freeman,
Fascinating article. I can't imagine why they wanted to mess with the
original lyrics... :)
MERRY CHRISTMAS everybody!!!
-- JR
flixs...@aol.com wrote:
The recent postings of favorite Holiday movies made me recall this
excellent article on how the song immortalized in MEET ME IN ST.
LOUIS "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" sung by Judy Garland
actually was actually quite bleak if not all together depressing when
originally written. I thought everyone might enjoy reading the
original lyrics and how it was changed, with the cooperation of the
composer. In Googling to find the article, I counted well over a
100 singers who have recorded this song. Wow, the impact of film on
popular culture cannot be underestimated...
freeman
There's Something About Merry
The history of a popular holiday song -- How ''Have Yourself a
Merry Little Christmas'' became one of the season's most beloved songs
By Chris Willman
<http://search.ew.com/EWSearch/ew/search/search.html?type=ew:Chris+Willman;>
| Jan 08, 2007
There are two Christmas anthems locked in a struggle for the nation's
soul. One, the perennial leader, is the Nat King Cole-popularized
''The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire),'' a glowing
portrait of America in heavenly, secular peace. And then we have the
challenger: ''Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,'' which this
year leaped to No. 2 on ASCAP's annual list of the most performed
holiday songs. ''Chestnuts'' has plenty going for it: embers, tots,
reindeer, an assurance of everything in its right place, and that
1-to-92 target demographic. But it can't hold a candle to the depth
and richness of ''Merry Little Christmas,'' which wins our hearts by
celebrating a quality that's even more intrinsic to the season:
emotional ambivalence.
'''Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' manages to be happy and sad
at the same time, hopeful but full of melancholy, as all the best
Christmas songs are,'' says Bette Midler, who sings it on her new CD,
/Cool Yule/. And the song's fascinatingly tangled history has left it
with several very different sets of lyrics, from the near-suicidal to
the downright ebullient. There's even a recent ''sacred'' rewrite,
''Have Yourself a Blessed Little Christmas.'' Which one you prefer may
be the truest Rorschach test of your yuletide temperament.
Hugh Martin, the song's 92-year-old writer, is calling from a
California studio where he's working on demos for a new musical. He's
curious to know who's done ''Merry Little Christmas'' well this year.
Though the latest interpreters include Sarah McLachlan, James Taylor,
and Aimee Mann, he's most excited to learn that his song has finally
merited a hair-metal cover. ''Twisted Sisters, is that the group's
name? Ha ha ha. That's a hoot!''
In 1943, Martin and Ralph Blane were an already successful songwriting
team hired to pen the songs for the movie musical /Meet Me in St.
Louis/, which would pair Judy Garland with her future husband,
director Vincente Minnelli. Though Martin and Blane shared credit for
the tune, Martin was actually the sole writer of ''Merry Little
Christmas,'' and a stubborn one. For the now-famous scene in which
Garland and her little sister, a 7-year-old Margaret O'Brien, are
despondent over the prospect of moving away from their cherished home,
he wrote an initial set of lyrics that were almost comically
depressing. Among the never-recorded couplets --- which he now
describes as ''hysterically lugubrious'' --- were lines like: ''Have
yourself a merry little Christmas/It may be your last.... Faithful
friends who were dear to us/Will be near to us no more.''
''I often wondered what would it have been like if those lyrics had
been sung in the movie,'' laughs O'Brien, now 69. ''But about a week
before we were to shoot the scene where Judy sings it to me, she
looked at the lyrics and said, 'Don't you think these are awfully
dark? I'm going to go to Hugh Martin and see if he can lighten it up a
little.'''
As Martin tells it, he initially balked at changing the words. ''They
said, 'It's so dreadfully sad.' I said, 'I thought the girls were
supposed to be sad in that scene.' They said, 'Well, not /that/ sad.'
And Judy was saying, 'If I sing that to that sweet little Margaret
O'Brien, they'll think I'm a monster!' And she was quite right, but it
took me a long time to get over my pride. Finally, Tom Drake [the
young male lead], who was a friend, convinced me. He said, 'You stupid
son of a b----! You're gonna foul up your life if you don't write
another verse of that song!'''
Martin finally gave in, coming up with a new, somewhat less downbeat
lyric. As sung in the movie, ''Merry Little Christmas'' is a buck-up
ballad that imagines the possibility of a bright future but finally
admits, in the song's most powerful line, that ''until then, we'll
have to muddle through somehow.''
Liza Minnelli (Vincente Minnelli and Judy Garland's daughter)
remembers her father's stories about telling Martin, '''Nooo, this
won't do. Look, the movie is about hope and dreams, and there's gotta
be some hope in the song.' My feeling is that Christmastime is about
your past, and there comes a time when it does become sentimental,
just because you start remembering, and people will always miss
somebody at Christmas. But to indulge in that and just say 'Everything
was better then' --- forget it! You've always gotta have hope.''
/Meet Me in St. Louis/ proved to be a huge hit, but there was only a
modest market for Christmas pop at the time, and ''The Trolley Song''
became the breakout tune, scoring a Best Song Oscar nomination. Still,
''Merry Little Christmas'' is one of Garland's most mesmerizing screen
moments, and one of her most maternal. ''Out of all my mom's movies,''
says Garland's daughter Lorna Luft, ''that's the hardest scene for me
to watch.'' Notes Linda Ronstadt, ''There's so much inherent
trouperism in [Garland's] version. Because one can imagine the
topsy-turvy of /her/ life and how many times she probably had to
demonstrate the eternal cheeriness and gleefulness of Christmas.''
Even so, ''Merry Little Christmas'' seemed destined to languish as a
beloved show tune that couldn't quite make it to ''standard.'' Then,
in 1957, Frank Sinatra --- who'd already cut a lovely version with the
movie's bittersweet lyrics in 1947 --- came to Martin with a request
for yet another pick-me-up. ''He called to ask if I would rewrite the
'muddle through somehow' line,'' says the songwriter. ''He said, 'The
name of my album is /A Jolly Christmas/. Do you think you could jolly
up that line for me?''' Not about to give the Chairman any lip, Martin
made several cheerier alterations, shifting the happiness into the
present tense and changing that ''muddle through'' line to ''Hang a
shining star upon the highest bough.''
The peppier Sinatra version turned the song into a Christmas
perennial; it has since been recorded thousands of times. ''It's been
a little confusing,'' says Martin, ''because half the people sing one
line and half sing the other.'' It's probably more off-balance than
that. Sample a good portion of the 500-plus recordings that are up on
iTunes, and most use the Sinatra lyrics. Even Garland herself
eventually did. ''But I still kind of like 'muddle through somehow,'
myself,'' Martin admits. ''It's just so kind of...down-to-earth.''
Of course, the ''happy'' lyrics can still pack an emotional wallop.
''I'm surprised that our version is very popular at all,'' says
Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, whose recording for the 1989 /A Very
Special Christmas/ charity album continues to get substantial airplay
every year. ''I was in a particularly melancholy mood, so I don't
think ours is a cheerful version. Singing it upset me; I was on the
verge of tears. I was thinking about relationships, and how things had
changed, and the people that I couldn't see and couldn't be with. But
maybe that [sadness] is what most people feel at Christmas, and maybe
that's why people relate to it.''
Recently, more and more singers have been opting for the darker words.
James Taylor, for one, was inspired to go back to the song's
bittersweet roots after 9/11. He recorded ''Merry Little Christmas''
in fall 2001 and released it to radio soon after (it's included on his
new /James Taylor at Christmas/ album). ''It's as though people were
suddenly experiencing everything on a deeper level for a while,'' says
the singer, who was intrigued to learn that the song was penned during
WWII. Though Martin has said he wasn't consciously writing about
wartime separations, Taylor ''would be very surprised if he wasn't
somehow influenced by the mood of missing people over the holidays and
hoping like hell that they would be home next Christmas, if not this
one.'' In times of strife, ''we 'muddle through,' as the lyric says.
As the /best/ lyric says.''
Not everyone feels that way, though. '''Muddle through' is what we
/do/,'' agrees Ronstadt, ''but I love the bravado of 'hanging the
shining star,' because it gets past the layers of anxiety to find that
little beacon of hope and bravery.'' In her recording, she neatly
solves the problem by singing both versions of the key line. And that
manic-depressive compromise between the muddled and the magisterial
might just capture Christmas best of all.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
*ORIGINAL VERSION*
/Have yourself a merry little Christmas/
/It may be your last/
/Next year we may all be living in the past/
/Have yourself a merry little Christmas/
/Pop that champagne cork/
/Next year we may all be living in New York/
/No good times like the olden days/
/Happy golden days of yore/
/Faithful friends who were dear to us/
/Will be near to us no more/
/But at least we all will be together/
/If the Lord allows/
/From now on, we'll have to muddle through somehow/
/So have yourself a merry little Christmas now/
*JUDY GARLAND VERSION*
/Have yourself a merry little Christmas/
/Let your heart be light/
/Next year all our troubles will be out of sight/
/Have yourself a merry little Christmas/
/Make the yuletide gay/
/Next year all our troubles will be miles away/
/Once again as in olden days/
/Happy golden days of yore/
/Faithful friends who were dear to us/
/Will be near to us once more/
/Someday soon we all will be together/
/If the fates allow/
/Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow/
/So have yourself a merry little Christmas now/
*FRANK SINATRA VERSION*
/Have yourself a merry little Christmas/
/Let your heart be light/
/From now on, our troubles will be out of sight/
/Have yourself a merry little Christmas/
/Make the yuletide gay/
/From now on, our troubles will be miles away/
/Here we are as in olden days/
/Happy golden days of yore/
/Faithful friends who are dear to us/
/Gather near to us once more/
/Through the years we all will be together/
/If the fates allow/
/Hang a shining star upon the highest bough/
/And have yourself a merry little Christmas now/
All three versions of ''Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas'' by
Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane 1943, 1944 Renewed 1971, 1972 EMI
Catalogue Partnership (successor to LOEWS) (PWH)/admin. by EMI Feist
Catalog Inc. (ASCAP) Used by permission.
Originally posted Dec 15, 2006 Published in issue #912 Dec 22, 2006
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