In tonight’s featured Christmas music, a young boy is beckoned to a manger to see the newborn King. He is a poor boy, and hasn’t any gifts fit for a king, so he offers instead his most humble expression of musical praise.
The origin of this timeless song remain in some dispute. Wellesley College grad Katherine K. Davis (class of ’14) is generally credited for having written it based loosely on the melody of an old Czech song titled “Carol of the Drum,” and, possibly, parts of a Spanish tune. Others, however, suggest that she merely translated the words of a traditional Czech song into English. Davis, for her part, said the song came to her while she was “trying to take a nap.”
In 1958 someone named Harry Simeone “arranged” Davis’ published song, and then, along with a friend of his, claimed co-authorship credits, even though sheet music from 1941 lists the song as being written by Ms. Davis. To further complicate matters, some insist that a guy named Jack Halloran had arranged the, er, arrangement a year before Simeone, and that Simeone’s later ‘co-writer’ promptly “took (Halloran’s) arrangement to Simeone, who hired the same singers, re-recorded it adding finger cymbals…and then put (it) out as a single…”
Whoever wrote it, it’s a lovely song. Simeone’s 1958 arrangement is, at this point, the the version we know and love, so without further ado, here’s The Harry Simeone Chorale (who seem to exist only as a name) performing Little Drummer Boy. (Lyrics here.)
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Each Christmas Eve since 1928 the BBC has broadcast the A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, a service from the King’s College Chapel featuring King’s College Choir, a group of 16 choristers founded in 1441 by King Henry VI. Tonight, under the direction of Stephen Cleobury, CBE, the choir performs British composer John Rutter’s Nativity Carol.
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In tonight’s Christmas music treat, an unidentified choir sings Prussian-born pastor and composer Eduard Ebel’s lovely and peaceful Leise Rieselt der Shnee (“Softly Falls the Snow.”) With English subtitles.
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It’s Saturday night, so hoist your jolly selves a glass of cocoa and listen to the University of Michigan’s Alma Choir in a spirited performance of the festive Yuletide carol Deck The Halls.
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Christmas can be a difficult time for some people, a seasonal reminder of dearly loved ones now departed or of hard financial circumstances. In tonight’s sweet but somewhat melancholy Christmas song, the singer, struggling to keep real-world trouble and loss at bay, consoles her younger sister with such promises as her heart can provide, and tries to reassure herself, too, that persevering kinship and love will rise to the spirit of the season and somehow hold the day. From the 1944 film Meet Me In St. Louis, here’s Judy Garland’s touching performance of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.
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Johnny Mercer was indisputably one of the great lyricists (“That Old Black Magic”, “Moon River”, the English version of “Autumn Leaves”, and many others), but, as you’ll hear in tonight’s song, which musically narrates a playful tug-of-war between a suave but single-minded man and a coyly virtuous woman, he was also a smooth singer with impeccable timing: From 1949, here’s Mercer and Margaret Whiting affectionately dueling on Frank Loesser’s seasonally appropriate Baby It’s Cold Outside.
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Grab a pen, a piece of paper, and some earwax remover: you’re about to learn all about the miraculous Turbo Encabulator, what with its hydrocoptic marzelbanes and ambifascient lunar wainshaft and whatnot.
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It’s too early for Christmas songs, but good way to start to get into the spirit of the season is to listen to the simultaneously serene and uplifting third movement of Antonio Vivaldi’s lovely Concerto in C major for two oboes, strings and continuo.
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Here’s a short (ten-minute) film, with historical footage, providing a bit of the context of the Hungarian Revolt of 1956.
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Let’s get slapping – it’s time for a bit of traditional dance, Bavarian style:

The Schuhplattler mimics not machinery but wildlife–the “aurhan,” the famous ring-tailed wood grouse. As large as a small turkey, the aurhan cock preens and struts in front of the hen on a fallen log, beating his wings to create a rhythm to impress the object of his lust. It works when the hen responds by turning in circles before him. The Schuhplattler does the same thing.

The men’s dance consists of a syncopated series of very loud slaps on lederhosen-clad thighs and the soles of the shoes (thus “schuhplattler” or “hitting the shoe”). Every district has its own unique plattle (slapping rhythm), many of them very complex, all requiring strength, flexibility, and stamina.

Here’s a group of men – they might well be Bavarian – slapping and hopping their way through The Schuhplattler.
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Helen Shapiro is a British-born former pop singer, now a gospel outreach worker, who had a couple of number one hits in England in the early sixties. Tonight’s selection showcases her unique and distinctive contralto voice, which is somewhat reminiscent of Amy Winehouse’s. From 1962, here’s Helen Shapiro singing Let’s Talk About Love.
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In tonight’s musical entertainment, filmed in Smoochoscope, Tom Jones’ mutton chops send Sammy Davis Jr.’s one-piece earth-toned striped zipsuit out for a smoking performance of For Once In My Life.
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Just a friendly reminder that your money will always be Safe With Government Control.
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The musical accompaniments to the tips thread usually feature established artists. Even the relatively unknown ones have been typically slogging away for years in the background. Tonight, in the first of four quinquennial posts featuring the potential stars of tomorrow, we present young Kate Osmond Devereaux singing Little Spanish Town.
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North Carolina native Doc Watson is known as one of the best flat-pickers ever, but he also happens to be a mighty smooth vocalist. Here he is singing his laid-back version of Blue Railroad Train.
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I wish I’d been there too, quaffing Grolsch, when Joni Mitchell sat at that riverside table in Amsterdam and sang her beautiful little impressionistic vignette called Night Ride Home. Lovely.
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In tonight’s featured video The Sixteen, a British ensemble consisting of a sixteen-person choir and a period-instrument orchestra, performs Renaissance era English composer William Byrd’s Mass for four voices, Agnus dei.
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Country music singer Dolly Parton grew up in a family with twelve kids living in a one room log cabin in Tennessee. Here she is singing a song she wrote based a true story from her childhood called Coat of Many Colors.
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Here’s a short look at the romance between Danny and Annie Perasa of Brooklyn, New York.
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In 1942 America composer Aaron Copland wrote a timeless musical expression of the perpetually reborn human spirit that is America. Supremely forceful yet utterly dignified, elegiac yet triumphal, the work is by now part of the lexicon of American music. From Avery Fisher Hall in the Lincoln Center in New York City, here is the New York Philharmonic, under the conductorship of James Levine, playing Aaron Copland’s Fanfare For The Common Man.
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