Vintage Christmas Songs from the 20s
Welcome to Monday’s Mewsic Moves Me on Sunday!
There won’t be an honorary 4M co-host for December because all month long it’s nothing but Christmas mewsic! There’s no room for the mean Mr. Grinch or the bah-humbug from an old Scrooge if you’re not with the Christmas program, then kindly take yourself elsewhere cause we don’t want you spoiling our party!
For the 5th year, my late mother-in-law celebrates her birthday in heaven. If she were still with us this would be her 92nd birthday. To honor her on this day, I learned from this site that Christmas Chimes by Adrian Schubert’s Concert Orchestra was the number #1 popular song the year Dorothy was born (1927).
The 20s era produced a number of old songs that carried down the year and here you’ll find more popular songs & singers from 1927. One of the songs found mentioned at Pop Culture Madness is Blue Sky written by Irving Berlin who gave us one of the most famous Christmas songs of all times, White Christmas.
It was unknown to me for years that Berlin’s song made famous by Bing Crosby was first purrformed in the movie, Holiday Inn. What’s neat about the above clip is the starlet, Majorie Reynolds, singing with Bing isn’t really singing at all but the ghost singer, Martha Mears but what makes it really neat is I discovered while pulling this post together that another 20s songwriter, Hoagy Carmichael wrote my next featured Christmas track sung by Martha Mears, My Christmas Song For You.
While I wanted to find more Christmas mewsic written in the decade my MIL was born but my results were limited to these few. However, I did stumble on a delightful playlist of holiday songs from the 20s & 30s thanks to YouTuber, Lindsey Holiday.
❆That’s Me Santa Claus (1928) Vernon Dalhart
❆Jingle Bells (1925) Shannon Quartet
❆March of the Toys (1939) Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra
❆ Button Up Your Overcoat (1930) Zelma O’Neal & Jack Haley
❆ Savoy Christmas Medley (1929)Lloyd Shakespeare’s New Piccadilly Band
❆In a Merry Mood (1934) Barnabas Von Géczy & His Orchestra
❆Silver Bells (1931) by Shep Fields & His Orchestra
❆Silent Night (1928) Paul Whiteman & His Orchestra with Bing Crosby
❆ Auld Lang Syne (1921) Peerless Quartet
Wasn’t that a lot of fun? I hope you enjoyed these older versions of popular and not-so-popular Christmas songs.
Please read…this is a mewsic linky party, which means all participates are sharing songs that one can listen to from YouTube or Vimeo and a not a post about mewsic or mewsicians. Failure to meet this basic guideline puts your URL in danger of being removed or labeled – NO MUSIC.
It’s now time to join the 4M dance party!
ATTENTION!!! Would you like to be an honorary co-host? If so, shoot me an email or leave me a comment saying ‘YES, sign me up!’ and I’ll secure the next available month for you then send you the details. 
[tweetthis]Hit the #MondaysMusicMovesMe dance floor with me! @xmasdolly [/tweetthis]
Keep those tunes playing, your body swaying, and I’ll be boogieing over to see you soon.
X💋X💋, Cathy
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Awww Mondays hosted by Sandee from Comedy Plus.
11 Comments
Stacy Uncorked
I LOVE your vintage Christmas songs, Cathy! Like Kim said, they certainly held up well! Hope you’re having a fabulous weekend (and Happy Birthday fellow December baby!) Can’t believe Christmas is almost here! GAH! I’m waaaay behind on everything! But it’ll all come together, I can feel it. 😉
Kim @ Storms and Stardust
These songs have held up quite well – I love the nostalgia! Thank you for sharing. I think I’m going to start sharing a holiday song every day until Christmas. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s just a thought.
Kim
angelswhisper2011
I feel real vintage today, don’t know why…MOL😸Very nice mewsic and that spark is so wise. Now let me put my paw in that boots to help a furriend, just to follow the Christmas spirit 😉 Pawkisses for a Happy Monday and week ahead sweet CK🐾😽💞
messymimi's meanderings
The music from then has something about it that i really, really enjoy. Thanks for sharing it with us!
John Holton
I always like the part in “Holiday Inn” where they’re singing this and he plays the bells on the tree with his pipe.
Those old songs were great, especially “In A Merry Mood” by Barnabas von Geczy. I couldn’t help laughing…
songbird1329
Great choices. I love the movie Holiday Inn.
15andmeowing
Great choices. I like Button Up Your Overcoat. Thanks for hosting. Have a nice day! XO
Alana Mautone (@RamblinGarden)
Those songs bring me back to some of the old movies my late mother in law used to watch. Such a distinct style of music, even for those songs that were already old in the 1920’s . Nice theme!
Rain Frances
Hi Cathy 🙂 I love those old Christmas songs, I have many You Tube channels bookmarked for December mewsic listening! The video for White Christmas was great to see! Thanks!!! 🙂
Brian Frum
That really was fun and it surprised us that we knew so many of those!
Thomas Anderson
Hi, Cathy!
Happy 4M Monday back where it belongs… on Sunday, dear friend! 🙂 I also wish your late MIL a happy birthday in heaven, and admire you for remembering and honoring her with a set of holiday songs from The Roaring Twenties.
Imagine how different the world was when those “Christmas Chimes” rang out and became the extended intro to that recording by Adrian Schubert’s Concert Orchestra. I have heard Bing Crosby croon “White Christmas” countless times over the years, but this is the first time I have seen or heard his duet version with actress Marjorie Reynolds (actual vocals dubbed by ghost singer, Martha Mears) in the 1942 film Holiday Inn. I knew the name Marjorie Reynolds immediately because, the following decade, from 1953 to 1958, I watched Marjorie every week in the role of wife Peg on the second iteration of the TV sitcom The Life of Riley starring William Bendix. I enjoyed Hoagy’s “My Christmas Song For You” performed by a new-to-me singer of the era named Martha Mears. I see that she was a Missouri gal and that she sang in dozens of films from the mid 30s through the early 50s. The final song set from the 20s and 30s reminds me that my mother was a tiny tot in 1921 when the Peerless Quartet released their version of “Auld Lang Syne,” and that she was in her early 20s and a young mother with her first child, my big brother, when Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra released “March of the Toys” in 1939. 1939 was also the year that Jack Haley, who recorded “Button Up Your Overcoat” with Zelma O’Neal, famously costarred as The Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz.
Thanks for the Bob Hope quote at the end of the post. Love is the answer. Thank you for these mewsical memories from the distant past, dear friend Cathy. I hope you and DH are enjoying the holiday period, and I hope to see you again soon. Have a great week!