Hello folks! Yes, it’s that time of the year again – with
just 23 days left until Christmas the next few WWR posts will concentrate on
obscure, bizarre and just plain awful festive-themed discs, a cornucopia of
cacophonous Christmas caterwauling if you will, to soundtrack the season. Oh
yes!
We’re kicking off with some seasonal plagiarism: songs that
have stolen something from someone or somewhere, and first up today is our old
friend the song-poem stalwart Gene Marshall (a.k.a Gene Merlino), with the
double sided ‘hit’ Merry Christmas All
and Christmas Day. The disc,
issued by Preview in the early 70s, is in pretty poor shape, so my apologies
for the poor quality, but what interests me is that the tune for the a-side – with
lyrics credited to one Alexander Liftee – has clearly been Liftee-d from the
much better known Jingle Bell Rock.
Flipside Christmas Day, is a
mediocre slice of song-poem hokum from the pen of Milton Cobham.
Next we have both sides of the 1959 45 from Kenny and Corky,
a pair of singing puppets stealing David Seville’s Chipmunks shtick wholesale. Nuttin’
For Christmas was originally a hit for
six-year-old Barry Gordon (and five other acts) in 1955. Many of you will know
the flip side, Suzy Snowflake from the vastly superior (!) version recorded by Marcy Tigner, a.k.a
Little Marcy. Issued by budget kiddie brand Big Top the disc was a minor hit in
the States, which prompted the highly collectable London label to issue the
coupling in the UK in November 1959. Barry Gordon went on to find fame as an
actor, appearing in everything from Alfred Hitchcock Presents to Star
Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek:
Voyager and Curb Your Enthusiasm. A noted voice actor, he served as the president of
the Screen Actor’s Guild and, in 1998, was the Democratic Party nominee for the
United States Congress for Pasadena, California.Enjoy!
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