Growing up in the '70s, one of the staples of my family's Christmas revels was the We Wish You a Merry Christmas album from Ray Conniff and the Ray Conniff Singers. You may think it isn't part of your own celebration, but if you have lived in the United States during one or more Christmas seasons and have set foot anywhere that Christmas recordings were being played, you've probably taken in at least one number from this album. It's quite popular with the malls and those radio stations that start playing holiday music on Thanksgiving Day and keep going through the night of Dec. 25th. But don't hold that against Ray Conniff or his singers! It's a well-produced album with nifty, creative arrangements -- albeit staged within a fake-holiday-party context that bears a slight whiff of "cheesy" fragrance -- and a nice mix of secular and religious songs.
As a teenager, I once ran across a cassette at my grandparents' house that featured me, at age 4, trying not only to sing these songs, but to reproduce the full ensemble arrangement with my lone voice. The medley with "We Three Kings of Orient Are" includes me making a segue between songs by oddly belting out the first word in the phrase, "STAR of wonder, STAR of light... ." As an adult, I was so happy when I discovered the CD version (our old vinyl version was beyond worn out by now), I bought one for myself, one for my parents, and one for my brother. Every year we load it into the car's CD player before heading to East Texas, though we're surely going to sing all the songs ourselves as a quartet-on-wheels both coming and going.
So it amazed me when I sang in a barbershop chorus as an adult and discovered that the song I'd always known as "Ring Christmas Bells," with beloved lyrics like "Ring, Christmas bells, merrily ring / Tell all the world Jesus is king," was known to most people as "Carol of the Bells" and had totally different, essentially nonsensical lyrics. It was painful learning to sing such inanity as, "Ding dong, ding dong / That is their song," and even lines like "All seem to say, throw cares away / Christmas is here, bringing good cheer" leave me cold. It seems almost a parody of the version I know, although I realize it's likely that the better-known version predates it.
Around 1996, I was singing with a church chorus when they prepared a Christmas program, and was disappointed that even they seemed familiar only with the pallid version that urges generalized "good cheer" for no particular reason. Don't get me wrong; I am not one of those people who sees some kind of "war on Christmas" or has a problem with expressions like "Happy Holidays." It simply seems sad to me that this far more inspiring version of the song doesn't seem to have made its way even into Christian circles, much less into holiday settings that play other religious Christmas carols and other selections from this very album. Tonight I Googled various phrases from the song, figuring that surely by now someone had posted the lyrics online. Incredibly, they had not, so I will do so here; there is no attribution for the lyrics on my CD or album, so if they are of known authorship, I hope someone will see this and alert me. :)
Ring, Christmas bells,
merrily ring
Tell all the world
Jesus is king
Loudly proclaim
with one accord
the happy tale
bound [*] from the Lord
Ring, Christmas bells,
Sound far and near
Comfort the old
Jesus is here
Carol the news [**]
to old and young
Tell it to all
in every tongue
Ring, Christmas bells,
merrily ring
tell all the world
Jesus is king
Ring, Christmas bells,
toll loud and long --
your message sweet
peal and prolong
Come all ye people
Join in the singing
Repeat the story
told by the ringing
[ring, ring, ring, ring]
Ring, Christmas bells,
throughout the earth
Tell the good news
of Jesus' birth
Loudly proclaim
with one accord
the happy tale
bound [*] from the Lord
Ring, Christmas bells,
merrily ring
Tell all the world
Jesus is king
Ring, Christmas bells,
merrily ring
Tell all the world
Jesus is king
Loudly proclaim
with one accord
the happy tale
bound [*] from the Lord
Ring, Christmas bells,
sound far and near
Comfort the old
Jesus is here
Carol the news [**]
to old and young
Tell it to all
In every tongue
[ring, ring, ring, ring, ring ...]
transcription is mine
[*] this word is unclear, even after several listening tries; I put what I always thought it said
[**] the word rendered "carol" may be "herald," which would fit as well
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2008
The home of the brave enough for criticism
... o'er the land of the free
and the home of the brave.
-- "The Star-Spangled Banner," by Francis Scott Key
The U.S. government currently has a new proposed rule under consideration that would, at last, expand the ability of the public to attend presidential inaugural parades, including the ability of those who attend for purposes of protest. I consider this an immensely patriotic and important rule to support, and I would urge fellow U.S. citizens to go promptly to Regulations.gov to comment on this rule, as the comment period will end September 22, 2008.
My own submitted comment follows:
and the home of the brave.
-- "The Star-Spangled Banner," by Francis Scott Key
The U.S. government currently has a new proposed rule under consideration that would, at last, expand the ability of the public to attend presidential inaugural parades, including the ability of those who attend for purposes of protest. I consider this an immensely patriotic and important rule to support, and I would urge fellow U.S. citizens to go promptly to Regulations.gov to comment on this rule, as the comment period will end September 22, 2008.
My own submitted comment follows:
"The government of communist China recently claimed it would permit protesters, etc., during the Beijing Olympics, but only in specified areas far from the venues, and only with permits, which they then proceeded to deny. This type of behavior is to be expected from a communist country, which has much to fear from its people being permitted free speech that might criticize them. It is undignified and unworthy of a free and democratic republic whose constitution and its amendments were written with the express intention of protecting its citizens' rights to critique their leadership.
"Yet this restriction and distancing have been typical of certain parties' political onventions and then of their approach to inaugural-festivities access. It is vital that he public have access to inaugural events even when -- perhaps especially when -- they choose to use that access for non-violent expressions of political views that may differ from that of the president-elect and supporters. While a new president's friends and supporters from the American citizenry should have a right to attend as well, the fact is that it will always be easy for such people to have a president's ear, even if they were unable to attend the inaugural event; opponents, on the other hand, may never receive a better venue for airing their grievances, and to allow them to do so is one of the most American actions my government can take. It is historic, it is honest, it is necessary, and it is unquestionably an appropriate and patriotic display to go with a new president's swearing to 'uphold and defend' the Constitution that protects this very right."
Thursday, July 03, 2008
The great Jester Hairston
Gossip, gossip, evil t'ing
Much unhappiness it bring
If you can't say somet'ing nice
Don't talk at all, is my advice
-- Jester Hairston
Every so often, I think back on the once in a lifetime opportunity we had at the Christian College Choral Festival. It's a great tradition, and one that I fear may have died out in recent years. From my first year in college, I looked forward to it every winter, and grieved the year that the weather was too bad for us to go. The festival provided a chance to learn from terrific clinicians and to be exposed to the musical stylings of other schools, including Southwestern Christian College of Terrell, Texas, which I'd never even heard of before that first year, but never again forgot. While the integration of colleges and other schools represents undeniable progress that was denied for far too long, the Historically Black Colleges and Universities developed their own great legacy, and SWCC is just one proof.
Imagine the honor for a pitiful little white girl like me to sing for magnificent musician Jester Hairston and to be selected for a solo under his direction. That year's group choral performance consisted of several of what he still called "Negro spirituals," each of which he'd either written or arranged, titles represented here as they were on the title pages: "Amen," "Lay Yo' Head in De Winduh, Jesus," "Home in Dat Rock," "Elijah Rock," among others. One of the strongest memories is of his teaching us the proper way to perform his classic "Amen," from The Lilies of the Field. (Incidentally, the version on the soundtrack is Mr. Hairston; the inimitable Sidney Poitier freely admits that he lip-synched to Hairston's recording.)
He complained that too often, people begin that rhythmic clapping even during the early verses, when Jesus is just a seemingly unimportant baby or a small child. They clap, too, when tragic events are being told. Jester Hairston firmly maintained that the better way was to let the tension build up during all those early verses, waiting to clap until the line "but he rose on Easter" is reached, and continuing through the final verse about "and he lives forever."
The pièce de résistance was his teaching us a calypso song while explaining about the ancient traditions of "call and response" and "lining out" a hymn: teaching a song line by line and having the learners repeat the line verbatim. My recollection is that this song is of his own authorship, but I'm hoping to be corrected if there is another author; I only ask that you not try to make a case that it is a folk song without authorship, as that is often believed about calypso songs even in cases where it's not true. :)
Note: Wish I could thank the two unknown Danish bloggers whose missives contained the verse I'd forgotten over the years -- I've placed it first because it works there, though I can't guarantee that's the correct order. This song is so catchy that when the rehearsals took a lunch break and went to a Lubbock cafeteria to eat, we all caught ourselves unwittingly singing the song while standing in the cashier's line, provoking a grand applause by the diners at song's end.
chorus:
Gossip, gossip, evil thing
Much unhappiness it bring
If you can't say something nice
Don't talk at all is my advice
If you talk about somebody
even what you say is true
when it comes back it is double talk, to what it was when it left you
(chorus)
Once I told me friend me secret
And he promise not to tell
Now community and strangers all know me secret very well
(chorus)
Take me wife, now, there's a gossip
What an ear for news has she
Knows a thing or two about everyone in our whole community
(chorus)
If there's one thing 'bout a gossip
Let me tell you this is true
If you tell she 'bout somebody, she tell somebody else about you
Words to live by.
Much unhappiness it bring
If you can't say somet'ing nice
Don't talk at all, is my advice
-- Jester Hairston
Every so often, I think back on the once in a lifetime opportunity we had at the Christian College Choral Festival. It's a great tradition, and one that I fear may have died out in recent years. From my first year in college, I looked forward to it every winter, and grieved the year that the weather was too bad for us to go. The festival provided a chance to learn from terrific clinicians and to be exposed to the musical stylings of other schools, including Southwestern Christian College of Terrell, Texas, which I'd never even heard of before that first year, but never again forgot. While the integration of colleges and other schools represents undeniable progress that was denied for far too long, the Historically Black Colleges and Universities developed their own great legacy, and SWCC is just one proof.
Imagine the honor for a pitiful little white girl like me to sing for magnificent musician Jester Hairston and to be selected for a solo under his direction. That year's group choral performance consisted of several of what he still called "Negro spirituals," each of which he'd either written or arranged, titles represented here as they were on the title pages: "Amen," "Lay Yo' Head in De Winduh, Jesus," "Home in Dat Rock," "Elijah Rock," among others. One of the strongest memories is of his teaching us the proper way to perform his classic "Amen," from The Lilies of the Field. (Incidentally, the version on the soundtrack is Mr. Hairston; the inimitable Sidney Poitier freely admits that he lip-synched to Hairston's recording.)
He complained that too often, people begin that rhythmic clapping even during the early verses, when Jesus is just a seemingly unimportant baby or a small child. They clap, too, when tragic events are being told. Jester Hairston firmly maintained that the better way was to let the tension build up during all those early verses, waiting to clap until the line "but he rose on Easter" is reached, and continuing through the final verse about "and he lives forever."
The pièce de résistance was his teaching us a calypso song while explaining about the ancient traditions of "call and response" and "lining out" a hymn: teaching a song line by line and having the learners repeat the line verbatim. My recollection is that this song is of his own authorship, but I'm hoping to be corrected if there is another author; I only ask that you not try to make a case that it is a folk song without authorship, as that is often believed about calypso songs even in cases where it's not true. :)
Note: Wish I could thank the two unknown Danish bloggers whose missives contained the verse I'd forgotten over the years -- I've placed it first because it works there, though I can't guarantee that's the correct order. This song is so catchy that when the rehearsals took a lunch break and went to a Lubbock cafeteria to eat, we all caught ourselves unwittingly singing the song while standing in the cashier's line, provoking a grand applause by the diners at song's end.
chorus:
Gossip, gossip, evil thing
Much unhappiness it bring
If you can't say something nice
Don't talk at all is my advice
If you talk about somebody
even what you say is true
when it comes back it is double talk, to what it was when it left you
(chorus)
Once I told me friend me secret
And he promise not to tell
Now community and strangers all know me secret very well
(chorus)
Take me wife, now, there's a gossip
What an ear for news has she
Knows a thing or two about everyone in our whole community
(chorus)
If there's one thing 'bout a gossip
Let me tell you this is true
If you tell she 'bout somebody, she tell somebody else about you
Words to live by.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Who SINGS this, and where can I get it?
Wake up, you sleepyhead
Get up, get out of bed
Wake up, the sun is shining
Stand up and touch your toes
Tell them it's time to go
You've got a lot to do today
This song pops into my head many mornings, Saturdays especially. They used to play it from time to time on 1530 AM in Raleigh, NC, on a Saturday-morning Christian radio show for children that I used to listen to in grad school. (And no, that's not a typo of "grade school." What can I say? It was relaxing!) Someday when we have kids around this place, I'm going to want to sing them that song, and in the meantime, I sing it to Marco from time to time. It's a delightful little tune, and I'd love to find a recording of it if only someone could tell me the artist(s)'s name(s). Thanks!
Get up, get out of bed
Wake up, the sun is shining
Stand up and touch your toes
Tell them it's time to go
You've got a lot to do today
This song pops into my head many mornings, Saturdays especially. They used to play it from time to time on 1530 AM in Raleigh, NC, on a Saturday-morning Christian radio show for children that I used to listen to in grad school. (And no, that's not a typo of "grade school." What can I say? It was relaxing!) Someday when we have kids around this place, I'm going to want to sing them that song, and in the meantime, I sing it to Marco from time to time. It's a delightful little tune, and I'd love to find a recording of it if only someone could tell me the artist(s)'s name(s). Thanks!
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