Been listening to the all-Christmas music stations lately? Did you know that all these favorite tunes actually first “hit it big” in the 1940s—that’s 80 years ago! If that doesn’t tell us something sentiment of the season!
Name the tune; name the artist who “first” made it a hit (all of these have been popular with more than one covering!):
1-(1942) Irving Berlin wrote this tune for a scene from the first of two very popular iterations of a Vermont inn without snow; it’s been combined with another song in some of its most popular renditions.
2-(1947) Written by the same cowboy who popularized the tune, the idea for the song came after riding his horse in the (now) Hollywood Christmas Parade.
3-(1944) Hugh Martin (Joni’s good friend!) wrote this favorite tune for “Meet Me in St. Louis.” “I found a little madrigal-like tune that I liked but couldn’t make work, so I played with it for two or three days and then threw it in the wastebasket.” Luckily, his partner had heard the tune, too, and told Martin it was too good to throw away. “We dug around the wastebasket and found it,” Blaine recalled. “Thank the Lord we found it.”
4-(1946) Written by the “Velvet Fog” Mel Torme, this holiday standard (commonly subtitled) written on a blistering hot summer day was popularized by a different crooner.
5-(1941) Yes, two Berlin songs make the list—this one also from the popular films of 1942 and eponymous remake in 1954.
6-(1949) The animal featured in the song (which subsequently came to TV as animated special) originally appeared in a booklet published by Montgomery Ward.
7-(1943) Originally written to honor soldiers overseas (remember, it’s the 40s!), this song is written as a letter.
8-(1945) Written by the great Sammy Cahn and Jules Styne, the tune speaks to the miserable weather (though they also wrote in CA sunshine) and given the lyrics “we’ve no place to go” strangely appropriate for 2020.
9-(1949) This tale of unrequited love during the holidays is now a classic, probably thanks to the guy who made it a hit ten years later with his Christmas album.
10-(1948) Originally recorded as an instrumental (who can forget Arthur Fiedler’s snap of the “whip” and “neigh” of the horse), a list of artists have made the lyrics equally popular.
Email your answers for this week’s game to Peg@ambaa.com.
Answers to last week’s “LISTS” Trivia:
1-What young men do to pursue a military career. Enlist
2-Writes fiction. Novelist
3-Boxer. Pugilist
4-Practice of the Cold War when people were excluded based on presumed political view (especially in Hollywood). Blacklist
5-Billy Graham; Billy Sunday; Dwight Moody; et al. Evangelist
6-John D. Rockefeller; Adam Smith; Donald Trump; et al. Capitalist
7-To do items. Checklist … “Honey Do” List ain’t bad either
8-Song line-up on Spotify or iTunes. Playlist
9-Some who accepts the world as it literally is and deals with that accordingly. Realist
10-Popular TV series (2008-2015) starring Simon Baker as crime consultant. Mentalist
