How LYRICS Evolve

Subject: How LYRICS Evolve
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 26 Nov 01 - 10:57 PM

November 26, 2001
Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

A Dark 'Merry Little Christmas'
Is Taylor's Anthem for the Season
By RICHARD TURNER

When James Taylor was noodling around with a Christmas song in the summer of last year, it wasn't just the dissonance of the season that made some people around him raise their eyebrows. It made no business sense. Although Christmas songs are a profitable and renewable resource for the music industry, they need to be part of an entire album -- and Mr. Taylor had no other Christmas songs.

But this was James Taylor, and who was going to say no? So on Oct. 1, 2000, hunkered down at Clinton Studios in New York to record another track for his upcoming album, Mr. Taylor suddenly said, "Let's try this." He and his musicians worked out an arrangement with what he had on the guitar, rehearsed "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" once, and recorded it in two takes. Then it was set aside, a musical orphan.

"I sort of assumed it might just fill some position on the next album," Mr. Taylor says.

After Sept. 11, though, as the holidays approached, Mr. Taylor and his producer Russ Titelman began playing the recording for close friends. The response was striking. People almost seemed shell-shocked. Some wept. "They reacted so strongly," says Mr. Titelman, whose credits include albums by Eric Clapton and Randy Newman. "They'd say, 'People really need to hear this. A year from now, it won't be so important.' "

The song is a favorite of music aficionados who appreciate that it's not as sentimental or commercial as much of the rest of the genre. Everyone from Frank Sinatra to Ella Fitzgerald (and recently Christina Aguilera) has recorded it, more than 500 recordings in all. "Easily, it's the most beautiful Christmas song," says Jonathan Schwartz, a New York radio host and well-known Sinatraphile. "It was crafted by songwriters who knew what they were doing. It has a poignancy and a dark undercurrent because of when it was written."

That was 1943, for the movie "Meet Me in St. Louis," a film awash in yearning for a simpler age. Originally sung by Judy Garland, the song can be interpreted in a way that makes it fraught with longing, of people grimly trying to set aside their troubles in tragic times and connect with family and community.

Kind of like 2001: "It's not exactly a 'Jingle Bells' kind of year," says Aimee Mann's manager Michael Hausman, for whom Mr. Titelman played the song at a recent dinner party. As the nation grieves, music is helping people cope in surprising ways. Who would have thought that some Irish tenor belting out "God Bless America" at a ballgame would touch chords we never imagined? Even "The Star Spangled Banner" isn't sounding so portentous these days. "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" seemed, to Mr. Taylor and those who heard his recording, an anthem for the season.

Listen to an audio clip of James Taylor's "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." RealPlayer 8 is required.

By this time, though, it was October, too late to cobble together an EP with three or four songs, or crowbar it into a holiday compilation, or try to convince the record company (in this case Sony's Columbia Records unit) to fund a retail launch of a single song, especially when the selling window is only a few weeks. Although the technology is there for digital distribution in this post-Napster era, the business model isn't: Record companies are still terrified to make their music available for download on the Web. But again, this was James Taylor. "He wanted this, and it was our job to figure out what the hell to do with it," says Gary Borman, Mr. Taylor's manager.

After a week of discussions with Sony, it was decided to press a few hundred discs and send them to radio stations, even though there was no immediate financial upside. Later, an agreement was worked out with Microsoft's MSN unit to stream the song for a single listen, but there would be no way for listeners to download the recording for their collections. What's more, there would be no marketing budget because there was nothing to sell at retail.

"I don't know whether radio will pick it up. It's just a take it or leave it thing," Mr. Taylor says. "This is a way we can make it available, but not make a big to-do about it -- which seems just right."

Mr. Taylor makes a point of singing the original lyrics recorded by Ms. Garland, but the history of these lyrics turns out to be a tangled tale itself. The hard times in the MGM musical were that this happy St. Louis family was preparing to move to New York, in 1903. Five-year-old Tootie (Margaret O'Brien) was especially upset at the prospect, and Ms. Garland's character, her sister Esther, consoles her. "Let your heart be light," she sings, "Next year, all our troubles will be out of sight ... next year, all our troubles will be miles away."

The songwriters, Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, originally came up with the somewhat ghoulish opening line, "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, It may be your last. Next year we will all be living in the past." Ms. Garland hated it, Mr. Blane told musical historian Hugh Fordin in his book "MGM's Greatest Musicials: The Arthur Freed Unit."

"It's too sad," Ms. Garland said. "The audience is going to say 'Oh my God!' And they're going to be leaving the theater." Mr. Martin got angry and refused to change the line until male lead Tom Drake intervened and the line became "Let your heart be light ... ."

There are myriad other small variations of the lyrics in other artists' recordings, some grimmer than others. Mr. Taylor tends to take a dark path, albeit in his trademark warm, soothing tones. He sings the rarely used "verse" at the beginning of the song, but tweaks the line (unconsciously, he says) from "Bringing joy that will last" to "MAY last."

He also uses a line Ms. Garland originally sang, "Through the years we all will be together, if the Fates allow, until then we'll have to muddle through somehow." Yet not every artist was thrilled with this wording. In 1957, co-songwriter Mr. Martin got a call from Frank Sinatra saying he wanted to put it on the album "A Jolly Christmas." This one line struck Sinatra as markedly unjolly. Mr. Martin changed it to "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough."

Mr. Martin, now 87 and living near San Diego, has even written a so-called sacred version of the song called "Have Yourself a Blessed Little Christmas," which includes the deletion of the line "if the Fates allow" in favor of "Should the Lord allow." He says "it thrills me" that the song takes on special resonance this year, "but I won't take any credit for it." He says he never intended to tap into anything about war-torn 1943 -- just the movie. "Lots of songwriters thought they'd sell a lot of records if they appealed to the soldiers and the people left behind. I never thought of those things -- I was too dumb."

Mr. Taylor wasn't thinking of those things, either, last year. "It's a simple sweet message," he says in an accompanying liner note on the CD sent to radio stations. "Just get through these hard times and there'll be better days ahead. ... For some reason it seemed important to get it out there now."

Subject: RE: How LYRICS Evolve
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 26 Nov 01 - 11:38 PM

Interesting stuff Gargoyle. I have always loved the song, but it is one of these songs that requires a chord change on almost every beat, isn't it?. I would love to see M.Ted have a shot at doing a chord chart for this, not TOO complicated, hopefully.

Murray

Subject: RE: How LYRICS Evolve
From: Kaleea
Date: 27 Nov 01 - 01:49 AM

While I had heard & sung this song all of my life, When I first heard the song as sung by Judy Garland, I have known & sung the lyrics as I heard them from the lips of Judy. It is about time that we learn the REAL song. Often the watered down, whitewashed version is empty, while the original tells a story filled with the emotions which, as humans living through the trials of life, we can truly appreciate. I have always enjoyed and respected the music of Mr. James Taylor, as his music reaches to the depths of my soul. I will continue to sing "Have yourself a merry little Christmas" as Ms. Garland taught it to me over the airwaves for the same reason.

Subject: Chords for Have yourself a Merry Little Xmas
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 27 Nov 01 - 05:43 PM

Chords can be found here...

http://guitar.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.geocities.com/etheltheaardvark/haveyourselfamerrylittlechristmas.txt

It is not too complicated

Subject: RE: How LYRICS Evolve
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 27 Nov 01 - 06:00 PM

Chords for Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

These certainly work Jack, I was thinking more along the lines of how Joe Pass would have played it as a solo.

MTed, I know you are out there how about it?

Murray

Subject: RE: How LYRICS Evolve
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 28 Nov 01 - 09:29 AM

Sounds like a lot of work and I'm not familiar with Joe Pass, but I am curious. Are there any more of those charts?