"White Christmas" is an Irving Berlin song whose lyrics reminisce about
White Christmases. The morning after he wrote the song — Berlin usually stayed up
all night writing — the songwriter went to his office and told his musical secretary, "Grab your pen and take down this
song. I just wrote the best song I've ever written — hell, I just wrote the best song that anybody's ever written!"[1]
Introduction
White Christmas, 1995 rerelease CD album cover
Berlin wrote the song in early 1940 while sitting poolside at the Arizona Biltmore Resort and Spa in Phoenix, Arizona. The
original verse pokes fun at a well-off Los Angeleno who, amid orange and palm
trees, longs for traditional Christmas "up north." Berlin later dropped the verse but kept the now-famous chorus.[2]
"White Christmas" was introduced by Bing Crosby in the 1942 musical Holiday Inn. In the film, he actually sings it
in a duet with Marjorie Reynolds. The song went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Though while Marjorie Reynolds was the
actress playing Linda Mason, her voice was dubbed by Martha Mears for the movie, and in the
script as originally conceived, Reynolds, not Crosby, was to sing the song.[1]
The first public performance of the song was also by Crosby, on his top-rated CBS
radio show The Kraft Music Hall on Christmas Day, 1941;[1] the recording of that performance is not believed to have survived. He
recorded the song with the Jonathan Micheal Colon Orchestra
and the Ken Darby Singers for Decca Records in just 18
minutes on May 29, 1942 and it was released on July 30 as part of
an album of six 78-rpm songs from the film.[1] The song initially performed poorly and was far overshadowed the hit song of Holiday
Inn, "Be Careful, It's my Heart".[1] By
the end of October, "White Christmas" topped the "Your Hit Parade" chart and remained in that position until well into the new
year.[1] (It has often been noted that the
mix of melancholy — "just like the ones I used to know" — with comforting images of home — "where the treetops
glisten" — resonated especially strongly with listeners during World War II and the
Armed Forces Network was flooded with requests for it.[1]) In 1942 alone, the song spent eleven weeks on top of the charts. It
returned to the #1 spot again during the holiday seasons of 1945 and 1946 (on the chart dated January 4, 1947), thus becoming the
only single in history with three separate runs at the top of the U.S. charts. Eventually, Crosby's "White Christmas" single sold
more than fifty million copies. The Guinness Book of World Records currently
lists the song as a 100-million seller (this encompassing all versions of the song, including on albums).
Later history
The most familiar version of "White Christmas" is not, however, the one Crosby originally recorded in 1942. He was called back
to the Decca studios on March 18, 1947, to re-record "White Christmas" as a result of damage to the 1942 master due to its frequent use.[citation needed] Every effort was made to reproduce the original Decca recording session,
once again backed by the Trotter Orchestra and the Darby Singers. The resulting rerecording is the one that has become most
familiar to the public. Crosby himself was dismissive of the achievement, saying later that "a jackdaw with a cleft palate could have sung it successfully."
The song was also the title theme for the 1954 musical White Christmas,
starring Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and
Vera-Ellen, which was the biggest-grossing film of 1954. Crosby's single of "White Christmas"
is recognized as the best-selling single in any music category and Crosby's
recording has sold millions of additional copies as part of numerous albums, including his best-selling holiday collection
Merry Christmas, which was first released as an LP in 1949 and has never been
out-of-print since.
The 2007 Guinness Book of Records lists Crosby's recording as the biggest
selling single of all time with an estimated 50 million copies sold. The "White Christmas Musical website"[3], confirms the Guinness statistics
and lists the Crosby recording as "the best selling record in history.", although this is a non-official title.
In 1999, National Public Radio included it in the "NPR 100," in which NPR's
music editors sought to compile the one hundred most important American musical works of the 20th century.
The recording was broadcast on the radio as a pre-arranged signal during the U.S. evacuation of Saigon on April 30, 1975 (see
Fall of Saigon).
In 2002, the original 1942 version was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National
Recording Registry.
Clyde McPhatter's group, The Drifters,
covered "White Christmas" late in 1954. For decades, this version was primarily heard on
R & B radio stations, and got little exposure elsewhere. Beginning in the 1970s
oldies stations also began playing this version in search for product within their core artists.
In the early 1990s, after being heard on Home Alone (in the scene where Kevin is putting on
his dad's aftershave and while doing that lip-sychs to the song), radio stations with formats as diverse as Adult Contemporary, Top 40, and Country, began playing this version. It was also heard on "The Santa Clause". The popularity of this version
over the years has grown as a result. Today this version gets almost as much airplay as Bing Crosby's versions.[citation needed]
Other recordings
Notes and references
- ^ a b c d e f Mueller, John (1986). Astaire
Dancing - The Musical Films. London: Hamish Hamilton, pp.204,425. ISBN 0-241-11749-6.
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