Merry Christmas Everybody

The man on this cover once spent a long time in a hospital (for what reason I don’t know). He later decided to start and save up money for children without a home, as he knew what it was like to be longing for home. This EP was made to gather money; in one of the songs he sings that he wants to give all human beings a happier world. Quite an ambitious project.

This week we, me and my husband, was DJ:s as usual at the annual Christmas Party at Sunkit, a club for Incredible Strange Music in Stockholm. The website is all written in Swedish, but they just put up a new presentation in English, where you can also read about our annual contribution.
Last week I talked about my collection of Christmas Music in morning television, and this week I was talking in two different radio programmes (but then I got tiered of myself and cancelled a third programme). There is undoubtedly a growing interest for unusual Christmas Music.

More Dances Around The Christmas Tree

"Postflickorna" was a group of girls all working at postofficies. This record contains old Christmas songs, unfortunatly I can´t yet provide you with this particular songs. But instead I want to share some other Christmas Songs. This is filmactor Thor Modén, well known from many comedies. This time he takes the part as Father Christmas ("Tomten" in Swedish) at the main stage of the outdoor center Skansen in Stockholm, it´s just before Christmas and he sings together with a laides choir. There are two parts, part one and a part two.
Hope you enjoy it!

Old American Favourites in Swedish

This time I want to share some old American favourites with Swedish artists. These recordings were made in the 40ties, when we first discovered some of these well known songs. There are a lot of versions of both songs, but these are my favourites.
The first one is Jingle Bells with Harmony Sisters, a Finish very popular ladies group singing in Swedish with a slight fínish accent (the Swedish titel is Bjällerklang). My second example is "I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus" with Margret Bienert ("Jag såg mamma kyssa tomten").
I don´t have any pictures of these artists, so I decided to give you one of the worst postcards I have in my collection instead. There is not much to say about it, apart from that I figure it was made in the 70ties.

Old Dances Around the Christmas Tree

Kvartetten Synkopen was a male choir and they recorded a legendary EP wíth dances around the Christmas Tree. The last bit of it was sampled by "Just D", a Swedish hip hop-group, for their record "Juligen" (apparently the same name as this blog). Please listen to part one and part two of this very traditional Swedish Christmas Record from the 50ties.

Scandinavian Christmas in Hawaii

Yngve Stoor was a Swedish singer performning music in Hawaiian style. His most famous song is "Sjömansjul på Hawaii"(Christmas for Seemen in Hawaii), a very sentimental and extremely popoular Christmas song in my country, also performed by many other artists. It is all about longing for going home (a common theme in Christmas music).
He also translated american songs into Swedish. This is his version of a song that was made popoular by Bing Crosbys: "God julvisa på Hawaii".

Kalinka turns into cold ham

My old favourite Thore Skogman made his first Christmas-EP in 1963. This is another version of the cover (another one is shown below). The song Klappa på is telling about the exitement when Santa is knocking on the door. Thore is also an excellent writer of new lyrics to old songs. He turned all the old songs used for dancing around the Christmas Tree into barbaric butcher-songs (suffering pigs are hunted up and down with big knives). This song from 1985 is called Ritsch Ratsch. For another tune, "Kall skinka", he used the russian melodi Kalinka. Kalinka almost sounds like "cold ham" in Swedish, and ham is the main dish on our Christmas table.