance for Christmas music of virtually all genres and virtually all
aspects of the holiday season. The songs or versions I don't like tend to be on
a case-by-case basis.
MB: A final question
for you Tim, and it’s a bit philosophical.
What are the qualities of your love of Christmas music that you would
share with everyone if you could?
TN: Wow. What I love
about Christmas music is the seemingly endless ways that songwriters and
singers express their love of the season. You'd think that, by now, everything
that could possibly be said about almost every aspect of the holiday has been
said. But every year, I find something new, different, and interesting. And
that's what is so great about it to me.
And as a format,
there is none more diverse. Sure, all the songs are about this time of the
year, but there is no other format where Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Johnny
Mathis, and Bing Crosby rest comfortably with Gwen Stefani, Blake Shelton, John
Legend, and Taylor Swift, who fit in with Mannheim Steamroller, Trans-Siberian
Orchestra, Bruce Springsteen, and the Pretenders, who can be joined by the
Beach Boys, the Ronettes, Donny Hathaway, and Vince Guaraldi. (And that's
merely scratching the surface.) If you're lucky, you might hear every one of
those artists in the same hour!
MB: Tim, once again,
thank you so much for taking the time to visit with Merry & Bright. I hope for many more years of Tim Neely’s
Christmas Song of the Day, and I wish you a very happy and safe holiday season!
TN: Thank you so
much!
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See Tim's Christmas Song of the Day at Tim Neely Stuff
Great finish to a great interview! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteExcellent interview. Christmas music has magical powers.
ReplyDelete