Warren Wolf - Christmas Vibes (2020)

From the record label:

There’s no shortage of Christmas music out there that can evoke the holiday spirit. But it takes a master of groove and swing like Warren Wolf to conjure a true feeling of Christmas Vibes. On his new album, the vibraphone great and father of five offers an album of jazzy Yuletide cheer sure to provide the ideal soundtrack to the season for the hippest families on the block. Wolf takes an even more prominent role than usual on Christmas Vibes, playing all the piano and keyboard parts as well as spotlighting his usual virtuosity on the vibes. In part, it was the outcome of necessity: the album was recorded in mid-March, just as much of the country was beginning to shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, necessitating some last-minute changes of plan. But it also gave the leader a long-overdue opportunity to showcase his multifarious talents.

The album was featured in Downbeat magazine's 2020 Holiday Gift Guide while Stereophile named the album the "Recording of the Month" in December 2020: "it is a lovely, heartfelt offering that deserves its place in this magazine's December issue. In this year of years, in this holiday season observed in a pandemic, it arrives like a life-affirming antidote to darkness."

The album definitely lives up to all that hype - the playing is spectacular and I'm diggin' the grooves. As mentioned above, Wolf plays not only vibraphone, but other keyboards and percussion as well. On most tracks, he's accompanied by Jeff Reed on bass and Carroll "CV" Dashiell III on drums. There's also vocals on five of the thirteen tracks, provided by Christie Dashiell, Allison Bordlemay, and Micah Smith. Overall, I prefer the swingin' instrumentals, but that's just me.

Peak on the US Billboard Top 200 chart: Did not chart

Tracks:

All good stuff. My top picks are O Christmas Tree (which beautifully sets the tone for the album), Skating (the Vince Guaraldi tune from the Charlie Brown special), Winter Wonderland, the upbeat Happy Xmas (War Is Over), and This Christmas just because it's a great tune. I'm at the age now where I seem to be chasing Christmas nostalgia and not really looking for new holiday tunes, but the sole original track, Wake Up Little Kids It's Christmas, fits right in here, so I don't mind it much. 

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: Much like Have Yourself A Soulful Little Christmas, this CD was purchased  at some point during the past few years and was immediately put into heavy rotation during the holiday season. 

The set includes a take on Sweet Little Jesus Boy, a 1934 piece normally performed in a semi-spiritual style. It's not a tune one hears very often, but it was practically a yearly occurrence during Christmas Eve services at the church I attended as a teenager. Attending that church at the same time was a local piano/voice teacher who was a graduate of Westminster Choir College, simply a fantastic musician as well as a kind, caring person. However, by the time I met her, she was past her prime as a vocalist and fit the mold of the stereotypical warbling church soprano with a vibrato you could drive a truck through. Imagine an operatic take on a spiritual and you get the idea of her performances of Sweet Little Jesus Boy. Sadly, they had passed the point of pity into parody and then to just downright humorous.

Christmas Eve services often prove to be tricky for church choir directors because 1) choir members travel out-of-town to visit family, 2) church choir attendance is normally iffy at best, and 3) in the case of this particular church, the candlelight Christmas Eve service started at the unholy hour of 11 PM (weak pun intended). For these reasons, the choir director usually offered the aforementioned soprano a solo and Sweet Little Jesus Boy was often her song of choice. I'm sure it's a fine tune, but since I was trying not to laugh out loud during an otherwise quiet church service, I really wasn't paying attention to the singing; I was just trying not to draw my mother's ire on Christmas Eve. In my defense, I was a knuckleheaded teenager at the time and the adults around me weren't behaving much better: I distinctly remember one adult leaning over during a performance and muttering, "Get the hook." Regardless, I rather enjoy the soulful performance of the performance on this disc.

My father was a Presbyterian Pastor for over 35 years and kept a bulletin from every service at the churches he served, first on paper then, near the end of his career, digitally. He served the church with the above-mentioned soprano from 1978-1985 and his saved bulletins indicate we were treated to Sweet Little Jesus Boy as a solo no fewer than 4 times during those 8 Christmas seasons. If it wasn't Sweet Little Jesus Boy (1978, 1982, 1984, 1985), it was Birthday Of A King (1978, 1981, 1984, 1985), or O Holy Night (1979, 1982, 1983) and often more than one of those three if Christmas Eve fell on or near a Sunday.

Please forgive this stream-of-consciousness digression prompted by Sweet Little Jesus Boy as it really doesn't have much to do with this fabulous Warren Wolf CD. But like I said, I'm chasing Christmas nostalgia these days.