Welcome back to day three of me going through some of the favorite Christmas songs in my collection – and I’ll keep going until December 25. I first bought “An Austin Rhythm and Blues Christmas” on cassette in the mid-80s. As near as I can tell, it’s now out of print, but available for streaming and download, so that’s all you really need.

There’s not a clunker on “An Austin Rhythm and Blues Christmas,” but today, let’s go with The Fabulous Thunderbirds. Remember them? Stevie Ray Vaughn’s older brother, Jimmie, on lead guitar?  “Tuff Enuff” was their big hit in 1986.

The T-Birds have two songs on “An Austin Rhythm and Blues Christmas.” The first is “Merry Christmas Darling” – not The Carpenters tune, but a blues cover written by Hop Wilson and Ivory Lee Semiens. My pick though is the second Fabulous Thunderbirds song, the standard “Winter Wonderland.”

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Time to talk about another Christmas song, one a day until December 25. “Christmas Must Be Tonight” by The Band is so much better than you’d expect from a song stuck at the end of side one on their 1977 odds-and-ends album, “Islands.” This was their last album for Capitol Records, scraped-together leftovers so the soundtrack for “The Last Waltz” could come out on Warner Brothers.

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I’ve got a deep collection of Christmas albums that started around 2005 when I was writing for a website that doesn’t exist anymore. Record companies would send us free copies of new Christmas releases in exchange for reviews. We were always hungry for content, so it was a fair trade. We might have even given “VeggieTales – The Incredible Singing Christmas Tree” an ironic spin.

I’ve added to the collection with my own money each year and I’m going to highlight some of my favorites between now and December 25. Let’s start with a Christmas song that’s huge in the UK – so popular that it comes back onto the charts every year since 2007, but it’s mostly unknown in the US. “I Wish it Could Be Christmas Every Day” was originally released by the glam band Wizzard in 1973.

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Children of the ’80s know well that in 1983, Daryl Hall and John Oates remade the classic Bobby Helms Christmas hit “Jingle Bell Rock” … but did you catch on that you’ve been hearing two versions of the song for decades? Even two versions of the music video? Like the Mandela Effect in reverse, every once in a while, you hear an alternative universe version of “Jingle Bell Rock.”

Here’s the one you probably hear most with Daryl on lead vocals, the A-side of the 45.

Then, there’s the flipside of the 45 with John at the mic. Every once in a while, I’ll hear this one slip into the mix on a radio station. Way back when, MTV would play both versions.

They saved money on the videos by having both Hall and Oates keep their mouths shut until about ninety seconds in. That way, they could use all the same footage. Right after Santa appears is when the two videos split off. Jump both versions to 1:30 to see where they go off on their own paths.

For my Orlando friends, that’s Charlie DeChant, aka Mr Casual, holding the toy saxophone. He’s been in the band since 1976, playing both sax and keyboards. Charlie lives in Orlando and if there wasn’t a global pandemic, you could book him and his band, The Kings, for your holiday party.

It’s the spring of 1986. You jump into your Chevy Monza, click on your Pioneer AM/FM/cassette player, and “Beat’s So Lonely” comes on. Yeah, it sounds like Billy Idol in his Elvis crooner phase, but it’s Charlie Sexton, who recorded this very ‘80s blend of rockabilly and new wave when he was just sixteen.

There’s no shame in thinking it’s Billy Idol. “Beat’s So Lonely” was produced by Keith Forsey, who handled all the big Billy Idol hits – including “To Be a Lover,” “White Wedding,” “Hot in the City,” and “Rebel Yell.”

Forsey also co-wrote and produced “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” for “The Breakfast Club,” Simple Minds’ biggest hit and a song that Billy Idol actually turned down. John Hughes, of course, directed “The Breakfast Club” so it’s not a coincidence that “Beat’s So Lonely” ended up in Hughes’ “Some Kind of Wonderful” – although not actually on the soundtrack album.

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