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WHITE CHRISTMAS
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IRVING BERLIN WROTE 'WHITE CHRISTMAS' AT HIS POOLSIDE IN 1940 AFTER STAYING UP ALL NIGHT WRITING. 1ST PERFORMED ON CHRISTMAS DAY 1941 ON NBC RADIO BY BING CROSBY. PERFORMED HERE ON CHRISTMAS EVE BY THE KINGWOOD ISD HONOR BAND, FROM MY 10TH GRADE YEAR
highschool bands jazz bands college bands all region bands community bands concert bands honor bands interlochen arts academy marching bands national music camp tmea all state bands university bands
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Contemporary band compositions, classical music arrangements, marches, jazz, symphonies, overtures. A collection from bands that I have played in throughout hi
Hello and welcome! "Symphonic Band Performances" is a compilation of recordings from several high school and college bands that I played in including the TMEA (Texas) All State Band, the TMEA Region X All Region Band, the Interlochen Arts Academy National Music Camp, the Cal Poly Tech Band, San Luis Obispo, the USAF Golden West Band, and recordings from my h.s. band, Beaumont H.S. and a few band recordings that were passed down to me. Also included are various All State groups and college and university bands. I participated and played in the large majority of these recordings. There are no professional recordings here and every recording is Public Domain. Most are available for free download. Each song has been converted from the original analog or digital source and edited with Audacity or Dak software. In the majority of these recordings, I play the tenor sax or alto sax, b flat or e flat clarinet, or directing. I was drum major for 2 years in high school, I have a BA from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where I studied music ed, composition and theory. I had about 500 more recordings I was planning to digitize and upload, but this past Nov. 20th, my home was completely destroyed by fire, and all the contents, including all my music and instruments. So, this is it. Please feel free to post a comment here or on my member page. If you like, please become a fan by clicking "I'm a fan" below.
Song Info
Genre
Pop • Christmas/Seasonal
Charts
Peak #20
Peak in subgenre #1
Author
Irving Berlin - 1940
Rights
public domain
Uploaded
November 06, 2009
Track Files
MP3
MP3 3.7 MB • 224 kbps • 2:20
Story behind the song
"White Christmas" is an Irving Berlin song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. The version sung by Bing Crosby is assumed to be the best selling single of all time. The morning after Berlin wrote the song in 1940 at the poolside, he often stayed up all night writing, he told his secretary, "Grab your pen and take down this song. I just wrote the best song I've ever written, hell, I just wrote the best song that anybody's ever written!" The first public performance of the song was also by Crosby, on his NBC radio show The Kraft Music Hall on Christmas Day, 1941; the recording is not believed to have survived. He recorded the song with the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers for Decca Records in just 18 minutes on May 29, 1942, and it was released on July 30 as part of an album of six 78-rpm songs from the film. At first, Crosby did not see anything special about the song. He just said "I don't think we have any problems with that one, Irving." The song initially performed poorly and was overshadowed by the film's first hit song: "Be Careful, It's my Heart". By the end of October 1942, however, "White Christmas" topped the "Your Hit Parade" chart. It remained in that position until well into the new year. (It has often been noted that the mix of melancholy, "just like the ones I used to know" with comforting images of home, "where the treetops glisten", resonated especially strongly with listeners during World War II. The Armed Forces Network was flooded with requests for the song. In 1942 alone, Crosby's recording spent eleven weeks on top of the Billboard charts. The original version also hit number one on the Harlem Hit Parade for three weeks, Crosby's first-ever appearance on the black-oriented chart. Re-released by Decca, the single returned to the #1 spot during the holiday seasons of 1945 and 1946 (on the chart dated January 4, 1947), thus becoming the only single with three separate runs at the top of the U.S. charts. The recording became a chart perennial, reappearing annually on the pop chart twenty separate times before Billboard Magazine created a distinct Christmas chart for seasonal releases. Following its prominence in in the musical Holiday Inn, the composition won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. In the film, Bing Crosby sings "White Christmas" as a duet with actress Marjorie Reynolds, though her voice was dubbed by Martha Mears. This now-familiar scene was not the moviemakers' initial plan; in the script as originally conceived, Reynolds, not Crosby, was to sing the song. The familiar version of "White Christmas" most often heard today is not the one Crosby recorded in 1942. He was called to Decca studios on March 18, 1947, to re-record the track; the 1942 master had become damaged due to its frequent use. Efforts were made to exactly reproduce the original recording session, and Crosby was again backed by the Trotter Orchestra and the Darby Singers. Crosby was dismissive of his role in the song's success, saying later that "a jackdaw with a cleft palate could have sung it successfully." But Crosby was associated with it for the rest of his career. Another Crosby vehicle -- the 1954 musical White Christmas -- was the highest-grossing film of 1954. "ItsRanked" ranked Crosby's "White Christmas" as the number one Christmas song on its Top 40 Christmas Songs of all time. In 1999, National Public Radio included it in the "NPR 100", which sought to compile the one hundred most important American musical works of the 20th century. In 2002, the original 1942 version was one of 50 historically significant recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. The recording was broadcast on the radio on April 30, 1975, as a secret, pre-arranged signal precipitating the U.S. evacuation of Saigon.
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