Stan Zabka’s Classic Christmas Eve Song

December 24th, 2016

For those unfamiliar with the name, Stan Zabka, think Americana and you’ll hear on this Christmas Eve his appropriately-named holiday classic (and one of my favorite holiday tunes) – Christmas Eve In My Home Town.

Resplendent with home town images and themes, especially as it is performed by the iconic Kate Smith, the carol was written during a very difficult time when American soldiers were engaged in another foreign war. Stan Zabka, along with Don Upton, another ex-GI, wrote Christmas Eve in My Home Town in 1951 at the height of the Korean War. The song became an immediate hit with soldiers in the field and sailors at sea, eventually earning sobriquets as The Soldier’s Christmas Song, and the Official Christmas Song of Radio Free Europe during the Cold War years.

In 1966 during the Vietnam War, Kate Smith wanted to do something special for American troops by recording 36 individual messages on the Armed Forces Network, which then aired them around the world wherever our troops were stationed or on ships at sea. In her folksy and heart-warming voice, she addressed her armed forces audience: “Hello boys and girls, this is Kate Smith coming to you via Armed Forced Radio with a greeting to let you know that we are all thinking of you. I have recorded a song especially for you. It was written by a couple of ex-GIs, Stan Zabka and Don Upton, and you will be hearing it soon. Its title is Christmas Eve in My Home Town. And boys and girls, Christmas won’t be the same without you, but you can bet that you will be thought of, and prayed for, and loved just as much as if you were all here. I would like to say Merry Christmas to you and may God bless you all.”

On another occasion when our troops entered Kuwait in September 1990, the U.S. government forbade Western Christmas music to be broadcast because Kuwait was a Muslim country. However, it was Kate Smith’s special Armed Forces Network message and introduction of the song on the Johnny Carson Tonight Show that convinced the government to lift its restriction. What may have also helped to get the message out was the affable Zabka, a three-time winning composer, musician, and director, once served as an associate director with NBC-NY and for five years had a close working relationship with Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show.

This Christmas Eve if you want to experience the warm glow of the season and the sound of a more innocent time in American history, richly illuminated by the one and only Kate Smith, tune into Zabka’s nostalgic classic: Christmas Eve in My Home Town.  His homey lyrics truly capture the spirit of the season and the nostalgic long ago, an essential ingredient of AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CLASSICS.

There’s so much to remember!
No wonder I remember
Christmas Eve in My Home Town.

Carols in the square,
Laughter everywhere,
Couples kissing under the mistletoe.
I can’t help reminiscing,
Knowing I’ll be missing
Christmas Eve in My Home Town.
Nothing can erase
Mem’ries I embrace
Those familiar footprints upon the snow!
There’s so much to remember!
No wonder I remember
Christmas Eve in My Home Town.

I’d like to be there,
Trimming the tree there,
And there’s a chance that I might!
I can hear singing,
Steeple bells ringing
Noel and Silent Night.
Wise men journeyed far
Guided by a star,
But, though I’m not a wise man,
This I know:
Through dreams and just pretending,
I’m there and I’ll be spending
Christmas Eve in My Home Town.

© Big Island Music, Inc.

Stan Zabka at the piano

Stan Zabka at the piano

 

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A Special Christmas Music Gift

December 19th, 2015

We all love to get into the Christmas season and set the right mood for love and merry making. This is also the right time to look for special gifts and send them to our loved ones just to let them know how much they mean to us. Just as we are reminded by the timeless hit of the Little Drummer Boy, no gift will ever be ideal for Christmas than the gift of a real Christmas classic. But unfortunately, it is a little bit of a task to locate and find such gifts and send them out during Christmas.

American Christmas Classics –  FREE SHIPPING until Christmas using Code CHR2015!

Despite the fact that it is not easy to find the perfect gift to send out during Christmas, there is not a total blockade to prevent you from thinking out of the box. It is still possible to come up with a nice sweet collection of American Christmas classics and wrap them into a gift box that will be much appreciated, especially by those folks from the Baby Boomer era. Fortunately, with a little searching, there are several places where you can find such gift collections. One such place is Christmas Classic Ltd. It produces exquisite Christmas music collections that will make perfect Christmas gifts at any time. To boot, American Christmas Classics is available at $29.95 . . . a 50% Discount from the original price of $59.95!

Included in the American Christmas Classics collection are 47 all-time favorite classic Christmas songs featuring music legends Bing Crosby, Kate Smith, Andy Williams, Gene Autry and other celebrated singers. But the collection is not only about music.

This cultural treasure includes a lavishly illustrated masterpiece book about the stories behind favorite American Christmas carols and songs featuring period fine art and illustrations from America’s great artists, such as Norman Rockwell, Henry Ossawa Tanner, and Grandma Moses, as well as images of nostalgic Victorian Christmas cards and notable magazines of yesteryear as The Saturday Evening Post, Scribner’s, and LIFE.

This Christmas collection has been described as a sumptuous and ideal gift package that will bring boundless joy this season. For customers nostalgic for their Christmas past, this is the perfect Christmas gift.

Act today for FREE SHIPPING using Code CHR2015

American Christmas Classics

          AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CLASSICS

444A9369

Dick Clark and AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CLASSICS

December 18th, 2014

Dick Clark, the late popular radio and television personality, had high praise for  AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CLASSICS.  An iconic figure who helped to pioneer the rock ‘n roll era with his popular American Bandstand, Mr. Clark was a gentleman of the highest order. I came to appreciate this quality about him after I had approached him in 2002 about promoting my newest Christmas music boxed collectionMr. Clark was so impressed by this unique collection of American Christmas songs, which he described as “most impressive,” that he considered buying my company, Christmas Classics Ltd. This was especially true after he had learned Christmas Classics Ltd. had gotten the necessary 172 copyright clearances to produce and published the richly illustrated collection. They included 47 Christmas songs and carols lyrics, three CDs, and 91 images including five Norman Rockwell color plates. Eventually Mr. Clark reluctantly decided not to purchase Christmas Classics Ltd. In an e-mail he wrote, “I always felt your material had great promise,” but because of a busy business schedule he would not have the time to devote to the enterprise. Regardless of the fact we could not work together to promote AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CLASSICS, I think of Dick Clark each Christmas season, ever thankful for his praise of my unique American Christmas songs and carols collection. But more importantly I remember him for being a gracious and kind person to me, a newcomer to the music and publishing trade. Over the years his positive assessment of AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CLASSICS has proven to be true, one that has been echoed by newspapers, media, and customers alike.

Dick Clark

Dick Clark

Christmas Songs and Carols to Brighten the Holidays

November 29th, 2014

Let us make this “a season to be jolly!” Despite our troubles, let us rekindle the fond memories of Christmas past for our parents,  grandparents, and children. Let us touch the sentimental strings of carefree and youthful days that once consumed Baby Boomers and our military veterans.

Let us start with the idea of organizing some of our holiday festivities around the theme of singing carols and holiday songs. It doesn’t get better than hearing joyous Christmas songs while hauling in and trimming the Christmas tree.

Some familiar old-timers reminisce about the joy of Christmas songs and carols.

The late Andy Williams, a popular singer of the 1960s and 1970s, described celebrating the Christmas season in an interview with me several years ago. “It was such a great time,” Andy said, as he and his three older brothers used to go house to house singing carols and drinking eggnog in Wall Lake, Iowa.

“Those were the days when you knocked on a neighbor’s door and opened unlocked doors.” The talented singer who in later years starred at his Moon River Theater in Branson, Missouri, suggested it would be a nice thing to renew the tradition of caroling around the neighborhood, or one’s home town, “because it is such a wonderful thing to do.”

Della Reese, familiar to television viewers for her earthly role in the popular 1994-2003 program “Touched by an Angel,” wrote to me at the same time “I just love the way Christmas carols change the spirit and attitudes of us all.” An accomplished singer and ordained minister, in addition to her acting skills, she described “Silent Night” as a magnificent thought, and her favorite holiday tune as “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” sung by the mellifluous Nat “King” Cole. The irrepressible Della added, “In fact, I don’t really start my Christmas in earnest until I hear Nat sing “The Christmas Song.”

The late country and pop singer, Gene Pitney, enjoyed considerable success on both sides of the Atlantic through the mid-1960s with more than twenty Top 40 singles, including hits “Town Without Pity” and “Only Love Can Break a Heart.” In an e-mail Gene fondly recalled carving the turkey when his large family gathered for the holidays and the singing of Christmas carols. “I prefer religious carols,” he said, “that have not become jaded by commercial overuse. They represent the essential Christmas message.”

Take a cue from Andy, Della, and Gene. Start this holiday season with the idea of organizing your festivities around the theme of singing carols and holiday songs.

Celebrate with friends and family at home beside the fireplace or piano, or while trimming the Christmas tree, with traditional classics as “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” or “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” or singing such nostalgic holiday fare as “White Christmas,” “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” or “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

Encourage friends to join in the singing of “Silent Night” and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” in front of your neighbors’ city stoop or country home. Better yet, why not sing for our senior citizens at nursing home or an assisted care facilities, or at a food kitchen for the poor and homeless, or a military hospital for our aged veterans or wounded warriors? Rest assured your caroling there will be met with open hearts and ready smiles.

Or you might volunteer to take part in the local performance of Handel’s “Messiah” for other worthy causes, or support a local church by attending its vesper service where awe-inspiring Christmas motets and concertos may reverberate, and where the reverential carol-hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” soars to celestial heights on the wings of angels. This is truly music for the soul.

Though the custom of singing Christmas songs and carols in front of neighborhood homes may seem quaint and outdated, let us redouble our efforts, especially this year, to engage young and old alike in reviving a wonderful Christmas tradition that is never out of fashion.

Ron Clancy is a Christmas songs and carols historian, and the author of illustrated Christmas music gift collections at www.christmasclassics.com.

Christmas Eve 2013: Gratitude and Fisher House

December 24th, 2013

Today is Christmas Eve, a much anticipated day on the Christian calendar that serves as a prelude to the birth of our savior Jesus Christ. For many of us it a day of evening worship at our parish church and a time to reflect on the meaningful story of Christmas so richly illuminated by the Gospel of St. Luke.

For me personally Christmas Eve floods me with childhood memories about going to midnight Mass and hearing a choir of nuns sing carols so beautifully that their notes seemed to spiral heavenward as though on the wings of angels. That warm and intoxicating experience has often been rekindled each Christmas Eve, especially today when I took time from doing last minute Christmas shopping to re-read several e-mails I recently received from Fisher House managers from across the country regarding the donations of Best-Loved Christmas Carols and American Christmas Classics, my two best-selling, highly illustrated Christmas music collections

Two of those e-mails were particularly poignant. Heather Frantz from the Fisher House of Pittsburgh wrote:  I just wanted to let you know that we handed out your boxed collections to our guests this past Wednesday at our Christmas Party and they absolutely LOVED them!!!!!! We had several wives who were so touched by the gift that they teared up and they all opened them and couldn’t believe how amazing the book was and all of the stories and history behind the songs that they all love so much. Thank you so very much for providing such a joyous gift for our guests!!! Merry Christmas to you!

The second response came from Kristin Palmer, Fisher House of San Diego.  I just wanted to follow up with you and let you know we received and have been distributing your Christmas collections to our families. I can tell you personally each family I have talked to is touched and awed by your generosity. The holiday season on a good day can be stressful enough, but to have to also deal with a loved one in a medical crisis compounds that stress. I gave the CDs to a mother whose 18 year old Marine is receiving cancer treatments. She was very moved, and thankful. Fortunately in her case she will be able to bring her son home for the holidays, and she said they would be listening to them and letting everyone they know about the generosity of the Fisher House and those that support it. For the rest of the families that will have to remain here for the holidays, at least they will have a little Christmas spirit and know someone was thinking of them during the holidays.  Again, thank you and God bless!

The sentiments conveyed by Fisher House military families are similar to the feelings I had when the Knights of Columbus, SKF Industries, Villanova University students, and others annually feted us at St. John’s Orphanage in Philadelphia during the Christmas holidays. I fondly remember, along with hundreds of other orphan boys, the warm afterglow of being a starry-eyed recipient of carefully wrapped Christmas presents that were more precious than gold.

To hear that the joy of my Christmas days of yore has been replicated and found expression in the hearts of Fisher House military families truly humbles me.  As it should for one who has benefited much from the Christmas spirit.

Merry Christmas!

"Christmas Prayers" - AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CLASSICS

“Christmas Prayers”
– AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CLASSICS

Christmas Music Collections to Bring Cheer to Fisher Houses

December 5th, 2013

Before the recent government shutdown occurred, author Ron Clancy of Christmas Classics Ltd. decided to support the Fisher House Foundation. A great provider of free housing and comfort for military families in need of medical care, the reputable foundation will benefit from the sale proceeds of Christmas Classics Ltd.’s two lavishly illustrated Christmas music collections (see FISHER HOUSE: How Others Are Giving).

In addition Ron has agreed to donate Best-Loved Christmas Carols and American Christmas Classics, his company’s premier boxed collections, to Fisher Houses located across the country.

To help bring special joy to Fisher House military families, Ron (@xmasmusicman) asks his Twitter followers to pass on the word about Christmas Classics Ltd. exceptional collections. The purchase of these ideal Christmas gifts for family and friends will help the Fisher House Foundation and its corollary Fisher Houses in the following ways:

1)  25% of sale proceeds will be donated to the Fisher House Foundation;

2)  Christmas Classics Ltd. exquisite boxed collections will be donated to Fisher Houses across the country.

Please act today. Buy Christmas Classics Ltd. richly illustrated Best-Loved Christmas Carols and American Christmas Classics collections for your family and friends. Your purchase will go a long way to make this Christmas a truly memorable experience for those who have served our country so well and yet ask so little.

Today’s Video: The Story behind THE LITTLE DRUMMER BOY

 

Christmas Classics PERSON OF THE DAY: Richard B. Smith

September 28th, 2013

On this day in 1901, the little known Richard B. Smith was born in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. He was the lyricist (Felix Bernard wrote the music) of the popular Christmas song Winter Wonderland that was first recorded by Guy Lombardo in 1934. Unfortunately for Smith, who was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1931, he never got to enjoy the success that came to his classic song after succumbing to the disease in 1935, thus aborting what looked to be a promising career.

Smith had attended Penn State University, majored in advertising, and was responsible for editing the school magazine. His interest in music was also on display there when he formed and conducted his own orchestra. After graduating from Penn State, Smith moved to New York and began a career as a newspaper editor. The music bug, however, never left him as he took on the management of several Broadway theaters.

The Pennsylvania lyricist got married in 1931. Shortly after the happy event he was stricken with the dreaded tuberculosis and soon was admitted to the West Mountain Sanatorium where his wife was a nurse. With his wife near to his side, Smith’s talent for songwriting blossomed as he produced When A Gypsy Makes a Violin Cry, Bringing My Honey Back to Me, and the  popular Winter Wonderland while convalescing, all of which caused Hollywood to come knocking. Before long Smith gladly agreed to a contract to write music for films; but a month before he was to go to California he passed away.

The inspiration for Winter Wonderland, a delightful addition to American Christmas Classics supposedly came from familiar winter snow scenes Smith remembered from life near the Pocono Mountains. Eight years after his passing, his song made it to the top of the charts and it has since become a perennial favorite during the Christmas season.

Winter Wonderland  Sheet Music Cover

Winter Wonderland
Sheet Music Cover

 

 

Christmas Classics PERSON OF THE DAY: William L. Dawson

September 26th, 2013

On this day in 1898, William Levi Dawson was born in Anniston, Alabama. He was an acclaimed African-American composer, conductor, and trombonist who wrote a wonderful arrangement of the Christmas spiritual Mary Had a Baby, a carol with two distinct lyrical texts. In some circles Dawson was called the “father of the Negro spiritual” although such a sobriquet might be contested by the John Works family also noted for its scholarship of Negro folk music.

Dawson was determined to earn a music education. Although black students were prohibited from attending classes, several professors helped him to clandestinely pursued his bachelor degree at night from the Horner Institute of Fine Arts in Kansas City. By day he taught at the  city’s Lincoln High School. His formal studies continued at the Chicago Musical College and the American Conservatory of Music, the latter from which he earned his master degree. He also enjoyed a career as a trombonist for both the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and Redpath Chautauqua, a campground assembly that usually gathered during the summer for music events or literary, moral, and scientific lectures.

The composer’s career, however, was primarily devoted to teaching at the college level. In 1931 he went to teach at Tuskegee University in Alabama where he soon himself the founding chairperson of its School of Music. During his tenure at Tuskegee, ending in 1956, Dawson achieved greatness as a composer. His body of work included arrangements and variations of spirituals, including his popular Ezekiel Saw the Wheel, King Jesus is a-Listening, and Jesus Walked the Lonesome Valley, and other spirituals that are widely published and regularly performed by school and community choral programs. In the classical realm, he is best known for Negro Folk Symphony, reputedly the first of its kind by a black composer, which premiered in 1934 with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of the dynamic Leopold Stokowski.

The lyrical text of Mary Had a Baby may date from the 18th century when it was probably sung at religious revival camp meetings where a “call and response” technique was utilized to unify the congregation in worship. After the Civil War, this musical style became more prevalent in black churches, especially those of the rural South, whose members learned it from their ancestors, almost all of whom were slaves.

As with most of his arrangements, Dawson employed black folk song idioms to Mary Had a Baby, an important addition to AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CLASSICS . Inspired by the spiritual text, he creates a heightened sense of dignity, despite the humble manger setting, of Mary the mother giving birth to her baby who is richly exalted as “King Jesus.”

William L. Dawson

William L. Dawson

 

Christmas Classics PERSON OF THE DAY: Jack Rollins

September 15th, 2013

On this day in 1906, Walter E. “Jack” Rollins was born in Scottdale, Pennsylvania. Better known as Jack Rollins, he is the songwriter credited with co-writing, supposedly with Steve Nelson, the Christmas holiday song Frosty the Snowman that is part of AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CLASSICS. That success came in 1950, just a year after Rollins, and supposedly Nelson again, collaborated on the popular Easter song Here Comes Peter Cottontail.

Rollins also co-wrote the song Smokey the Bear in 1952 after a wildfire swept across the Capitan Mountains in New Mexico, during the course of which firefighters noticed a lone bear cub climbing up a charred tree to escape being further burnt from the flames. The cub was rescued from his perch and given immediate veterinary care and ultimately was sent to the National Zoo in Washington. The story about the bear cub and its rescue lead to a national public service campaign to prevent forest fires with Smokey the Bear serving as mascot.

Rollins achieved a fair level of success with his children’s holiday songs, especially with the Gene Autry recording of Frosty the Snowman that sold over a million records. Rollins also co-wrote others songs for such country singers as George Jones and Eddie Arnold.  Success, however, seemed to have come late in his career, one dotted with menial jobs. In 1940 he worked for a bakery. Eight years later he was a baggage clerk for Penn Station in New York. It was at that time when the 44 year old baggage clerk found the time to pen Frosty the Snowman and a number of other songs, and practically every night Rollins used to ask Frank (Zeb) Martello, the host of WOR mutual radio, to play them.

According to a letter from a Martello family member, Rollins and the radio host became friends and together they may have written five songs, including Rollins’ two most popular holiday songs Frosty the Snowman and Peter Cottontail. But Rollins asked Martello to take his name off the songs because some other well-known people, including “a guy by the name of Steve Nelson, for one, wanted his name on the songs before he would promote them.

After the two songs became big hits, Martello was asked by his wife why he had removed his name from the two songs, insisting that he was always being the nice guy. Martello replied “Jack has a lot of talent, he deserves a break.” When asked if he ever regretted doing that, Martello said, not really, but I guess mom could have used the money.”

Jack Rollins died in Cincinnati on January 1, 1973. The kind-hearted Zeb Martello on hearing the sad news was quoted to have said, “God Bless Jack, but I still have a lot to be thankful for.”

Jack Rollins

Jack Rollins

 

Christmas Classics PERSON OF THE DAY: Mel Tormé

September 13th, 2013

On this day in 1925, Melvin Howard Torma, better known as Mel Tormé, was born in Chicago to a Russian Jewish family. He was an accomplished and well-liked jazz composer, scat singer, author, and actor for television and movies. In Christmas music circles he is best known as co-author, along with Robert Wells, of The Christmas Song (a.k.a. Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire).

During the World War II years Tormé moved to California, enlisted in the Army, and started his own quintet Mel Tormé & the Mel-Tones. B y 1947 he decided to strike out on his own and then went on to develop a reputation as a cool jazz singer. He did not disappoint in 1948 with Careless Arms, a number one hit. In all “The Velvet Fog” a sobriquet Tormé detested, is credited with 250 songs and the arranger for a host of songs he sang for several recording companies, including Decca and Capitol Records. For a time in the 1960s he was the principal song writer and music arranger for The Judy Garland Show and by the 1970s with the resurgence of jazz singing his career was revitalized and from that time forward he remained a presence in the jazz world until his death.

How Tormé became associated with one of the most popular Christmas songs for the past seven decades is one for the books. During a terrific heat wave besieging Los Angeles in July of 1945, the songwriter Robert Wells sat at his piano and tried to find solace from the heat by jotting down several lines of lyrics with wintry themes. “It was so damn hot, I thought I’d write something to cool myself off,” he once said. All I could think of was Christmas and cold weather.” While in this mood, his good friend Mel Tormé paid a visit. When Tormé noticed the notes Wells had put to paper, he suggested to him that they just might have the beginnings of a Christmas song.

Within twenty or forty-five minutes, depending upon who’s telling the story, the two songsters produced The Christmas Song. Tormé then went to the home of Nat King Cole and convinced him to record the song, and in the Spring of 1946 Nat went into a New York recording studio with a simple piano version of the song. The initial results weren’t satisfactory, and at the urging of his wife Maria and manager, the mellifluous singer responded with a more highly regarded version with strings and full orchestra. It was Cole’s exquisite recording that popularized the song, and over the years The Christmas Song has consistently ranked as one of America’s seasonal favorites.

Considered an historic recording, the song was honored in 1999, as was Tormé himself for life time achievement, by being inducted by the Grammy Awards organization into its Hall of Fame.

The Christmas Song has truly stood the test of time. This is quite understandable because it was written during an age when composers like Tormé produced music marked by grace and charm. In retrospect it is easily understood why his passing was mourned by many, especially by those nostalgic for such memorable musings from Chestnuts roasting on an open fire” . . . to . . .And so I’m offering this simple phrase, To kids from one to ninety-two; Although it’s been said many times, many ways, “Merry Christmas to you.”

Mel Tormé

Mel Tormé

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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