Winter Holiday: Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa: American Routes Radio

The vapor trail from Santa's sleigh heading back to the North Pole may be dissipating but the music in his wake is still ringing in my ears thanks to American Routes...

LISTEN right here...http://americanroutes.wwno.org/archives/show/1200/Winter-Holiday-Solstice-Hanukkah-Xmas-Kwanzaa

This week's edition of American Routes - Two hours of Americana that celebrates a whole range of songs for the season.

Tune in and feel the pulse of the season in as many flavors as you find in a fruitcake - rhythm & blues, blues, ballads, country and rock, in as many tempos as the number of ornaments on your Christmas tree, Hanukah bush or colors on your Kwanzaa candle holder.

Spitzer is the equivalent of a Santa Claus with a bag of gifts that satisfy the soul thirsting for seasonal sentiments only quenched by voice and instruments. Not to mention that a few of them are played as universally as Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.

From the first selection to the last, Santa Spitzer dispenses gifts he has shopped for all year long, hidden in his closet, and gleefully stuffed in the bag he opens for us today.

The first hour features several artists you'd never hear on your radio and rock or croon righteously. The second hour is loaded with familiar artists moved by the spirit of the season and deliver chestnuts disarmingly recast from the original versions. Eartha Kitt, Chuck Berry, Willie Nelson, Otis Redding, Herbie Hancock with Corinne Bailey Rae, John Coltrane all slide into the program as easily as the big man with the round belly slides down our chimneys.

The second hour is more dedicated to songs celebrating Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Christmas and New Year. Opens with lyrical Andy Statmam's Klezmer clarinet solo "Old Brooklyn" followed by a marzipan collection of Carole King (Hanukkah songs), New Birth Brass Band, Chuck Berry, Willie Nelson, Otis Redding,  Herbie Hancock with Corinne Bailey Rae, Bruce, John Coltrane, among others. 

Spitzer doesn't just drop presents under the tree. While you open his carefully wrapped gifts he tells you stories of where he found them and how they fit so synchronously with the other presents. After Chuck Berry's bluesy "Merry Christmas Baby" ... "Berry is covering in 1958 the original that Charles Brown made famous in 1947. Other covers were made by Elvis, Otis Redding, and Mae West..."

After the first of John Coltrane’s two compositions," This is a 1963 take on 'Greensleeves,' the old ballad from 1580 with Coltrane joined by his legendary quartet, piano McCoy Tyner, bass Reggie Garrison, and trumpet Freddie Hubbard."

I love this. Music has roots, songs and interpretations have antecedents. Every week Nick Spitzer digs in and tells us about them on American Routes.

"With Kwanzaa upon us, we'll close with music from the Georgia Sea islands, Lord Invader and his calypso composition Father Christmas," Spitzer says. Up comes West Indian singer Lord Invader joined by playful saxophone, drums, hand cymbals and hand clapping  followed by the Georgia Sea Island Singers "Join the Band" with an up-tempo penny whistle and hand clapping song that carries the message just fine.

My memories of Christmas past evoked by this day's American Routes is as intense my memory of incense wafting over the pews at Midnight Mass at Mount Carmel Church when I was a kid.

Listening brings home to me that the grip these secular songs have on me is as strong as any traditional or religious songs recalled from my youth. And reinforces how deeply embedded the contributions of Black musicians and singers are in our Christmas songbook and culture.

 

Comments

[Bill Pignato]

Hi Paul

Nice to hear from you. Happy Holiday and New Year. We are all glad to leave 2020 in the rear view mirror.

I hope you are well and safe.

Best

Bill

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. aka pt at large]

Hey Bill,
Years ago I recall Queen Elizabeth calling a year Annus Horribilis. That describes this year.

I have no idea what next year will be like, will take it a day at a time. A really good therapist once told me “no expectations no disappointments” Good advice.

[Susan Bennett]

This is a wonderful gift PT. I love listening to it. Thanks for your enthusiastic and well written into to the music too. I need to get that program regularly. Hope you had a good holiday and will be dancing your heart out for NewYear’s Eve and all next year. Lots of love! Susan

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. aka pt at large]

Indeed Susan!
every time a song with an appealing beat floats through the speakers, I dance around my kitchen table as if it were at festival in Louisiana.
Love
PT

[Paul Sinopoli]

Paul – this was terrific! I’m enjoying the music as I type this. Happy New Year!

Paul

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. aka pt at large]

This program took up a lot of slack from the real time celebrations I was missing with family. This was the first time in my life i haven't visited a Sinopoli family on Christmas Eve.

Paul

[Cathleen Cavanaugh]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for this great playlist. We’ve been playing every genre of music these past few months. When in the house, and there’s need for “take me away!”, a different album comes off the shelf. Or new music sent by the boys.
Another silver lining re: this pandemic. Stopping to listen to the music.

Happy New Year!
Cathleen

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. aka pt at large]

Must be interesting to listen to what your boys add to the repertoire and how their tastes compare.

[Sal Falzone]

Paul,

If you look at the list of rich Blacks in the music industry, Barry Gordy seems like a very wealthy man – and deservedly so, for all the class acts he brought to market.

But when you look further up the list, there are a few guys worth many times his empire that have sold lots of so-called music (Jay-Z, Kanye West, Dr. Dre & Master P). Of course, I am not sure how much hip hop and rap breathes life into Black culture so much as it widens the divide between Black and white.

Honestly, if these billionaire and near billionaire Black “music” promoters looked at their jobs more like Berry Gordy did, I think we would have a lot more good music to listen to.

Sorry – I don’t mean to drop you from your high of all the great Black music we have been blessed with. It is just that I have been feeling that these guys have been part of the undermining of race relations with their vile lyrics. Liz and I love the Temptations Christmas album perhaps more than any other and after watching a documentary last month about Motown, she asked whatever happened to all these great musicians and I told her that once they broke away from Gordy, they went down that slippery slope all the way to the bottom. My son Stephen would say, that’s your Opinion, Dad. That’s not a fact.

Thanks for the upbeat articles and have a safe and quiet New Year’s Eve party, complete with noisemakers.

Cheers!!

Stay well,

Sal

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. aka pt at large]

Given the holiday season, Spitzer covers the music white to black, lots of it familiar and composed before social media largely changed the way people communicate. I'm not an authority but think blues, R&B still stick with the formula similar to its inception.
https://www.transcendingsound.com/blog/2016/06/08/blackownedrecordlabels
Music producers often run the show. If they think it will sell they put it on tape.There is no code of speech.https://www.complex.com/music/2020/02/best-hip-hop-producers