CHRISTMAS TUNES
Three Seasonal Collections
- THREE ALBUMS
CHRISTMAS GUITAR SOLI BY JOHN FAHEY 2013
STAX CHRISTMAS – VARIOUS ARTISTS
MR SUN PLAYS DUKE ELLINGTON’S NUTCRACKER SUITE - SHORT ESSAY
Why You Should Listen to John Fahey’s Christmas Music—Even If You Hate Christmas Music
by Grayson Haver Currin / Pitchfork Magazine
Guitarist John Fahey was a boundary-pushing musical innovator whose excellent five Christmas albums helped pay the bills (Michael Ochs Archive photo)
‘TIS THE SEASON
Three albums of Christmas music featuring solo acoustic guitar, soulful sounds from Stax Records and a jazzy take on the Nutcracker Suite
CHRISTMAS GUITAR SOLI by JOHN FAHEY
• I don’t remember when or which one of the five Christmas albums he recorded that did the trick. But it was the boundary-pushing, eccentric US acoustic guitarist John Fahey who introduced me to Christmas songs that resonated with authenticity instead of Hallmark sap. Just him, his unique interpretations and special finger picking style on a six-string steel guitar.
As a little known and impoverished US musician Fahey observed that Bing Crosby’s Christmas albums sold out each year at his local record store. This prompted him to issue his first seasonal collection in 1968 – The New Possibility. It was the best-seller of his career. The album generated 100,000 sales for his Takoma record label in its early years and ongoing sales for many years after.
Christmas Guitar Soli, issued in 2013, is a 14-song collection that pulls from each of his five Yuletide offerings.
“When people hear his music, they’re let into a world that is still connected to theirs but has gone farther, taken more chances, had more highs and lows than they will ever have,” musician Jim O’Rourke said of Fahey in Pitchfork in 2017. “It’s the expression of a human being who has gone through extremes in his life, but when he expressed these feelings, it comes direct from the heart.”
The quote comes from an essay by music journalist Grayson Haver Currin which offers clear insight into the public’s attraction of Christmas music and Fahey’s particular understanding of it.
STAX CHRISTMAS by VARIOUS ARTISTS
• This 12-song compilation from Stax Records and Craft Recordings is a soulful dip into the label’s archives. It features mainstays like Otis Redding, The Staple Singers, Issac Hayes and Carla Thomas. It borrows some songs from the 2007 Christmas in Soulsville collection and adds a few rarities and unreleased tracks.
Says the review in No Depression magazine, “…the real highlights are a pair of previously unreleased tracks. The alternate mix of Otis Redding’s Merry Christmas Baby puts the magnificence of the Big O’s larger-than-life voice front-and-center. And Carla Thomas’ Blue Christmas deserves to unseat Elvis’ as the definitive rendition of the song.”
MR SUN PLAYS DUKE ELLINGTON’S NUTCRACKER SUITE
• In 1960 big band jazz king Duke Ellington gave Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite a bit of swing and changed the way audiences heard the classical gem. Six decades later Nashville’s Mr Sun offers a different kind of polish that shines with a blend of bluegrass and jazz.
The group comprises two players from the David Grisman Quintet – Darol Anger on fiddle and Grant Gordy on guitar. They’re joined by bass player Aidan O’Donnell and Joe K. Walsh on mandolin.
Atwood Magazine notes that the virtuosic quartet has taken on a task of reinterpreting the work of not one, but two musical giants. The verdict? “Mr Sun has seized upon the inspiration of Duke Ellington’s brilliant, sly and urbane re-interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s Suite as an opportunity to salute and re-invent this wildly multi-faceted work anew, through the lens of the American String Band, a musical form which now contains many styles and is presently engaged in a marathon upheaval of innovation and expansion”.
Sounds like a Christmas winner!
16 December 2023
