Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post provides information about the classic Blues/R&B Christmas song "Merry Christmas, Baby" and showcases two versions of that song.
The content of this post is presented for cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to Charles Brown and Johnnie Moore's Three Blazers for their musical legacy. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publishers of these examples on YouTube.
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LYRICS: MERRY CHRISTMAS, BABY
(credited to Johnny Moore and Lou Baxter)*
Merry Christmas baby
You sure did treat me nice
Merry Christmas baby
You sure did treat me nice
Gave me a diamond ring for Christmas
Now I'm livin' in paradise
Well, I'm feelin' mighty fine
Got good music on my radio
Well, I'm feelin' mighty fine
Got good music on my radio
Well, I wanna kiss you, baby
While you're standin' 'neath the mistletoe
Santa came down the chimney
'Bout a half past three
Left all these pretty presents
That you see before me
Merry Christmas little baby
You sure have been good to me
I haven't had a drink this mornin'
But I'm all lit up like a Christmas tree
-snip-
*This song was at least partially composed by Charles Brown.
Read the Addendum found below.
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SHOWCASE EXAMPLES
Example #1: 1947 HITS ARCHIVE: Merry Christmas Baby - Johnny Moore's 3 Blazers (Charles Brown, voc) (#3 R&B hit)
MusicProf78, Published on Jul 11, 2014
Merry Christmas, Baby (Baxter-Moore) by Johnny Moore's Three Blazers (CD audio source)
Though the tune is today more closely identified with Moore's vocalist-pianist Brown (who recorded his own version in later years) this is the original best-selling 1947 release of the rhythm 'n blues standard.
-snip-
Here are some comments from this YouTube sound file, with numbers added for referencing purposes only.
1. onegibson, 2012
"This is a definitive example of the slow Blues style. "
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2. Anglynn74, 2012
"the original! rock on!"
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3. John Holloway, 2017
"this has been my christmas theme song for decades,the orig and best .all theolder cousins and uncles had it on 78s"
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4. Rick Dahms, 2017
"Contrary to the label, Charles Brown wrote this - credit stolen by Baxter & Moore."
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Example #2: Merry Christmas Baby - Charles Brown
Spadesz93, Published on Nov 27, 2010
A christmas soul classic. Heard in the Holiday Comedy 'Friday After Next'
-snip-
Here are some comments from this YouTube sound file, with numbers added for referencing purposes only.
1. STEPHEN VASIL, 2013
"Charles Brown: A great but vastly underrated R&b singer from the 1950's."
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REPLY
2. Charles Washington, 2018
"STEPHEN VASIL , it was recorded in one of America's first integrated recording studios, King Records."
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REPLY
3. Quippian Simmons, 2016
"THIS is the ONLY version of this song that's "real." Everybody and his/her momma has tried to do this song and they miss the WHOLE point of "the Christmas blues." Sidebar: Ray Charles ...THEE Ray Charles....used to open for Charles Brown on the road. RIP Mr. Brown (and Mr. Charles)."
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REPLY
4. Mary Lane, 2016
"Ray used to imitate Charles Brown when he first started out."
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5. Geena114, 2014
"Well, I can't say the same, but I do really love this song. His interpretation is my favorite of all that I've listened to and I love how he's tickling the ivories!"
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6. 1932March, 2016
"Charles Brown is right there with Ray Charles, Joe Williams, Louis Armstrong and other truly great blues singers."
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7. stephanie warthaw, 2016
"this song always reminds me of my grandmother cooking on Christmas Eve baking cakes for christmas"
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8. Tom Needles, 2016
"I'm listening to the guitar player and hearing T-Bone's influence. Is it Wayne Bennett ? Then I do some research and discover it was Johnny Moore whom I had never heard of. All from Texas. Come to find out Moore influenced Chuck Berry"
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9. Lonnie Bradford Bradford, 2016
"I love this version of the song by Charles Brown, It reminds me of that classic old school song way way back in the day :)"
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10. Rob Branigin, 2017
"it ain't christmas until somebody breaks out the charles brown. RIP, sir."
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11. Tom Smith, 2017
"Simple and beautiful. Just a few instruments, a smooth voice and a great song."
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12. Karen Parker, 2017
"Now that I've this song, it feels like Christmas. It's a shame we don't have more music from this singer. Charles Brown father became sick while he was touring or about to tour. His record company told him to choose the road or his father. He was told if he chose to go see his father, his career would be over. He chose to go see about his father."
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13. Kenneth J, 2017
"Everybody done SLEPT on this HepKat Mr Charles Brown"
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ADDENDUM
From https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/who-wrote-merry-christmas-baby-180965207/ Who Really Wrote “Merry Christmas, Baby”
The co-author of a classic holiday song still can’t catch a break
By William Browning; Smithsonian Magazine, November 2017
"A new song by a Los Angeles-based trio called Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers began showing up in record bins 70 years ago this month, just in time for the holidays:
But this being America, a counterpoint soon emerged.
Merry Christmas, baby,
You sure did treat me nice
In contrast to the nostalgic schmaltz of “White Christmas,” which was already (and remains) the best-selling Christmas single of all time, this was a blues number with a slow tempo, and it promised something new for the holidays: romance.
Gave me a diamond ring for Christmas,
Now I’m living in paradise
“Merry Christmas, Baby” rose to No. 3 on Billboard’s Jukebox R&B chart, and quickly became an American Christmas standard. More than 80 artists have covered it, from Elvis to Springsteen, Otis Redding to Billy Idol, Christina Aguilera to CeeLo Green. Jeff Beck and Frankie Valli joined forces for a version released just last fall.
Yet this particular holiday gift has always been wrapped in doubt. It was, and remains, credited to Lou Baxter and Johnny Moore. But it was the performance of Charles Brown, the Three Blazers’ pianist and vocalist, that defined the song—and he insisted that he wrote it, too. In the postwar music industry, such intellectual-property disputes were as common as mediocre B sides, but I’ve uncovered evidence that Brown’s claim was legitimate.
In several interviews over the decades, Brown maintained that an ailing songwriter named Lou Baxter had asked him to record one of his songs as a favor, so he could pay for a throat operation. Brown, who had already written a hit song in “Driftin’ Blues,” said he reworked one of Baxter’s compositions into “Merry Christmas, Baby” and recorded it with the Three Blazers. When the record came out, he said, he was surprised to see it credited to Baxter and Moore.
The bandleader, Brown said in interviews over the years, had nothing to do with the song’s composition. What’s more, a woman named Richie Dell Thomas, an aspiring pianist in Los Angeles in the 1940s, told the blues historian Roger Wood that Brown, a friend of hers, developed the song in her apartment.
And I recently discovered that “Lou Baxter” was a pseudonym for one Andrew Whitson Griffith, an Army veteran in the dry-cleaning business who shopped lyrics around the Los Angeles blues scene in the 1940s and ’50s. He deposited dozens of his songs in the U.S. Copyright Office, including, in September 1947, one titled “Merry Xmas Baby.” It was never published, but earlier this year, I laid eyes on a copy of the song from the Library of Congress.
It was certainly the basis for “Merry Christmas, Baby”—the first verse is nearly identical to the song we know today, as is the second, rhyming “music on the radio” with “underneath the mistletoe.” After the start of the bridge, though, the lyrics chart a different course
Griffith’s bridge is busy—a heap of references to gold, a Cadillac, a “fancy” bar and “lovely clothes.” The version Brown sang streamlined them into “all these pretty presents you see before me.” And while Griffith’s version closed:
I can’t help but love you
For being such a dear
Merry Christmas, baby,
And a happy new year
Brown, a teetotaler, cut the sappiness and offered mischief instead:
Merry Christmas, baby,
You sure been good to me
I haven’t had a drink this morning
But I’m all lit up like a Christmas tree
At a minimum, I think Brown should have received partial credit for writing the song.
Griffith and Moore both died, largely unknown, in the 1960s. Brown, meanwhile, became renowned as a pioneer of the laid-back, piano-driven style of West Coast blues and was recognized as an early influence on Ray Charles; he had a renaissance in the 1990s, touring with Bonnie Raitt. It had already been announced that he would be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame when he died of congestive heart failure in 1999, at age 76. The first line of his obituary in the New York Times described him as “the singer of the hit ‘Merry Christmas, Baby.’” "
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