Someone said only Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" is from the 40s, but America's Best Music played "God Rest You Merry Gentlemen" and it sounded like Bing, who recorded his version in 1945. It must be that old because the sound quality is poor.
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How old is the Christmas music on the radio?
- Thread starter vchimpanzee
- Start date
The version usually heard of the 1942 classic is almost identical to the original but recorded in 1947, in an attempt to replace it. In that 78rpms were superseded in 1948, it makes sense to me that the 1947 version was made with the new technology. It would be decades before justice could be done to previous recordings, so anything earlier than that probably didn't get very much play. I don't generally remember hearing older recordings while I was growing up. They tended to be new recordings of older material. Of course now, you can hear digitally remastered recordings of John Philip Sousa, to your heart's content.
The best example of that is Nat King Cole's The Christmas Song. Originally recorded as a quartet in NYC in the 40s, it was re-recorded with strings in stereo in the early 60s. The version we know now has strings and stereo.
Funny...I've actually heard them. The bad news is they were recorded acoustically, before the use of dynamic microphones, before recording tape, with the full band playing into one acoustic horn direct to disc. Not bad, but still a lot of surface noise, and not a lot of dynamic range.
I've heard stations play Gene Autry's versions of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (1949 for the original) and Here Comes Santa Claus (1947 for the original), but they may be newer versions. I can't remember who the ad was for but there has been one recently that had a remixed version of Here Comes Santa Claus with a beat.
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