D. J. David B. Spins Comics-Tunes: Deck Us All With Xmas Jazz!
This is the day ITMve been waiting for. ItTMs Christmas! And itTMs time for my favorite Christmas song, my favorite comic strip and my favorite vocal group. IsnTMt it magical when it all comes together? ItTMs a Christmas miracle!
It should come as no surprise that my favorite comic strip is Walt KellyTMs Pogo. A lot of comics have their Christmas traditions, but in my mind itTMs Pogo that is most closely associated with Christmas because every year Kelly did some variation of his parody of “Deck The Halls With Boughs of Holly.” In the unique Pogo-ese spoken by the swamp critters, it came out as “Deck Us All With Boston Charlie.”
Although Kelly had illustrated the song in the funnies, published the lyrics in books, and even included the sheet music in “Songs of the Pogo,” it fell to a jazz vocal group to first record the song. If youTMre not hip to Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, allow me to hip you.
Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross were jazz fans, first and foremost. Plus they were great singers. They came together out of a mutual interest in singing jazz. But much of the music they liked best had no words, and they were not content to simply scat (although they did that very well also). Rather than nonsense like “boop shoo-bop, scree-bop sh-bang” as other jazz singers might have sung, Hendricks wrote actual, meaningful words to music that had none, taking jazz solos that had been freely improvised and writing words that matched them, note-for-note. The result was some of the coolest music ever from one of the coolest-looking groups ever! (Not enough singers wear tiaras these days…)
Being Pogo fans (and who isnTMt?) as well as jazz fans, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross recorded a jazzy version of “Deck Us All With Boston Charlie” bringing together jazz, Christmas and Pogo in a way the world had not heard before or since. Enjoy this rare treat and feel free to sing along!
(click the first image above for a slideshow of the lyrics)
For sounds of the season, click on the bar below…
— C. Yoe (in the funny papers)
Wow!!
Thank you for hipping me. This is just plain good, in addition to its novelty value.
But I thought it was, “Bark us all bow-wows of folly.”
On another note:
Yo, Craig! Come back, man! We miss you!
Goodness gracious, the first update since August! Hope everyone had a good time with the whole Xmas thingy, and hereTMs hoping for frequent future updates!(?)
Michael:
I think there was a verse with “bark us all bow-wows” but it was either another stanza or an alternate version. Kelly used this song in his strips for years and he may have added variations from one Christmas to the next. As far as I know, Lambert Hendricks and Ross are the only ones to record this song and the version they chose to sing has become the definitive one by default.
As I recall — and my memory isnTMt very good anymore — OlTM Beauregard was telling everyone that they had the words wrong. We unsuspecting comic strip readers supposed that he was going to say that the correct words were “Deck the halls with boughs of holly” or something equally absurd, but no! He presented a set of lyrics beginning with the canine-themed “Bark us all bow-wows of folly.”
He was mistaken in his insistence that all the other singers were wrong, but we remain grateful to Mr. Beauregard Bugleboy for uncovering a verse that might otherwise have been lost.
Yes! That does sound familiar. If I had a few weeks to go through my collection, ITMll bet I could find that exact strip you describe. ITMll make that my goal for next Christmas.
[...] always makes me think of Pogo, what with “Deck Us All With Boston Charlie” (see December 24, 2008) and all the other Walt Kelly holiday traditions (here and [...]
[...] the combination of Walt KellyTMs Pogo and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, so why bother? Just click here and here to relive the [...]