THE ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS SONG
Quite a long time ago now, I conceived the idea of writing a Jazz Standard, Great American Songbook-style Christmas Song. I was playing a cocktail piano gig at the time, I think, and all those classic American songs were running through my head and flowing through my fingers. Many of which ended up somewhere in my song.
And so I wrote the Choruses and the Bridge to “I Wanted Love for Christmas.” I was thinking maybe Peggy Lee or Nancy Wilson.
Years later, I think while I was teaching a class in songwriting, I was getting obsessed with classic American song form. To wit (I think): Introduction, Verse, Vamp, Chorus, Chorus, Bridge, Chorus, Reprise, Ending, Tag. And so, I expanded on my simple ditty. I think the finished song has most of those parts. As well as most of Christmas. If you think this makes the song “too long,” then you don’t get it.
Years later, I made the video from odds and ends I found on the random internet. I especially wanted a picture that suggested bourgeois Christmas contentment. Because almost all of those Jazz Standard, Great American Songbook-type songs I was aspiring to emulate one way or another touched on the theme of upward mobility. My theory is that the audience for big band music and songs from Broadway musicals was young, upwardly mobile, urban young adults. Or those who aspired to be. At any rate, I found the picture I was looking for, and it’s at the top of this page.
The recording is just me and my old trusty Yamaha piano. In my head, though, it’s maybe the Count Basie big band accompanying maybe Chris Connor.
Here’s the video:
I Wanted Love for Christmas on Vimeo