XMAS BONUS: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

we're in the period between Christmas and New Year, the gap between episodes is going to be longer than normal, and the podcast proper is going to be back on January the 9th.

So nobody has to wait around for another fortnight for a new episode.

I thought I'd upload some old Patreon bonus episodes to fill the gap.

Every year around Christmas the bonus episodes I do tend to be on Christmas songs, and so this week I'm uploading three of those.

These are older episodes, so don't have the same production values as more recent episodes, and are also shorter than more recent bonuses, but I hope they're still worth listening to.

It's the middle of December, as you have probably noticed, and that that means it's a time when the airwaves in both the UK and the US are dominated by Christmas music.

The music that's most prominent in the UK will have to wait until we get to the 70s for a discussion.

But this week and next, in these bonus episodes, I'll be looking at a few American Christmas classics.

Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus Lane,

Dixin' and blixing, and all his reindeers pulling on the reins.

Bells are ringing, children singing, all is merry and bright.

So hang your stockings and say your prayers, cause Santa Claus comes tonight.

Here comes Santa Claus, here comes the...

If I'd been doing these Patreon bonus episodes from the beginning of the podcast, rather than waiting for the first six months or so to do them on a regular basis, I'd have covered Gene Autry on one by about the fourth episode.

He's someone whose name you'll have heard a lot in the podcast.

He was an influence on all sorts of musicians we've looked at, in all areas of music.

Jerry Lee Lewis, Sam Cook, Hank Ballard, Bo Diddley, Bill Haley, Fats Domino, and Les Paul all acknowledged him as someone they were trying to imitate in one way or another.

And that's just the ones where I've been able to find clear confirmation.

Audrey was not, in any direct sense, a precursor to rock and roll.

He didn't make records that included any of the elements that later became prominent in the new music, and he didn't have a rebellious image at all.

But from the early 1930s to the early 1950s, he was the single biggest star in country music.

He starred in many films, had his own radio show, had a line of comics about him, and he was so popular that even his horse had his own radio and TV show.

British people from my generation may well remember Champion the Wonder Horse still being repeated as kids TV in the 80s.

That's how big Gene Autry was.

And so it's unsurprising that he influenced pretty much every singer of note in the rock and roll field.

But he was was also, along with Bing Fosby, one of the people who pioneered American secular Christmas music.

You know, Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid, and Donner, and Blitzen,

but do you recall

the most famous reindeer of all

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer

I specify American secular music here because one thing that differs between the US and the UK when it comes to Christmas is the music that's ubiquitous.

In the UK, Christmas music mostly means glam rock.

You hear Slade and Wizard incessantly, and other 70s artists like Mud.

In the US though, it means primarily the music of the 40s and 50s, the music of people like Gene Autry.

Autry started his career as just another country singer, who performed as Oklahoma's Yodeling Cowboy.

His early recordings were very much in the style of Jimmy Rogers and were very different from his later clean-cut image.

with a dress to her knee

oh listen red-headed mama your daddy's got the black bottom too

daddy will be

the women down in black bottom are we but in 1932 he had a hit with a song he wrote which would soon become a standard of country music a rather maudlin ballad called that silver-haired daddy of Mine.

Is a dear one who's weathered life's sorrows,

tis that silver-haired daddy of mine.

As a result of that hit, Autrey started appearing in films.

The first film he appeared in was a serial, The Phantom Empire, in which he starred as a singing cowboy who is kidnapped by people from the underground super science kingdom Morania, descendants of the lost tribe of Mew, and has to help them defend themselves from an evil scientist who wants to steal their radium.

It may not surprise you that the writer of the film came up with the plot for it while on nitrous oxide, having a tooth extracted.

Autry made another 44 films in the next five years, and every year from 1937 through 1942, he was the top star of Western films in the US, as well as having a whole series of hits with songs like Blueberry Hill.

On Blueberry Hill,

On Blueberry Hill

When I found you

The moon stood still

on Blueberry Hill However in 1942 he enlisted in the army against the wishes of Republic the film studio for whom he worked They told him that if he was just going to go off and fight Nazis instead of making singing cowboy films, they were going to promote Roy Rogers instead.

So from 1942 through 1945, Autry was off fighting in the Second World War.

After he got back, he was the second most successful singing cowboy film star, after Rogers.

It was in 1947 that Autry got the inspiration for the song that would define his career.

He was riding his horse in a Christmas parade, known as the Santa Claus Lane Parade, and he heard spectators sing, Here comes Santa Claus.

Here comes Santa Claus right down Santa Claus Lane,

Dixin' and blixing, and all his reindeers pulling on the reins.

Bells are ringing, children sing, and all is merry and bright.

So hang your stockings and say your prayers, cause Santa Claus comes tonight.

Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus right down Santa Claus Lane.

He's got a bag that's filled with toys for boys and girls again.

Hear those sleigh bells jingle, jangle.

Oh, what a beautiful thing.

Here comes Santa Claus, not only charted that Christmas, it charted the Christmas after as well.

Given that Autry's recording career was slowly fading, it seemed to make sense for him to record another Christmas song about Santa and see if he could repeat his success.

and if you ever saw it

you would even say it glows

all of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names

they never let poor Rudolph

join in any reindeer games

then one foggy Christmas Eve Santa came not only did that go to number one and become the first number one of the fifties but here comes Santa Claus charted for the third year in a row.

So, of course, the next year, after an Easter single, Peter Cottontail, which also charted, but didn't have the same repeat success as the Christmas songs, he recorded yet another Christmas single, Frosty the Snowman.

Frosty the Snowman was a jolly happy soul with a corncob pipe and a button nose and two eyes made out of coal.

Frosty, the snowman, made the children laugh and play.

Were they surprised before their eyes, he came to life that day?

There must have been some magic in the world.

The next year,

he didn't release a Christmas single at all, and he seemed to lose momentum.

In 1952, he released one final Christmas record, Upon the Housetop.

Up on the housetop, reindeer paws.

Out jumps good old Santa Claus.

Down through the chimney with lots of toys, all for the little ones Christmas joys.

Ho, ho, ho, who wouldn't go?

Ho, ho, ho, who wouldn't go?

Up on the housetop, click, click, click, down through the chimney with old St.

Nick.

But that had nothing like like the success his earlier Christmas records had.

He carried on making films and TV shows until the mid-50s, and finally retired in 1964.

He died in 1998.

His Christmas records still occasionally hit the charts in December and regularly feature in the special holiday charts Billboard publish every year.

and rock your way

All the down, round and round we'll sway Will be swell

in the spelling rock and rhythm of the sea