Our Christmas playlist for 2015 features 25 favorites created by Michael Kelly, Cargo Communications Manager from United Airlines.
     Michael includes pop vocals, big band, rhythm & blues, soul, rock ‘n’ roll, country, folk, world music, and even jazz, revealing a deep love and understanding of uplifting seasonal music that crosses all lines to spread the joy.
     Someone once asked Duke Ellington when he knew the music he was writing was complete.
     Ellington thought for a moment and mused:
     “If it sounds good, it is good.”
     I thought of those words listening to this excellent collection of Christmas songs.
     Dick Haymes, perhaps one of the most overlooked of the great big band singers of the 1940s, teams up with guitarist genius Les Paul on “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”
     The Ventures, an instrumental guitar rock group, put their “Walk Don’t Run” signature sound on a 1965 version of Sleigh Ride, and it works!
     Cuban Christmas “En el portal de Belen” by Trio Cubamar is hauntingly beautiful as it sways gently in the stable of Bethlehem.
     Johnny Mercer and Maggie Whiting remind us “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Mercer, the wordsmith dream weaver who sang his own tunes and was the driver of more great songs than anybody, teams up with the incomparable Miss Whiting for a stellar turn.
     There is more, but as we listened to this unexpected exceptional collection of holiday music, we kept thinking:
     Who knew that Michael was such a passionate musicologist?
     Just listen to Toots and the Maytals from down Jamaica way and get that “Christmas Feeling.”
     What a great Christmas gift we can all share.
     In Michael’s words:
     “The only ‘performance video’ is filled with one of the most exquisite, transcendent two minutes in TV history – Perry Como singing, ‘Love in a Home’ from one of his later Christmas specials.”
     Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2015.

Geoffrey