BOOKER T. & THE M.G.'s: IN THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT (1966)
1) Jingle Bells; 2) Santa Claus
Is Coming To Town; 3) Winter Wonderland; 4) White Christmas; 5) The Christmas
Song; 6) Silver Bells; 7) Merry Christmas Baby; 8) Blue Christmas; 9) Sweet
Little Jesus; 10) Silent Night; 11) We Three Kings; 12) We Wish You A Merry
Christmas.
Okey-dokey. This is an album by Booker T. &
The M.G.'s, called In The Christmas
Spirit and containing twelve songs whose titles you could probably guess
even without looking at the track list. It was issued in time for the Christmas
season of 1966 on the Stax label. What else needs to be said? I'm at a loss for
words.
Actually, if you are on the lookout for a
purely instrumental Christmas album, so that you could have thirty-four minutes
of background accompaniment while you're doing your Christmas thang (not that
thirty-four minutes is such a long time, particularly if your table is well set
up), this would be a decent enough choice, I guess. At least we can tell that
Booker T. Jones respects his traditional holidays, and is able to transmit
feelings of joy, reverence, and even a bit of spiritual mysticism through his
organ playing, such as would be required from an understanding musician during
the Christmas season.
On second thought, we could also remark that
once the main theme of ʽJingle Bellsʼ gives way to the improvisatory section, the
song becomes a rather irreverent piece of Chuck Berry-stylized rock'n'roll,
with Cropper taking over Booker T. for a while and ruminating on the
possibilities of merging ʽJingle Bellsʼ with ʽMemphis Tennesseeʼ. That's a good
thing — a bit of experimental Christmas humour has never hurt anybody — but it
is somewhat regrettable that they did not apply the same approach to everything
else here. Pretty soon, it becomes obvious that Cropper's guitar will
consistently be relegated to an auxiliary function: Santa Claus does not
approve of too much rocking and rolling while being confined to sleigh duty,
but he does enjoy some solemn church organ, or at least an electric simulation.
One exception is a Chicago blues-style arrangement of ʽMerry Christmas Babyʼ,
where Steve gets to be B. B. King for a little while, and which does not sound at all Christmasy, but then what's wrong
with adding some classic electric blues to your Christmas experience?
That said, when it is Booker T.'s turn to have
a track completely focused on a solo organ performance, this is as close as
the album comes to emanating a bit of magic: ʽWe Three Kingsʼ, played completely
straight and stern, at a low, ghostly volume, becomes almost as haunting as
ʽSummertimeʼ from their previous album. Booker T. may not have been a
fantastic organ virtuoso, and his playing on the band's more dynamic-aggressive
numbers may seem unnecessarily restrained and too overtly disciplined to
generate top-level excitement, but he was a fine master of subtle atmosphere,
and it is a pity that the band's R&B format prevented them from letting him
explore that side of his personality more often. Here, though, ʽWe Three
Kingsʼ, together with the preceding ʽSweet Little Jesus Boyʼ and ʽSilent
Nightʼ, is like a concluding part of a special atmospheric trilogy that, once
you have had your fill of the turkey or the pumpkin pie, initiates you into the
mystery spirit of the occasion. It's not amazingly amazing — reinventing these
all-too familiar melodies in some radically new way is a feat of which The
M.G.'s would hardly be capable — but it is touching and tasteful. Meaning that
the record is not a complete waste of
time, as much as the rational mind would suggest that it couldn't be anything
but.
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