Classic Christmas Music's Swan Song

For me, the era of classic Christmas recordings' end is signaled by one seminal music event in 1977 when two legends met to make beautiful music together. Yes, I'm talking about the historic duet of Bing Crosby and David Bowie on their version of Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy.  Beyond that moment Christmas music entered a dismal period punctuated with a few minor bright spots.  How many modern R&B versions of This Christmas, or horribly glib rewrites of the 12 Days of Christmas, or worse yet Madonna's massacre of Santa Baby must we endure?  Funny enough though, this post is partially inspired by the recent release of a new animated cover of this 1977 classic, by non-other than Jack Black and Jason Segel.

I first read the story of this song's inception in a newspaper article published in the Edmonton Journal a few years ago.  Bing Crosby was looking for a British musician to share a duet with for his 1977 Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas, television special.  Most accounts suggest that Bing's kids suggested Bowie as a potential partner, and Bowie, who was in the midst of creating his celebrated Berlin trilogy and getting sober (after spend the the last few year a slave to a massive cocaine addiction) wanted to be involved in a project that would help him move beyond the Ziggy Stardust/Thin White Duke personas that he had been known for throughout the first half of the seventies.  Each with their personal agendas came together to make this final classic Christmas song, although it was not without some friction.

When told that Bing and the show's producers wanted to him to sing Little Drummer Boy, Bowie expressed extreme displeasure.  He hated the song (a sentiment that I completely get on board with) and asked to be given another song to sing.  Enter Ian Fraser, Larry Grossman, and Buz Kohan, who wrote Peace on Earth in under 75 minutes and arranged the two songs to compliment each other.  Bowie agreed to singing the new lyrics, and after less than an hour of rehearsal between Crosby and Bowie, Bowie's segment of the Christmas special had been laid down with little expectation that the performance would ever go beyond the special's broadcast.  Crosby died a month later, making this Christmas special the last project that he would ever complete.  Bowie continued on with his incredibly prolific career.

Since the special originally aired, the song has gone from an obscure oddity to a seasonal classic, given the poignant lyrics that still resonate today.  It is also charming to watch old guard Crosby banter with the undeniably original and strangely enduring Bowie.  Crosby wins me over more in the five minute segment than in any of the movies that I have seen him in and I could watch David Bowie pick lint out of his belly button for an hour and still be fascinated.  Here's the original segment from Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas...