There are a gazillion holiday albums out there; everybody from Perry Como to Bob Dylan has put one out. Hell, you can even find my holiday-themed 1977 release, Some Nobody Butchers Your Favorite Christmas Carols, on eBay. It’s not bad, if you speak esperanto.
Most holiday LPs are designed to scratch a particular musical itch, and so it goes with 1981’s God Rest Ye Merry Jazzmen. It’s probably not your cup of bebop if you don’t much care for America’s classical music, but it’ll make the perfect stocking stuffer for that loved one whose tastes run to jazzed-up interpretations of their favorite Christmas songs.
The artists on God Rest Ye Merry Jazzmen include such legends as tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, pianist and John Coltrane Quartet sideman McCoy Tyner, alto saxophonist extraordinaire Arthur Blythe, trumpeter Wyinton Marsalis and more. And its songs include “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” “I’ll be Home for Christmas,” and that one with the chestnuts roasting on an open fire whose title I can never remember, amongst others.
The performances are uniformly excellent, and will make for the perfect mood music as you try in vain to put out the house fire caused by roasting said chestnuts in said open fire. And it’s an instrumentals only LP, which means there are no vocals to remind you’ve gone your whole life listening to these songs and still don’t know the words. But so what if you don’t know ‘em? I prefer to scat along like Shooby Taylor, that is until a beloved family member knocks me for a loop with a turkey leg.
I don’t know Krampus about jazz, but I know what I like. My preferences in general run to free-form jazz skronk, but I’ll be damned if I want to spend Christmas morning listening to the hair-raising likes of saxophonist Peter Brötzmann, whose music would send Santa scurrying back up the chimney screaming, “Run Dasher! Run Dancer! Run whatever the fuck your name is! I don’t know who’s down there, but it sure as hell ain’t Kenny G!” No, I prefer the mellower stuff whilst lying about in my pajamas blitzed on eggnog, and that’s what you get with God Rest Ye Merry Jazzmen.
What really sets God Rest Ye Merry Jazzmen apart from virtually every other holiday jazz album I know is song length. The artists allow themselves time to improvise and stretch out, giving you the opportunity to stretch out after eating your own body weight in cranberries and stuffing. The Dexter Gordon Quartet’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” clocks in at nine minutes plus, and the same goes for the Wynton Marsalis Quintet’s “We Three Kings of Orient Are.” Compared to them, Paquito D’Rivera’s four-plus minutes’ “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” is a Minutemen song.
Everybody loves the holidays, whether they celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Yule or Diwali. And everybody–from Christians to Zoroastrians–will love God Rest Ye Merry Jazzmen. Jazz is a universal language, and everybody in the world speaks it, kinda like the esperanto on my own 1977 LP Some Nobody Butchers Your Favorite Christmas Carols, copies of which you can still find on eBay. Or have I said that already?
Happy Holidays one and all!
GRADED ON A CURVE:
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