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Christmas Party With Eddie G.Eddie Gorodetsky made his living writing and producing radio, television, and films, but he was also a storied record collector - most famous for the annual Christmas compilations he made for friends and family. He shared his treasures with the rest of us for one brief and shining moment, and it was a record made in heaven - albeit a very screwy place in paradise.

The selections on Christmas Party With Eddie G. (1990) aren't necessarily classics. In fact, they're not necessarily even good. But, each and every song is a bona fide rarity - at least, they were at the time. One of them, Foghat's "All I Want For Christmas Is You," hadn't even been released commercially. Moreover, most of these songs are cracked, bent, or bizarre in some aspect, and Eddie and his friends add their own dementia in between the twisted tunes.

Like most record collectors, Eddie G. has eclectic tastes that lean towards the unusual. Or, as he says in the liner notes, "The great thing about this holiday cornucopia is its diversity," but "the message is still the same - good cheer to all." Gorodetsky once told Cool & Strange Music that as a college disc jockey he got the best response from the "goofy" Christmas songs. "Christmas is the one time of the year when people will listen to any kind of music if it happens to be a Christmas song," he asserted. "You can tear down the walls at Christmas time and open up people's ears."

Musical Whiplash

Huey "Piano" SmithSo, the selections on Christmas Party With Eddie G. run the gamut from the Latin kiddie pop of Augie Rios' "Donde Esta Santa Claus" to the hepcat beat poetry of Tony Rodelle Larson's "Cool Yule" to the revivalist surf rock of Untamed Youth's "Santa's Gonna Shut 'Em Down." While on this journey we are treated to several slabs of genuine rock 'n' roll (Foghat, Fabulous Thunderbirds) and rhythm 'n' blues (Rufus Thomas, Huey "Piano" Smith, Solomon Burke) alongside exotica (Arthur Lyman), reggae (Byron Lee), jazz (Louis Prima), cajun (Monty & Marsha Brown) and country (George Jones & Tammy Wynette). Certainly not for the faint of heart - or anyone at risk of whiplash.

And, of course, there are novelty songs. Debbie Dabney's extroverted, palpably horny "I Want To Spend Christmas With Elvis" (1956) is the keeper, written by Don Kirshner and a young Bobby Darin and featuring the rock 'n' roll guitar of - get this - jazzbo Kenny Burrell! Dabney really wants Santa to bring her Elvis Presley, and what she is going to do with him (or to him) is barely unspoken. By the way, "I Want To Spend Christmas With Elvis" is one of numerous holiday songs in the mid-50's to address the newly crowned King - and I don't mean baby Jesus (read more).

Gorodetsky breaks up the other novelty record, Eddie Lawrence's "The Merry Old Philosopher" (1957), into three pieces as part of the between-tracks comic relief. Lawrence was a humorist with a modernist, absurdist twist - kind of like Will Rogers crossed with Lenny Bruce - and his Christmas record was based on a character he created the previous year for his most popular record, "The Old Philosopher." It's worth hearing - and wacky as hell - but it's a sideshow, at best.

Two Special Party Favors

NRBQ, Christmas WishTwo tracks on Christmas Party With Eddie G. merit special notice for two different reasons. In addition to Christmas music, Gorodetsky is also a longtime fan of NRBQ, the patron saint of rock misfits since 1966. While the band can rock like nobody's business, much of their music is cacophonous or uncategorizable, and much the same can be said of their Christmas music. "Christmas Wish" (1980), the song Gorodetsky included on Christmas Party With Eddie G., is neither. Rather, it is a lovely, tuneful paean to the holidays that, in Eddie's own words "combines a Pet Sounds inspired sing-along with well-needed holiday optimism." As much as anything on the album, "Christmas Wish" reflects Eddie's utopian vision of Christmas.

I mention the second special track because it means a lot to me personally. By the time Christmas Party With Eddie G. was released, I had long been a fan of the Skeletons and the Morells, two bands from Springfield, Missouri, built around Lou Whitney and D. Clinton Thompson. They never sold a lot of records, but they worked with some big-ass indie rock acts like Jonathan Richman, Syd Straw, Robbie Fulks, Dave Alvin, the Bottle Rockets, and the Del-Lords - both as a backing band and at Whitney's Springfield studio.

So, imagine my surprise and delight when a heretofore unknown holiday song by the Skeletons showed up on Christmas Party With Eddie G. "Do You Hear What I Hear/You Really Got Me" is credited to Bobby Lloyd & The Skeletons, as in Bobby Lloyd Hicks, the band's longtime, dearly departed drummer. It is, indeed, a medley of Bing Crosby's "Do You Hear What I Hear" and the Kinks' "You Really Got Me," and it's as great as it is unlikely. The song was released on one of the band's early non-LP singles circa 1980 and, to this day, it exists in my unreasonably huge record collection only on Christmas Party With Eddie G. - reason enough to cherish the album.

A Blind Boy Grunt Enterprise

Bob DylanAs I mentioned, Eddie G. paid the rent through his labor in the entertainment business, and one of his gigs was producing Bob Dylan's wide-ranging, genre-free weekly radio series, "Theme Time Radio Hour," which ran from 2006 to 2009 and spawned a similarly wide-ranging series of albums, The Best of Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour. I know basically nothing about their relationship, but Eddie and Bob must've been fellow travelers from way back, because Christmas Party With Eddie G. had been released on Dylan's short-lived label, Strikin' It Rich - so short-lived, in fact, that Christmas Party With Eddie G. was the only album the label ever released.

Unsurprisingly, Strikin' It Rich was distributed by Columbia, Dylan's label for most of his career. It was announced with some fanfare in late 1990, with the goal of releasing rare material - not unlike what Gorodetsky and Dylan would do later with "Theme Time Radio Hour." But, what became of the vanity imprint, or even whether it even existed, is now a matter of speculation among Dylanologists - in part because the famously inscrutable Dylan's name appears nowhere on Christmas Party With Eddie G.

Bottom line, Christmas Party With Eddie G. is a fine collection of Christmas music, as enjoyable as it is eclectic. Almost every track on it is essential listening (see below), and three songs made my Top 100. But, taken as a whole, it's a window not just into the world of one record collector, but into the entire fascinating, eccentric world of hip Christmas music. [top of page]

Albums Albums

SongsEssential Songs

  • All I Want For Christmas  (Is A Little Bit Of Music) (Huey "Piano" Smith & The Clowns, 1962) Top 100 Song
  • All I Want For Christmas Is You (Foghat, 1981)
  • Cajun Christmas (Monty & Marsha Brown, 1987)
  • Christmas Day (Detroit Junior, 1960) Top 100 Song
  • Christmas Presents (Solomon Burke, 1955)
  • Christmas Wish (NRBQ, 1980)
  • Cool Yule (Tony Rodelle Larson, 1961)
  • Do You Hear What I Hear/You Really Got Me (Bobby Lloyd & The Skeletons, circa 1980)
  • Dónde Está Santa Claus? (Augie Rios, 1958)
  • I Want To Spend Christmas With Elvis (Debbie Dabney, 1956)
  • I'll Be Your Santa Baby (Rufus Thomas, 1973) Top 100 Song
  • Mele Kalikimaka (Arthur Lyman, 1961)
  • Merry Christmas Darling (Fabulous Thunderbirds, 1983)
  • Mr. & Mrs. Santa Claus (George Jones & Tammy Wynette, 1973)
  • Santa's Gonna Shut 'Em Down (Untamed Youth, 1989)
  • What Will Santa Claus Say When He Finds Everybody Swinging? (Louis Prima, 1936)

Further ListeningFurther Listening

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