Charles Brown - Merry Christmas Baby (King 6194)
That's right... you guessed it - it's time for yet another version of Charles Brown's Merry Christmas Baby!
As we said last year, "Brown recorded what many consider to be the definitive version for King Records in Cincinnati in August of 1968, shortly after Syd Nathan died. By October, King had been taken over by Don Pierce and Hal Neely, who apparently chose not to renew Brown's contract..."
Be that as it may, the King release soon supplanted both the Hollywood and Imperial versions, and was the one you heard on the radio in 'Soul Locations' every Christmas. As we've seen, by 1973 it had chased them off Billboard's annual Christmas Singles chart as well, and had become the new standard.
Sadly, this is no longer the case as places like Pandora, Sirius XM and Spotify don't seem to have this record in their rotation, and the one you hear is the 1994 Cool Christmas Blues version. Oh well...
Merry Christmas Everybody!
posted by Red Kelly at 10:55 AM
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