There are few things in popular culture as divisive as Christmas music. The mere mention of the topic tends to create two factions in an otherwise amenable group; one party feels as though they must come up with progressively more exaggerated metaphors to express their loathing for anything resembling a sleigh bell, the other side would be happy to spend their lives in a marshmallow world of roasting chestnuts, leaping lords, and sugar plum fairies.
As for me, I love Christmas music. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that I’m writing these articles. I love music generally, and while I’m hugely opinionated and can find lots to complain about in entertainment, I can also find plenty to appreciate within any given genre. So while there’s a good amount of holiday music that leaves me cold, there’s also a lot of wonderful, amazing examples of the form – most of which will never be heard on your local Adult Contemporary FM station’s 24/7 Holiday rotation. I mean, I certainly have love for the well-executed Holiday standards: Nat King Cole, Sinatra, Andy Williams, John Denver & The Muppets, The Beach Boys, et al – but I don’t feel the need to talk about it, because you’ve most likely heard it all before. What I’m going to discuss here isn’t, for the most part, music you’ll run across the mall or the supermarket. This is the off-beat, the weird, the wonderful flip side of the seasonal songbook.
I’ve already discussed the Tijuana Christmas phenomenon of the late ’60s, and now it’s time to look at another warm-weather seasonal subgenre: the Hawaiian Holiday album!
The concept of Christmas carols with an island twist might seem a bit incongruous at first glance, but these two disparate flavors have combined for some hugely memorable music. The Andrews Sisters set the standard for South Seas caroling when they released Christmas Island in 1946, and repeated the trick a few years later in 1949, when they convinced Bing Crosby to stop longing for a “White Christmas” long enough to make Mele Kalikimaka part of the national vocabulary.
Still, it wasn’t until the late ’50s that this combination reached full bloom. Hawaii’s ascension to statehood in the late 1950s, the rise of Tiki culture, and the national surfing craze that followed the release of the Gidget novel and movie sparked a rush of Polynesian-themed product – inevitably, Christmas albums followed.
The Surfers – Christmas From Hawaii (Hi-Fi Records, 1959)
The Surfers were a Hawaiian act best known for backing up Elvis Presley on the Blue Hawaii soundtrack, and their Christmas album is quite a treat – an intoxicating blend of gently wavering melody lines, and beautifully-stacked vocal harmonies with the occasional mass of jingle bells adding festive flavor. The recording features some of Hawaii’s finest working musicians offering support, including legendary steel guitar player Jules Ah See and drummer Harold Chang.
The performances are energetic and the sheer musicality and enthusiasm ensures the proceedings never descend to the level of novelty: album opener Here Comes Santa In A Red Canoe is a good-timey barbershop quartet ditty, the Hawaiian/English/Latin trilingual treatment of Adeste Fideles is pulled off with panache, Mele Kalikimaka hops along on a bed of echoing island percussion, the doo-wop hula Hawaiian Santa is a joyous lark, and the rest of the numbers work equally well – ballads and uptempo selections are handled with equal aplomb.
The Waikikis – Merry Christmas In Hawaii (Kapp, 1964)
This is really something: a faux-Hawaiian Christmas album by an anonymous band of studio musicians from Belgium. And not entirely surprisingly, given its unusual origin, it occupies a strange sort of musical limbo. It’s perfectly pleasant to listen to but without quite enough personality to make a lasting impression – an amusingly kitschy confection that disappears into thin air the moment it finishes. The arrangements lean heavily on steel guitar and bongos, the performances are smooth and expertly executed. Snow In Hawaii is a nice little galloping jingle-fest tune, the slide-and-chime treatment of O Tannenbaum is pretty fun, and the rendition of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town trots along on a bed of clattering-coconut percussion. It’s charming in a quaint sort of way, and about as authentically Hawaiian as a hula-girl-print cocktail napkin in an airport lounge.
Arthur Lyman – Mele Kalikimaka (Merry Christmas) (HiFi Records, 1964)
While not necessarily striving for a strictly “Hawaiian” sound, the Xmas offering from exotica kingpin Arthur Lyman is chock-full of volcanic flavor, and is an indispensable element of any proper holiday luau. Lyman unleashes his entire orchestral arsenal on these eleven tracks, and creates an aural advent calendar of tiki torches and rum cocktails. All manner of international instrumentation combines to conjure up a tropical season where one can wassail under waterfalls, exchange a sled for a surfboard, and sip eggnog from a hollowed-out coconut. The moods and styles vary wildly from track to track (and even moment to moment within songs), taking in a fired up, ukelele-and-vibraphone-fueled medley of Mele Kalikimaka/Jingle Bells, a languid, understated Winter Wonderland, a chiming, prancing Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, and a bizarre east-meets-west culture-clash re-imagining of We Three Kings.
The Paradise Islanders – Christmas In Hawaii (Decca, 1961)
I’ve been unable to track down much information about this one, which is a shame, as it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite seasonal selections. The liner notes are fairly devoid of actual documentation (“a collection of ever popular Yuletide melodies, played Hawaiian style by the celebrated Paradise Islanders” is the most informative passage), but whatever the story of the band actually is, the music is fantastic: lilting lap steel melodies, accented with ukelele and xylophone and the occasional shake of jingle bells. It’s spaced-out, dreamy, blissful music that conjures up images of lying on the beach on Christmas eve, staring up at the stars, waiting for Santa to come climbing down the palm tree to deliver your gifts. Highlights include a gently strutting Jingle Bell Rock, a blissful take on The Christmas Song, and the inevitable rendition of Mele Kalikimaka, but the quality doesn’t really falter at any point. It’s one long stretch of seaside enjoyment, a twelve-song set of top-notch tropical instrumental carols.
detail of artwork from the original Mele Kalikimaka sheet music
This strange subgenre of Xmas records has become a vital part of my seasonal listening, adding welcome variety to playlists, swapping out snow-covered creches for sun-bronzed Polynesian pageantry, serving as a welcome rejoinder to the standard snowbound holiday atmosphere. Track them down, give a listen, and who knows – when you prepare to fall asleep this December 24th, with visions of sugarplums hula-dancing in your head, you may even feel moved to forego the traditional milk and cookies, and leave a mai tai out for Santa Claus.