Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images Graph: Heather Palmateer / Smithsonian It was certainly the basis for “Merry Christmas, Baby”-the first verse is nearly identical to the song we know today, as is the second, rhyming “music on the radio” with “underneath the mistletoe.” After the start of the bridge, though, the lyrics chart a different course.Ĭharles Brown (far right) with fellow Blazers (from left) Johnny Moore and Eddie Williams. Copyright Office, including, in September 1947, one titled “ Merry Xmas Baby.” It was never published, but earlier this year, I laid eyes on a copy of the song from the Library of Congress. He deposited dozens of his songs in the U.S. What’s more, a woman named Richie Dell Thomas, an aspiring pianist in Los Angeles in the 1940s, told the blues historian Roger Wood that Brown, a friend of hers, developed the song in her apartment.Īnd I recently discovered that “Lou Baxter” was a pseudonym for one Andrew Whitson Griffith, an Army veteran in the dry-cleaning business who shopped lyrics around the Los Angeles blues scene in the 1940s and ’50s. The bandleader, Brown said in interviews over the years, had nothing to do with the song’s composition. When the record came out, he said, he was surprised to see it credited to Baxter and Moore. Brown, who had already written a hit song in “ Driftin’ Blues,” said he reworked one of Baxter’s compositions into “Merry Christmas, Baby” and recorded it with the Three Blazers. In several interviews over the decades, Brown maintained that an ailing songwriter named Lou Baxter had asked him to record one of his songs as a favor, so he could pay for a throat operation.
In the postwar music industry, such intellectual-property disputes were as common as mediocre B sides, but I’ve uncovered evidence that Brown’s claim was legitimate. But it was the performance of Charles Brown, the Three Blazers’ pianist and vocalist, that defined the song-and he insisted that he wrote it, too. It was, and remains, credited to Lou Baxter and Johnny Moore. Yet this particular holiday gift has always been wrapped in doubt. Jeff Beck and Frankie Valli joined forces for a version released just last fall. More than 80 artists have covered it, from Elvis to Springsteen, Otis Redding to Billy Idol, Christina Aguilera to CeeLo Green. 3 on Billboard’s Jukebox R&B chart, and quickly became an American Christmas standard. In contrast to the nostalgic schmaltz of “ White Christmas,” which was already (and remains) the best-selling Christmas single of all time, this was a blues number with a slow tempo, and it promised something new for the holidays: romance. We hope you enjoyed this list and have found some inspiration for songs about home.A new song by a Los Angeles-based trio called Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers began showing up in record bins 70 years ago this month, just in time for the holidays:īut this being America, a counterpoint soon emerged. Paying attention to these nuances can enrich your appreciation for lyrics, and for that matter, music in general. Home can be a metaphor or an analogy for a variety of things.
Just because a song has the word “home” in the title doesn’t mean that’s what it’s about.
Isn’t it fascinating to see the many ways people think about home? It could be a song with romantic intent, but the way I look at it is that the protagonist is just calling out for help in general. So, in a way, this song is a call for help.
We all know what it’s like to have “friends.” It seems like the protagonist is tired of trying to be friendly to people that he doesn’t care about and people who don’t care about him – “friends.”
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