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Christmas KissesCapitol Records was an independent label established in 1942 by singer/songwriter Johnny Mercer and a few well-connected friends. Over the next decade or two, Capitol became a preeminent force in the music business, releasing foundational records by Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Buck Owens, Miles Davis, and many more on their own label, as well as numerous associated labels such as United Artists, Liberty, Imperial, Blue Note, and World Pacific. From their headquarters at Hollywood & Vine in Los Angeles - and, eventually, their iconic, record-shaped tower - Capitol became the first West Coast label to challenge the hegemony of East Coast labels like RCA, Columbia, and Decca. Purchased by English conglomerate EMI in 1955, Capitol would become part of the storied six major label groups - at least until consolidation in the internet age shrunk that number to three: Sony, Warner, and Universal, which consumed EMI whole in 2012.

Long before that happened, Capitol produced a wealth of Christmas records during what is, for many people, the golden age of holiday music - from the 1940's war years till the "British Invasion" of the early 1960's. Christmas Kisses: Christmas Classics From Capitol's Early Years (1990) and its three subsequent companion volumes showcase this deep, rich vein of gold running through the vaults of Capitol Records. The label is adept and unabashed about what the industry refers to as "catalog exploitation," so there would be many other collections of Capitol Christmas music. But, Christmas Kisses and its cousins were the first - and arguably still the best. Consisting mainly of lounge and easy listening classics (many quite rare), the series also touches upon country, blues, jazz, and comedy - even a little rock. Plus, each volume features an alluring, Vargas-style pin-up girl on the cover. Pucker up!

The other three discs in the series - none quite as vital as Christmas Kisses - are Merry Christmas Baby: Romance & Reindeer From Capitol Records (1991), Let It Snow! Cuddly Christmas Classics From Capitol (1992), and Happy Holidays: Warm & Wonderful Christmas Favorites (1993). Originally released on compact disc, all four are out-of-print but worth hunting down if your interests are as eclectic and catholic as mine. The good news is that all of them made the leap into the online world of downloads and streaming. The lengthy list of songs below provides testament to how valuable these albums will be to Christmas fiends, serious record collectors, and dedicated lounge lizards.

Merry Christmas BabyEclectic Capitol

Books have been written about Capitol Records, so I won't attempt to chronicle their long history. But, suffice to say that the label wasn't focused on any one genre - unlike, say, other West Coast independents like Modern, Aladdin, Specialty, or Verve. Early on, Capitol specialized in pop - Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Dean Martin, Margaret Whiting, and Johnny Mercer himself - but they dabbled in rhythm 'n' blues, country, jazz, and, comedy. Christmas Kisses and its companions include tracks like Julia Lee's risqué "Christmas Spirits," Tex Ritter's corn-fed "Merry Christmas Polka," Les Brown's swingin' "Nutcracker Suite," and Stan Freberg's beatnik "Night Before Christmas" that reflect that eclecticism.

But, it's with pop that Capitol made its mark. Johnny Mercer's brassy 1947 single with the Pied Pipers, "Jingle Bells" b/w "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town," is a great example. No one version of "Jingle Bells" can be called definitive - the song is the ultimate tabula rasa of Christmas songs - but Mercer's version (found on Merry Christmas Baby) comes close. However, his interpretation of "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town" (found on Christmas Kisses) is inarguably timeless. "Fat man's coming!" announce the Pied Pipers, and Mercer and his band welcome him with a bang. It's a pop song, for sure, but it swings like crazy.

This packed Capitol Records series - 88 total tracks - holds way too many highlights to discuss them all, but here's a few more:

  • Billy May's over-the-top 1954 single "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer Mambo" (Christmas Kisses) must be heard to be believed. And, if you like that, you'll love Rhino's compilation Mambo Santa Mambo.
  • June Christy's "Hang Them On The Tree" (Happy Holidays) is just one of four tracks in the series taken from her fine, under appreciated 1961 Capitol album This Time Of Year.
  • Johnny Mercer & Margaret Whiting's "Baby It's Cold Outside" (Merry Christmas Baby) is one of the first recordings of the now-infamous song after it appeared in a 1949 film. It's a fine version, too, swinging gently so that makes the song seems more about romance than seduction (or date rape).
  • "The Things We Did Last Summer" (Happy Holidays) by the George Shearing Quintet with Nancy Wilson is just great, though it really isn't a Christmas song. It makes a passing reference to winter, but that's about it.
  • If you can find a better version of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" than Lou Rawls' 1967 performance, I'd like to hear it. It's one of five tracks in the series taken from his excellent 1967 Capitol album, Merry Christmas Ho! Ho! Ho!

But, nothing blew me away more than Kay Starr's 1950 single, "(Everybody's Waitin' For) The Man With The Bag," a song largely lost to history until Capitol included it on Let It Snow in 1992. It's certainly not your normal Christmas song - swinging like crazy, completely blurring the lines between jazz, rhythm 'n' blues, and easy listening music. Between the blaring horns, Starr's wide-eyed delivery, and the exceedingly clever wordplay ("Old Mr. Kringle is soon gonna jingle the bells that'll tingle all your troubles away!"), it became an instant favorite for me, earning a spot in my Top 100 Songs. These days, "The Man With The Bag" is a widely recognized classic thanks to its appearance on Let It Snow, Christmas Cocktails, Swingin' Christmas, and other like minded compilations - helped along when Brian Setzer covered it on his popular 2002 album, Boogie Woogie Christmas.

Let It SnowThat Chestnuts Song

The Capitol Records tower has been called "The House That Nat Built." And, indeed, the Nat King Cole Trio's many hits for Capitol helped generate the capitol for the Capitol tower. "Straighten Up And Fly Right" (1944), "I Love You For Sentimental Reasons" (1946), "Nature Boy" (1948), and "Mona Lisa" (1950) literally laid the foundation for that storied high-rise (or, at least, paid for it). Originally known as a jazz pianist - a really, really good one, by the way - Nat Cole had ambitions far beyond that esoteric world, and his 1946 vocal reading of "The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas To You)" was a key step down that path. Reportedly, Cole - who was Black - fought with Capitol over the use of orchestration during the session. He wanted to break out of his corner as a jazzbo, while they wanted to protect their investment - and not ruffle racial feathers. Suffice to say, Cole won that battle and went on to great success as a pop crooner, though he would face racist pushback for the rest of his life.

"The Christmas Song" was cowritten by Mel Tormé - aka "The Velvet Fog," and no slouch of a singer himself - but Cole immediately took ownership. His recording zoomed up the charts, topping out at #3 Pop and #3 R&B. It would chart over and over again, year after year, right up to the present, while spawning thousands of cover versions - most slavishly patterned after Cole's elegant interpretation. Tormé recorded his most famous composition several times himself - there's a 1954 live version on The Joy Of Christmas Past and a 1966 studio version on Croon & Swoon Vol. 2 - but "The Christmas Song" would forever be associated with Nat King Cole. Still, Tormé got to cash the checks...

Nat King Cole recorded "The Christmas Song" two more times, and those versions are actually the ones most people know. The second recording happened in 1953, though it wasn't released until 1954, this time with a bigger orchestra conducted by the inestimable Nelson Riddle. Stereo was a fairly new animal, and the session produced a "high fidelity" mono recording intended for 45-rpm vinyl - various editions of which would hit the charts almost every year for two decades. Even in the digital age, the Nelson Riddle session isn't uncommon - it's the version found on Merry Christmas Baby - and, mono notwithstanding, it's a gorgeous recording and a fine performance by all involved.

Cole revisited "The Christmas Song" yet again in 1960 for The Nat King Cole Story, a collection of new stereo recordings of his mono hits. Three years later, it was added to a reissue of The Magic Of Christmas (1960), his first-ever holiday album, to create The Christmas Song, the album we all know and love. It's worth noting, however, that all the records above - 78, 45, and LP - refer to "The Christmas Song" by its original subtitle, "Merry Christmas To You." Only later did we start calling it by its unforgettable first line, "Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire."

Merry Christmas BabyExploitation Is Such an Ugly Word

At the start, I mentioned that Capitol Records is great at "catalog exploitation," an industry term that simply means marketing and repackaging previous releases for financial gain - hopefully for the artists (or their estates) as well as the label. Christmas Kisses and its companions were the first major effort at Capitol to do so with their expansive Christmas catalog - that is, artists beyond the usual Rat Pack suspects. The series would not be the last, however - not by a long shot.

The first two albums I'd mention are arguably part of this series - or certainly suitable companions: Christmas On The Range: Cowboy Classics From Capitol Records and Legends Of Christmas Past: A Rock 'n' R&B Holiday Collection, both released in 1992. As you might expect, the former focuses on country music - though, oddly, with none of the West Coast "Bakersfield Sound" of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard that Capitol was so instrumental in developing. The latter does what it says it does, surveying rock and rhythm 'n' blues artists as illustrious as the Beach Boys, Ventures, and Charles Brown.

More apropos to Christmas Kisses and its companions, however, is Ultra-Lounge Christmas Cocktails, four volumes of a massive series of albums compiled in response to the mid-1990's "lounge music" revival. The whole series is great, deftly spotlighting the swinging, exotic side of easy listening music - not the more pervasive boring side - while digging down with granular detail into weird, fascinating niches like bongo music, crime themes, mambo, cha-cha, bossa nova, and, of course, exotica. For holiday music collectors, the downside is that Christmas Cocktails overlaps massively with the earlier Capitol Records series discussed herein. But, Christmas Cocktails snags a few gems overlooked by the more traditional Christmas Kisses series, including Martin Denny's "Exotic Night" (1967), Les Paul & Mary Ford's "Jungle Bells" (1953), and the Capitol Studio Orchestra's "Cha-Cha All The Way" (1958).

Much later, Capitol compiled two fine, straightforward sets, Capitol Christmas (2016) and Capitol Christmas Vol. 2 (2017). Again, they overlap massively with Christmas Kisses and its three companions, but it's all good stuff. The main point of the releases seems to have been to cash in on the resurgent vinyl trend. In fact, pricey two-LP vinyl editions were released, but they got quickly hoovered up and can be hard to find (here's the first volume and the second volume). Digital editions remain available.

Consumer Notes

Broadly speaking, the series inaugurated with Christmas Kisses in 1990 is very nicely done, averaging more than 20 remastered tracks, with annotation and lovely illustrations. Merry Christmas Baby even has a centerfold! Despite the fact that all four volumes were produced and compiled by the same guy, Brad Benedict, there is a slight decline in quality on the later editions. The third, Let It Snow, includes a generous 25 tracks, but one of those is repeated from a previous volume (Nancy Wilson's "That's What I Want For Christmas") and the amount of detail in the liner notes drops off precipitously. Much the same can be said about the fourth volume, Happy Holidays, but it has just 18 tracks, including another repeated from a previous volume (Margaret Whiting's "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas"). Interestingly, none of the volumes includes any sort of essay to put everything in historical context. Mr. Benedict, I can only assume, wanted to let the music do the talking.

Albums Albums

SongsEssential Songs

  • - Christmas Kisses (1990)
  • Christmas At Midnight (Lead Belly, 1944)
  • Christmas Boogie (Sugar Chile Robinson, 1950)
  • Christmas Kisses (Ray Anthony, 1961)
  • Christmas Spirits (aka Christmas Blues) (Julia Lee & Her Boyfriends, 1948) Top 100 Song
  • Do You Hear What I Hear? (Bing Crosby, 1963)
  • Every Heart Is Home At Christmas (Five Keys, 1957)
  • Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (Margaret Whiting, 1949)
  • I Yust Go Nuts At Christmas (Yogi Yorgesson, 1949)
  • Jingle Bells (Les Paul, 1951)
  • Jingle-O The Brownie (Tennessee Ernie Ford, 1960)
  • Merry Christmas Polka (Tex Ritter, 1947)
  • Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer Mambo (Billy May, 1954)
  • Santa Claus Is Coming To Town (Johnny Mercer & The Pied Pipers, 1947)
  • Silent Night (Les Paul & Mary Ford, 1951)
  • Silver Bells (Margaret Whiting & Jimmy Wakely, 1950)
  • That's What I Want For Christmas (Nancy Wilson, 1963)
  • 'Twas The Night Before Christmas (Stan Freberg, 1955)
  • Yah Das Ist Ein Christmas Tree (Mel Blanc, 1953)
  • You're The Angel On My Christmas Tree (Faron Young, 1953)
  • - Merry Christmas Baby (1991)
  • Auld Lang Syne (Guy Lombardo & His Royal Canadians, 1956)
  • Baby It's Cold Outside (Johnny Mercer & Margaret Whiting, 1949)
  • Christmas Heart (June Christy, 1961)
  • Christmas Island (Bob Atcher & The Dinning Sisters, 1950)
  • The Christmas Song (Nat King Cole, 1954)
  • The Christmas Spell (Peggy Lee, 1949)
  • The Christmas Waltz (Nancy Wilson, 1968)
  • Frosty The Snowman (Bing Crosby, 1962)
  • Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (Lou Rawls, 1967) Top 100 Song
  • I'd Like You For Christmas (Julie London, 1957)
  • Jingle Bells (Johnny Mercer & The Pied Pipers, 1947)
  • Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! (Dean Martin, 1959)
  • Love Turns Winter Into Spring (Four Freshmen 1956)
  • Merry Christmas Baby (Lou Rawls, 1967)
  • Ring A Merry Bell (June Christy, 1961)
  • Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (Lena Horne, 1966)
  • What Are You Doing New Year's Eve? (Margaret Whiting, 1947)
  • - Let It Snow! (1992)
  • All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth) (Nat King Cole, 1949)
  • Christmas Blues (Dean Martin, 1953)
  • Christmas Is (Lou Rawls, 1967)
  • The Christmas Waltz (Peggy Lee, 1960)
  • (Everybody's Waitin' For) The Man With The Bag (Kay Starr, 1950) Top 100 Song
  • I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm (Dean Martin, 1959)
  • Jing-A-Ling Jing-A-Ling (Starlighters 1950)
  • Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! (Lena Horne, 1966)
  • Love Turns Winter Into Spring (June Christy, 1957)
  • The Merriest (June Christy, 1961)
  • Santa Claus Is Coming To Town (Lena Horne, 1966)
  • Snow Dreams (Connie Russell, 1954)
  • Song At Midnight (Peggy Lee, 1949)
  • Song Of The Sleigh Bells (June Hutton, 1952)
  • That's What I Want For Christmas (Nancy Wilson, 1963)
  • Warm December (Julie London, 1956)
  • What Are You Doing New Year's Eve? (Nancy Wilson, 1963)
  • Winter Wonderland (Bing Crosby, 1962)
  • - Happy Holidays (1993)
  • Baby It's Cold Outside (Dean Martin, 1959)
  • Caroling Caroling (Nat King Cole, 1960)
  • Christmas Is The Season (Jo Stafford, 1964)
  • The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire) (Peggy Lee, 1960)
  • Christmas Will Really Be Christmas (Lou Rawls, 1967)
  • Hang Them On The Tree (June Christy, 1961)
  • Happy Holiday (Peggy Lee, 1965)
  • Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (Margaret Whiting, 1949)
  • Jingle All The Way (Lena Horne, 1966)
  • Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! (Bing Crosby, 1962)
  • The Nutcracker Suite (Les Brown & His Band Of Renown, 1958)
  • The Things We Did Last Summer (George Shearing Quintet with Nancy Wilson, 1961)
  • What Are You Doing New Year's Eve? (Lena Horne, 1966)

Further ListeningFurther Listening

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