Doo Wop Christmas Songs

What’s the Christmas season without a little doo wop of a popular standard?  This song by Irving Berlin as sung by Bing Crosby is the best-selling single of all time — somewhere in the vicinity of 50 million copies. If all the versions of the song are put together, the figure rises to 100 million. National Public Radio (NPR) ranks it as the #2 song on their “NPR 100 List” of songs of the 20th century. That is, right after Judy Garland’s “Over the Rainbow.”

The number of covers goes on and on, which takes us to The Drifters featuring Clyde McPhatter on lead and Bill Pinkney on the bass part. In December 1954, their version went to #2 on the R&B Chart, and in 1955, it went to #80 on the Billboard Top 100 Chart. The 1990 film Home Alone featured their version when the character played by Macaulay Culkin puts on his father’s aftershave. The films Mixed Nuts and The Santa Clause also featured The Drifters’ version. Besides McPhatter and Pinkey, for this recording there were Jimmy Oliver, Gerhart Thrasher, and Andrew Thrasher. Membership in The Drifters (and its various splinter groups and soloists) has changed over the years, to say the least, and they continue to tour and perform today.

Here are the lyrics to “White Christmas” by The Drifters:

“Ooh
Doop doop, doop doo doop
Ooh
Doop doop, doop doo doop

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know,
Where those treetops glisten, and children listen,
To hear sleigh bells in the snow, the snow.

Then, I-I-I am dreaming of a white Christmas,
With every Christmas card I write,
May your days, may your days, may your days be merry and bright,
And may all your Christmases be white.

I-I-I am dreaming of a white Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know,
Where the treetops glisten, and the  children listen,
To hear sleigh bells in the snow.

I-I-I am dreaming of a white Christmas,
With every Christmas card I write,
May your days, may your days, may your days be merry and bright,
And may all your Christmases be white.

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells all the way.
Ooooh.”

If you are interested in purchasing The Drifters’  Christmas Album from amazon: Christmas Album

For more songs by The Drifters: “Save the Last Dance for Me,” “Under the Boardwalk,” “Up on the Roof,” “This Magic Moment,” and “There Goes My Baby.”

For More Golden Oldies Music

The Daily Doo Wop Rec Room has daily featured doo wop, rock and roll, R&B, or rockabilly songs that were hits during the first era of rock and roll (that is, from about 1952 until the British invasion in 1964). After a song is featured, it then goes into the juke box. You are welcome to listen to any of the 40+ selections there. Every weekend, there is a Golden Oldies Juke Box Saturday Night, and the juke box is full of song requests from the 1950s and 1960s.

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