The best Christmas songs missing from your playlist

Welcome to the Tri-Cities Dispatch office party! It’s like a regular office party only someone fact-checked the egg nog.

The cookies are in the oven, the shopping is done, so kick off your shoes and turn up a few of our favourite songs of the season.

For baking

Sting: Soul Cake

This song emerges through the tangle of English history, pagan ritual, religious ceremony, the evolution of Halloween, and small baked goods made with warming spices.

Sting recorded the centuries-old tune for his 2009 album If On a Winter’s Night . . .

In perhaps the most English bit of music criticism ever put to paper, Dave Simpson rendered the scathing verdict: “Sting’s Christmas pudding is over-egged.”

I humbly disagree. The tempo is perfect for a light step on a wintry night in a search for sustenance and a kind soul. The horns provide a beautiful counterpoint to the fiddle, which is the finest since the devil was in Georgia.

For my taste, Sting’s pudding has just the right amount of egg.

“Go down into the cellar and see what you can find.
If the barrels are not empty, we’ll hope that you’ll be kind.
With your apple and your pear,
And we’ll come no more a-souling
‘Til Christmas time next year.”

The party songs

Louis Prima: Shake Hands with Santa Claus
If I understand correctly – and it’s possible I don’t – Louis Prima is Santa Claus.

Released in 1951, Prima’s raspy promises of bananas and pianos are punctuated by brilliant pops of brass.

According to my research, this song represents the only time Santa Claus offered to kiss someone on the streets of Rome, buy them scungilli, and fly them back home. I don’t know who he’s singing to, but they must’ve been at the very top of the Nice list.

“If you do the dreaming, I’ll do the scheming, shake hands with Santa Claus!”

The Harmony Grits: Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Made up of outcasts from The Drifters, The Harmony Grits only recorded a couple songs, including this up-tempo doo-wop gem with a gospel call-and-response that’s the perfect way to kick off a Christmas party.

Bob Seger: Sock It To Me, Santa
Before he turned pages and took those old records off the shelf, Bob Seger was a garage rock wild man with dreams of being James Brown. This song follows a spoken word intro with two minutes of high-energy, guitar driven Christmas fun that walks right up to copyright infringement without crossing the line.

“Christmas just won’t be a drag, because Santa’s got a brand new bag.”

Cheap Trick: I Wish It was Christmas Today
An arena rock Christmas anthem that began its life as a Saturday Night Live skit written by the host of the Tonight Show and Horatio Sanz.

Somehow, the song’s very implausibility adds to its joyfulness.

The Youngsters: Christmas in Jail
A slice of 1950s doo-wop about the perils of Christmas excess.

Recording for the ill-fated Empire Records, the Youngsters were also The Preludes, The Tempters and, incredibly: Them Featuring Him.

They had more polished performances and they had bigger hits, but they never seemed to have quite as much fun as when they were singing about a stupid driver with a snootful.

“Had a little too much to drink,
Ain’t got no bail,
And I’m spending New Year’s Eve in the clink.”

Barbara Streisand: Jingle Bells?
With a voice as strong and wintry as the Abominable Snowman, Streisand re-creates a Christmas classic with humour and infectious energy. In my experience, kids love this one.

Detroit Junior: Christmas Day
Maybe best known as Howlin’ Wolf’s piano player, Detroit Junior released this uproarious, horn-filled Christmas jam as a B-side in 1961. It should’ve been a hit.

The Reverend Horton Heat: Frosty the Snowman
The Texas psychobilly trio plays it straight on this one, capturing the fun, the exuberance and thumpity-thump-thump-thumpity the song deserves.

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings: Ain’t No Chimneys in the Projects
A gorgeous piece of neo-soul, Jones tells the story of a child’s skepticism and a mother’s reassurance.

The Cadillacs: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
The funniest, finest version of the classic song.

Slade: Merry Xmas Everybody
Whatever your opinion of glam rock, this tune just might be the ultimate sing-along Christmas rocker.

The Rubber Band: Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
Here’s the concept: an album full of Christmas songs re-arranged to sound like Beatles tunes. Doesn’t sound great, does it? Well, for the most part it’s not but this version of Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree melded with I Saw Her Standing There is – inexplicably – wonderful.

Whitney Houston with the Georgia Mass Choir: Joy to the World
It starts out fine. Nice, but nothing you haven’t heard before. And then the choir hits and the song makes good on its promise to bring joy to the world.

Blues and ballads

Charles Brown: Silent Night
Any slower and it’d be going backwards. Charles Brown gives you all the notes you’d need and enough time between them.

This record’s got a deep baritone, a brooding horn and a piano that seems to transcend the blues even while playing them. It’s a smooth ride that somehow lets you feel every bump in the road.

Jim Croce: It Doesn’t Have to be That Way
A beautiful, heartrending ballad about missing the person you love on Christmas.

“Just don’t seem the same/ And the Christmas carols sound like blues / but the choir is not to blame.”

Amos Milburn: Let’s Make Christmas Merry, Baby
For anyone on a tight budget, this song offers you two entendres for the price of one.

Best known for mixing blues, booze and boogie, Milburn is all smooth crooning and seductive horns on this 1949 tune. He promises a Cadillac and a diamond ring before sliding into a piano solo that runs from Christmas carol to jazz with such brilliance you’d forgive him if the Cadillac never showed up.

Vanessa Williams: What Child is This?
This is smooth and melancholy, captivating and understated. Williams conducts a church service in a jazz joint.

Jimmy McCracklin: Christmas Time Part 1
One of the great blues pianists, Jimmy McCracklin is joined by a beautiful saxophone for this up-tempo groove likely recorded in the late 1950s or early 1960s.

“Let’s party all night long,” he sings. “I know you know Christmas can’t last too long.”

Sidenote: Despite being both talented and prolific, McCracklin seems largely forgotten today. However, he was almost immortalized in Beatles lore as the fab four jammed through a truncated version of McCracklin’s hit “The Walk” during the last days of the Let it Be sessions. The song didn’t make the album but, with all apologies to the “Dig a Pony” fans out there, maybe it should’ve.

Freddy King: Christmas Tears
He hears sleigh bells ringing, but he hasn’t heard a word from you in years.

With a guitar as loose and lethal as a cottonmouth after a yoga class, Freddy King takes you through this driving Christmas blues. He feels bad, but it sure makes you feel good.

Ray Charles: The Snow is Falling
The Genius is at his gloomiest and bluesiest on this Lieber/Stoller tune.

“All I do is cry/ Gonna buy me a coffin, well I’m gonna lay right down and die.”

Something smooth

Lou Rawls: Christmas Is
You want something a little mellow, something smooth you can put on when the chaos is over? Lou Rawls somehow manages to be Nat King Cole, Otis Redding and Santa Claus all in one on this track.

Dinah Washington: Ole Santa
From ribald blues to sophisticated jazz, Dinah Washington could do just about everything. This song captures a child’s anticipation on Christmas Eve.

Ella Fitzgerald: We Three Kings/O Little Town of Bethlehem
It’s a testament to Fitzgerald’s greatness that this song didn’t make the cut when her album, Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas, was released in 1960.

Producer Frank De Vol creates a beautiful musical backdrop that stays in the background, allowing the greatest singer of a generation to give us two standards on one record.

Brook Benton: Soul Santa
As smooth as rayon, as deep as a crevasse, Brook Benton stays in a lowdown groove on this track that imagines Santa Claus as a “fine soul brother.”

Duke Ellington: Sugar Rum Cherry (Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy)
I wish I had the vocabulary to do this song justice. As slinky and silky as, um, a silk Slinky? It’s great, is the point.

Something else

Edd ‘Kookie’ Byrnes: Yulesville

In 1960, sensing that teenagers had too much money and too few Christmas records, Warner Bros. released an album of standards performed by their most popular TV stars.

They got the guy from the TV western Cheyenne to sing “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” future James Bond and current Ivanhoe star Roger Moore recites a poem, and TV detective Bob Conrad offers up his version of “White Christmas.”

However, smack dab in the middle of that collection of mostly forgettable songs is 77 Sunset Strip star Edd ‘Kookie’ Byrnes with an original tune: a spoken word novelty record of hipster nonsense from a teen idol who only became famous because Connie Stevens asked him to lend her his comb.

And I love it.

For just shy of two minutes, Byrnes does “’Twas the night before Christmas” in his inimitable, cool cat style.

Is Santa a square? Well, “his threads were from cubesville,” according to Byrnes.

But while the ponies were parked in bunches and clusters, the jolly old elf slid down the chimney, “like gangbusters.”

Byrnes might be too hip for the room, but not for the season.

This one was worth every penny.

“He laid the jazz on me and peeled from the gig.
Well, and have a cool yule, man, later. Like, dig?”

Ronnie James Dio: God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
It was called: We Wish You a Metal Xmas and a Headbanging New Year. Released in 2008, this album would prove, once and for all, that Christmas carols and heavy metal could coexist in the spirit of peace and harmony.

Well, for the same the reason they don’t make tinsel out of tungsten, this didn’t quite work out.

I love Lemmy, but when he growls “Run, run Rudolph!” he sounds like a whiskey-soaked Elmer Fudd ordering the reindeer with the very shiny nose to gallop for his life. Similarly, Alice Cooper’s version of Santa Claws wouldn’t use the chimney when he’s already lurking under your bed.

But Dio’s recording of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” is something different. It transforms the Christmas standard into four minutes of bone crunching metal, but it does it without mockery or subversion.

Possibly the most versatile vocalist in metal history, Dio was the lead singer of Rainbow (the pre-Graham Bonnet era), Black Sabbath (the post-Ozzy era), Dio (who else would they get?), Black Sabbath again (the post Ian Gillan era), and Heaven and Hell (when they realized they never should’ve called the Ozzy-less band Black Sabbath to begin with).

Having grown up studying the trumpet, Dio has astounding breath control and power and it’s all on display here as his vocals soar over the blistering riffs supplied by Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath fame.

It’s not for everyone, but for headbangers looking for comfort and joy, this is the one and only.

The classics

Stan Rogers: At Last I’m Ready for Christmas
Rousing and sweet, it’s a Christmas folk song that pays tribute to parental exhaustion. Some lyrics may be a bit dated (Christmas bonus?) but the story of toiling to give the kids a great Christmas remains both true and moving.

Peggy Lee: The Christmas Waltz
“This song of mine, in three-quarter time . . .”

This tune’s not quite a standard, but it probably should be.

Peggy Lee is more sweet than sultry as she looks through frosted windowpanes to see gleaming candles and painted candy canes.

It’s a waltz of sentiment and serenity amid the season’s sometimes desperate dizziness.

Solomon Burke: Presents for Christmas
The musical titan who fused rock ‘n’ soul gives us a joyful groove here. It’s the rare Christmas song you can dance to and the even rarer Christmas song you’ll want to dance to.

Nat King Cole: Caroling, Caroling
OK, it’s not quite as beloved as “The Christmas Song,’ but still, this is a masterful tribute to the songs and sounds of the season.

Marvin Gaye: I Want to Come Home for Christmas
Written in 1972, this tune was intended to be a contemporary Christmas song told from the point of view of a U.S. soldier spending Christmas as prisoner of war in Vietnam. Fifty years later, the song is still stirring. The lyrics may be timely, but Marvin Gaye is timeless.

Louis Armstrong: Christmas in New Orleans
Before he wrote songs for Disney classics like Mary Poppins and the Jungle Book, Richard M. Sherman contributed to this classic about “A Dixieland Santa Claus leading the band/ to a good old Creole beat.” Another singer might’ve done it justice but that joyful genius Louis Armstrong made it a classic.