Sunday, December 5, 2010

Sunday Videos: Must Be Santa

The best Christmas party video of all time was put together last year by the one and only Bob Dylan. Bobby is mixing drinks, smoking cigars, hanging out with Santa, and throwing one hell of a house party. He has an accordion player, and even participates in some polka dancing, which is in his blood per his Northern Minnesota upbringing. I want an accordion player and polka dancing at my next party! Then things get rowdy, as they tend to do at holiday parties, and a fight breaks out. Santa and Bob just shake their heads. What can you do?



Dylan took this arrangement directly from the Grammy award winning polka group, Brave Combo who released this song on their 1992 album It's Christmas, Man! Bob is a big fan of polka and Brave Combo.



"Must Be Santa" was originally written by Mitch Miller, and released on his 1961 album Holiday Sing Along With Mitch Miller. Miller was a major force in the music industry from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, serving at the head of A&R for both Mercury and Columbia Records. With Columbia in the 1960s he was responsible for signing and producing many important pop standards. However, he did not like rock and folk music, and he greatly disapproved of Columbia's signing of a certain 1960s folk singer named Bob Dylan.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi, I'm Fred and live in Germany!

Just one week ago, my amateur-band „The Storytellers" covered „Must Be Santa" with all the necessary stuff like the accordion at our annual „X-Mas-Jam" of local amateur-bands at the music club „Parkplatz". Worked out pretty fine and we really had a ball, quite similar to the video but without the fighting ;-)