CHRISTMAS ISLAND

ANDREWS SISTERS
SONGWRITER: LYLE L. MORAINE
COUNTRY: U. S. A.
ALBUM: CHRISTMAS SONGS
LABEL: UNIVERSAL MUSIC
GENRE: CHRISTMAS SONG
YEAR: 2004
 
            The Andrews Sisters were an American close harmony singing group of the swing and boogie-woogie eras. The group consisted of three sisters: contralto LaVerne Sophia (July 6, 1911 – May 8, 1967), soprano Maxene Anglyn (January 3, 1916 – October 21, 1995), and mezzo-soprano Patricia Marie "Patty" (February 16, 1918 – January 30, 2013). The sisters have sold an estimated 80 million records. Their 1941 hit "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" can be considered an early example of jump blues. Other songs closely associated with the Andrews Sisters include their first major hit, "Bei Mir Bist Du Schön (Means That You're Grand)" (1937), "Beer Barrel Polka (Roll Out the Barrel)" (1939), "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar" (1940), "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else but Me)" (1942), and "Rum and Coca Cola" (1945), which helped introduce American audiences to calypso.
              The Andrews Sisters' harmonies and songs are still influential today, and have been copied and recorded by entertainers such as Patti Page, Bette Midler, Christina Aguilera, Pentatonix, and others. The group was among the inaugural inductees to the Vocal Group Hall of Fame upon its opening in 1998. Writing for Bloomberg, Mark Schoifet said the sisters became the most popular female vocal group of the first half of the 20th century. They are still widely acclaimed today for their famous close harmonies. They were inducted into the Minnesota Rock/Country Hall of Fame in May 2006.  
                             

Let's get away from sleigh bells, let's get away from snow 
Let's make a break some Christmas, Dear, I know the place to go
How'd ya like to spend Christmas on Christmas Island?
How'd ya like to spend the holiday away across the sea?
How'd ya like to spend Christmas on Christmas Island?
How'd ya like to hang a stocking on a great big coconut tree?
 
How'd ya like to stay up late, like the islanders do?
Wait for Santa to sail in with your presents in a canoe.
If you ever spend Christmas on Christmas Island
You will never stray for everyday
Your Christmas dreams come true.
 
How'd ya like to stay up late like the islanders do?
Wait for Santa to sail in with your presents in a canoe
If you ever spend Christmas on Christmas Island
You will never stray, for everyday
Your Christmas dreams come true
On Christmas Island your dreams come true.

HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS

ELLA FITZEGERALD
SONGWRITERS: H. MARTIN; R. BLANE; HUGH MARTIN & RALPH BLANE
COUNTRY: U. S. A.
ALBUM: ELLA WISHES YOU A SWINGING CHRISTMAS
LABEL: VERVE RECORDS
GENRE: CHRISTMAS SONG
YEAR: 1960
 
           Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella. She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.
          After a tumultuous adolescence, Fitzgerald found stability in musical success with the Chick Webb Orchestra, performing across the country but most often associated with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Her rendition of the nursery rhyme "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" helped boost both her and Webb to national fame. After taking over the band when Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start her solo career.
            Her manager was Moe Gale, co-founder of the Savoy, until she turned the rest of her career over to Norman Granz, who founded Verve Records to produce new records by Fitzgerald. With Verve she recorded some of her more widely noted works, particularly her interpretations of the Great American Songbook.
            While Fitzgerald appeared in movies and as a guest on popular television shows in the second half of the twentieth century, her musical collaborations with Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and The Ink Spots were some of her most notable acts outside of her solo career. These partnerships produced some of her best-known songs such as "Dream a Little Dream of Me", "Cheek to Cheek", "Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall", and "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)".
              In 1993, after a career of nearly 60 years, she gave her last public performance. Three years later, she died at the age of 79 after years of declining health. Her accolades included fourteen Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
               Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas is a 1960 album by the American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, recorded in the summer of 1960, with a studio orchestra arranged and conducted by Frank DeVol.
             It is Fitzgerald's only Verve complete album of Christmas tunes. Verve had issued a 7" 45rpm single in 1959, featuring "The Christmas Song" with "The Secret of Christmas" on the B-side; both were recorded with Russ Garcia and His Orchestra in September 1959. The album has been reissued several times and there have been variations to the sleeve's artwork.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be
out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the yule-tide gay
Next year all our troubles will be
miles away
Once again as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Will be near to us once more
Someday soon, we all will be together
If the Fates allow
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS

MICHAEL BUBLÉ
SONGWRITER: MEREDITH WILLSON
COUNTRY: CANADAXITALY
ALBUM: CHRISTMAS
LABEL: REPRISE RECORDS
GENRE: CHRISTMAS SONG
YEAR: 2011
 
            Michael Steven Bublé OC OBC (IPA:/buːˈbleɪ/boo-BLAY; born September 9, 1975) is a Canadian-Italian singer, songwriter, and record producer. His first album reached the top ten in Canada and the United Kingdom. He found a worldwide audience with his 2005 album It's Time as well as his 2007 album Call Me Irresponsible – which reached number one on the Canadian Albums Chart, the UK Albums Chart, the US Billboard 200, the Australian ARIA Albums Chart and several European charts. Bublé's 2009 album Crazy Love debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 after three days of sales, and remained there for two weeks. It was also his fourth number one album on Billboard's Top Jazz Albums chart. His 2011 holiday album, Christmas, was in first place on the Billboard 200 for the final four weeks of 2011 and the first week of 2012, totalling five weeks atop the chart, it also made the top 5 in the United Kingdom. With this, Christmas became his third-consecutive number-one album on the chart. To Be Loved was released in April 2013. Bublé has sold over 40 million records worldwide, and won numerous awards, including four Grammy Awards and multiple Juno Awards. Bublé is a dual citizen of Canada and Italy.
               "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" is a Christmas song written in 1951 by Meredith Willson. The song was originally titled "It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas". The song has been recorded by many artists, but was a hit for Perry Como and The Fontane Sisters with Mitchell Ayres & His Orchestra on September 18, 1951, and released on RCA Victor as 47-4314 (45 rpm) and 20-4314 (78 rpm). Bing Crosby recorded a version on October 1, 1951, which was also widely played.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev'rywhere you go
Take a look at the five and ten glistening once again
With candy canes and silver lanes aglow
 
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Toys in ev'ry store
But the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be
On your own front door
 
A pair of hopalong boots and a pistol that shoots
Is the wish of barney and ben
Dolls that will talk and will go for a walk
Is the hope of janice and jen
And mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again
 
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Ev'rywhere you go
There's a tree in the grand hotel, one in the park as well
The sturdy kind that doesn't mind the snow
 
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Soon the bells will start
And the thing that will make them ring is the carol that you sing
Right within your heart
 
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Toys in ev'ry store
But the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be
On your own front door
Sure it's Christmas once more.

HAPPY XMAS (WAR IS OVER)

JOHN LENNON
SONGWRITERS: JOHNN LENNON & YOKO ONO
COUNTRY: U. K.
ALBUM: JOHN & YOKO THE PLASTIC ONO BAND
LABEL: APPLE RECORDS
GENRE: CHRISTMAS SONG
YEAR: 1971
 
           John Winston Ono Lennon MBE (born John Winston Lennon, 9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as the founder, co-lead vocalist, and rhythm guitarist of the Beatles. His songwriting partnership with Paul McCartney remains the most successful in history. In 1969, he started the Plastic Ono Band with his second wife, Yoko Ono. After the Beatles disbanded in 1970, Lennon continued a career as a solo artist and as Ono's collaborator.
             Born in Liverpool, Lennon became involved in the skiffle craze as a teenager. In 1956, he formed his first band, the Quarrymen, which evolved into the Beatles in 1960. He was initially the group's de facto leader, a role gradually ceded to McCartney. Lennon was characterised for the rebellious nature and acerbic wit in his music, writing, drawings, on film and in interviews. In the mid-1960s, he had two books published: In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works, both collections of nonsense writings and line drawings. Starting with 1967's "All You Need Is Love", his songs were adopted as anthems by the anti-war movement and the larger counterculture.
               From 1968 to 1972, Lennon produced more than a dozen records with Ono, including a trilogy of avant-garde albums, his first solo LP John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, and the international top 10 singles "Give Peace a Chance", "Instant Karma!", "Imagine" and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)". In 1969, he held the two week-long anti-war demonstration Bed-Ins for Peace. After moving to New York City in 1971, his criticism of the Vietnam War resulted in a three-year attempt by the Nixon administration to deport him. In 1975, Lennon disengaged from the music business to raise his infant son Sean and, in 1980, returned with the Ono collaboration Double Fantasy. He was shot and killed in the archway of his Manhattan apartment building by a Beatles fan, Mark David Chapman, three weeks after the album's release.
             As a performer, writer or co-writer, Lennon had 25 number one singles in the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Double Fantasy, his best-selling album, won the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. In 1982, Lennon was honoured with the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2002, Lennon was voted eighth in a BBC poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Rolling Stone ranked him the fifth-greatest singer and thirty-eighth greatest artist of all time. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame (in 1997) and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (twice, as a member of the Beatles in 1988 and as a solo artist in 1994).
               Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" is a Christmas song released in 1971 as a single by John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band with the Harlem Community Choir. It was the seventh single release by Lennon outside his work with the Beatles. The song reached number four in the UK, where its release was delayed until November 1972, and has periodically reemerged on the UK Singles Chart, most notably after Lennon's death in December 1980, when it peaked at number two. In a UK-wide poll in December 2012, it was voted tenth on the ITV television special The Nation's Favourite Christmas Song.
              Also a protest song against the Vietnam War, "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" has since become a Christmas standard, frequently recorded by other artists, appearing on compilation albums of seasonal music, and named in polls as a holiday favourite.
            The Plastic Ono Band was a rock band formed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1969 for their collaborative and solo projects.
              Lennon and Ono began a personal and artistic relationship in 1968, collaborating on several experimental releases. Following their marriage in 1969, they decided their future endeavours would be credited to a conceptual and collaborative vehicle, Plastic Ono Band. The band featured a rotating lineup of musicians including Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann, Alan White, Billy Preston, Jim Keltner, Keith Moon, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, and Lennon's former Beatles bandmates George Harrison and Ringo Starr. After the Lennons' move to New York, they collaborated with Elephant's Memory under the moniker of the "Plastic Ono Elephant's Memory Band". Lennon's collaborations continued under similar names, until the winding down of the concept in 1974.
            From 2009 to 2015 (29 years following the death of Lennon in 1980), Ono and her son Sean Lennon led a new incarnation of the group, the Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band.
So this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
And new one just begun
 
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young
 
A very Merry Christmas
And a Happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
 
And so this is Christmas (war is over)
For weak and for strong (if you want it)
The rich and the poor ones
The road is so long
 
And so Happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight
 
A very Merry Christmas
And a Happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
 
And so this is Christmas
And what have we done?
Another year over
And new one just begun
 
And so Happy Christmas
We hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young
 
A very Merry Christmas
And a Happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
 
War is over
If you want it
War is over
Now.