You have to get to 3:33 for the Jimmy McGriff White Christmas I'm after here. There is something about that Hammond B3 that gets me every time.
I hear it and I'm instantly transported back to being 4 years old, laying on the hard brick/tiled floor of our house on Kirkdale with those brown headphones that pushed my cheeks out, like a chipmunk's about to pop, listening to Daddy's albums.
Play it, Jimmy.
Oh, you want lyrics?
Ok, well the Drifters have this one locked up then.
Some accounts have Irving Berlin writing this poolside in Arizona in 1940. I'd be dreaming of a white Christmas in that heat, too.
Here's Louis Armstrong performing it a decade later with one of the original orchestras who recorded the song 1942:
And, of course, the most famous, the first, and still one of the most beautiful, remains Bing Crosby's version. He sang the song for the first time on Christmas Day 1941, only weeks after the December 7 bombing of Pearl Harbor. How many young GIs were shipping out that Christmas? It still stands as the best selling single of all time.
For a girl growing up in Houston, I had to fib a little singing "just like the ones I used to know" but I guarantee you the "dreaming of a white Christmas" part couldn't have been any more fervent or sincere.
ok, just one more instrumental:
no, I lied...
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