Christmas Hits with Long Beach Roots

By Steve Propes

As far as hit records are concerned, Christmas began 75 years ago this month. That’s when “White Christmas” by Bing Crosby hit No. 1. A mere 70 years ago this month, several entries on the hit parade of best selling Christmas music turned out to have Long Beach connections.

On Dec. 14, 1911, Lindley Armstrong “Spike” Jones was born in Long Beach. As a musically talented Poly High student in the late 1920s, Spike Jones began his own show on the local radio station, KFOX. In the 1930s, Jones drummed in big bands, learning to use dinner utensils, pots and pans as musical instruments.

His very popular band spoofed the big hits of the day. One of the most successful by Spike Jones & His City Slickers was the charming “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth,” released 70 Christmases past.

In 1936, the traveling African-American vaudeville show, “Shuffle Along” closed in Long Beach, leaving cast member, Alabama-born Nathaniel Cole stranded. The next year, he began the King Cole Swingsters, playing a number of local bars, possibly working at the V-Room on Fourth Street, as well as being hired to entertain sailors at the Pike for $90 a week.

Nat Cole signed with start-up Capitol as one of their first artists in 1942 and promptly scored several major hits. In 1946, the King Cole Trio evergreen, “The Christmas Song” moved up the pop and race charts for multiple Christmases.

A similar fate met the Charles Brown song, “Merry Christmas Baby” from 1947, which he crooned at the Labor Day Long Beach Blues Festival in 1989 and 1995 and the Big Time Blues Festival in a hot July. “Charles sang that song year round, no matter the month, weather or season,” said Big Time’s Bernie Pearl.

Speaking of Capitol Records and Poly High, big band singer Jo Stafford graduated from Poly two years after the brutal 1933 earthquake destroyed the school, while Jo sang on-stage. After a stint with the Pied Pipers out of Long Beach City College, Stafford went on her own and in 1946, hit big with her rendition of Der Bingle’s “White Christmas” on Capitol Records at the same time King Cole was selling his own Capitol holiday hit.

The Beach Boys debuted with “Surfin” in December 1961, the same month they made their first significant appearance at the Ritchie Valens Memorial Dance at the Long Beach Auditorium. Valens had appeared there in January 1959, just a week or so before his ill-fated Winter Tour in Iowa, where he died in a plane crash with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper.

Soon signed to Capitol, the Beach Boys released their Christmas debut, “Little Saint Nick,” a variation on their hit, “Little Deuce Coupe” with a “run run reindeer” background. At that juncture, the Beach Boys release schedule was a surf side combined with a hot rod record, a trend they jettisoned with a restrained version of “The Lord’s Prayer” on the flip in very late 1963.

Then came the No. 1 hit by the Carpenters, “Merry Christmas, Darling” in 1970, dating back to when lyricist, 19-year-old Frank Pooler wrote the song in August 1945 for his girlfriend, Sylvia. According to his wife, Rhonda Sandberg-Pooler, it was recorded by the Leighton Brothers, then pretty much forgotten.

Decades later, the Carpenters were in search of new Christmas material after they had scored their first several hits. Sandberg-Pooler supplied the following from CSULB music professor, the late Frank Pooler, “Karen and Richard Carpenter were students of mine in my choir at Cal State Long Beach. At the time they hit big in the recording business.

“During those successful early years, 1970-1973, Richard told me that he had grown tired of the old Christmas standards and wondered if I knew of any songs or had written any that he might like. I gave him my version of ‘Merry Christmas, Darling’ and didn’t think anymore about it until I received a call from Richard to come to A&M Studios as he had something to show me.

“Upon arrival, I was seated in an overstuffed chair, a switch was pulled and out poured Karen’s gorgeous voice singing Richard’s tune and my lyrics to the new ‘Merry Christmas, Darling’ from three of the largest speakers I had ever seen. Overcome, thrilled, struck dumb; I did not know how to respond. It came as a complete surprise. The song I had written so long ago was about to become a Christmas classic.

“The old words I had written for Sylvia still seemed fresh to me as I listened to Richard’s gorgeous tune to my lyrics. It was in the top 10 on the national charts with Billboard Magazine calling it ‘The Christmas Song of the Year.’ Before the holiday season was over, ‘Merry Christmas, Darling’ had sold over 600,000 copies. To this day, I am still thrilled to hear it.”

Then there was Poly expatriate, Snoop Doggy Dogg, who in 1993 issued his “Merry Christmas Mutha***ers” on Suge Knight’s Death Row Records. In 2008, Snoop Dogg Presents Christmas in Tha Dogg House featured “A Pimp’s Christmas Song.”

Merry Christmas.

steve@beachcomber.news

Steve Propes, co-author with Dave Marsh of “Merry Christmas, Baby: Holiday Music From Bing To Sting” will teach rock history at CSULB OLLI school as of Jan. 4.

“What’s In The Bag, Frank? A Memoir” by Frank Mairich Pooler and Rhonda Sandberg-Pooler is available at www.rhondalaypress.com.