Black Friday is also Record Store Day, and certainly a way to celebrate indie record stores. This year, my local record store Vacation Vinyl was hosting the release party for a Miles Davis exclusive, a 7″ release of his ’62 Gill Evans arranged subversive classic, ‘Blue Xmas’… as a cool transparent blue 7” vinyl.
Miles Davis’ daughter Cheryl Davis and musician/producer Vince Wilburn Jr, (Davis’ nephew), both of the Miles Davis Estate, which overseers of reissues and all things Miles, were present to sign the reissue, and I got mine signed by Cheryl and Vince!
I have never really thought about it, but what does Miles Davis have to do with Christmas music? Actually, Davis was asked by his label to contribute to an album of jazz artists playing Christmas music in 1962, and I guess he did not have any desire to interpret one of the usual suspects such as ‘Jingle Bells’ or ‘Frosty the Snowman’! So Miles Davis commissioned this new song, ‘Blue X-mas’, subtitled ‘To whom it may concern’, to jazz composer, pianist and bebop singer Bob Dorough, best known as the primary composer of and performer of many of the songs used in Schoolhouse Rock!
Davis, Gil Evans and Dorough turned the holiday season on its ear, mocking the commercialism of the Christmas season, and unsurprisingly, the lyrics are not really cheerful… ‘Lots of hungry, homeless children in your own backyards /While you’re very, very busy addressing twenty zillion Christmas cards.’ It was also the first time that the famous jazz trumpeter was recording with a vocalist.
“Blue Xmas, along with ‘Devil May Care’, another Dorough original recorded by Davis and Evans, were released by Legacy Recordings for Record Store Day Black Friday 2014 as a 7″ 45 RPM blue vinyl single, wrapped in a brand-new picture sleeve. ‘Blue Xmas’ is also featured in Jingle Bell Rocks!, a new documentary about obsessive record collectors who are looking for alternative holiday songs, and set to be released this December by Oscilloscope Laboratories… with appearances from people like Run-DMC’s Rev. Run, the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne, novelty-music baron Dr. Demento, and cult filmmaker John Waters, it should be fun!
Meanwhile, Vacation Vinyl is the only store I step in on Black Friday, so I really kept my holiday consumerism in control.
