Ella Fitzgerald: "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"

There seems to be very little to say about the established Christmas classics. They've been around forever, everyone knows them and they always sound the same no matter who performs them. This is probably why holiday albums are never much cop: what can a group or singer do with a bunch of tunes that are so familiar except make them just like everyone else? Even when some originality is brought into play — as in the famed A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector — it only results in more copycats to the extent that it's impossible to imagine "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" being sung differently before 1963.

Christmas songs being so pervasive also means that very little thought is put into the words. We all know them back to front so what's the point of having to consider meaning? When Frank Sinatra went to composer Hugh Martin about revising the lyrics to "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" he wanted to "jolly up" the song a little. A nice thought for the season but it misses the point. The line he objected to was "until then we'll have to muddle through somehow", hardly Louvin Brothers doom and gloom. The song is all about overcoming hardship to enjoy a modest family Christmas but it also looks forward to a brighter future with "faithful friends" and getting everyone together ("if the fates allow"). Muddling through the next twelve months was apparently too much for Old Blue Eyes and he requested it be excised in favour of "hang[ing] a shining star upon the highest bough". A nice thought but not something that fits in with the overall mood.

Three years later, Ella Fitzgerald, conductor Frank DeVol and famed Verve Records producer Norman Granz went into a studio in New York to work on Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas, a work that stands proudly alongside the vocalist's lifetime of top notch records — and a far cry from phoned in hack work you normal get from holiday albums. I don't know if they considered using Sinatra's version but they ended up going with the muddling lyric. She wasn't looking to jolly things up (versions of "Jingle Bells", "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" and "Rudolph" are there for some cheer) but neither does she dwell in misery. Yes, this family is going through some tough times (I can't help but think that Martin and lyricist Ralph Blane were thinking of the Great Depression, which the United States was just getting itself out of, when they wrote it) and they very well may continue but they need hope, especially if they're to have a decent Christmas. A slice of what the average working family was going through may very well be poison for the festive season but Fitzgerald makes it sweet, engaging, optimistic and, yes, a bit sad since I get the feeling things aren't turning around for these people any time soon.

I have a recent Christmas tradition of tweeting (scratch that, thinking of tweeting: I really lack the stones for social media) Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas > A Christmas Gift to You from Phil Spector. It's something I stand by (a little of bit of wall-of-sound girl groups goes a long way for me) but I don't wish to come across as trashing one album in order to build up the other. It's all taste in the end. At any rate, much can be learned from both. Producers and musicians could do worse than explore the Spector Christmas for some inspiration; budding vocalists ought to do the same with Ella's and learn a thing or two about how to sing a Christmas classic.