Charles Brown's Cool Christmas Blues, Charles Brown (Bullseye Blues)

This site credits Brown with the beginnings of rock 'n roll Christmas music for his original 1947 recording of "Merry Christmas Baby" with Johnny Moore's Three Blazers. While there are earlier blues Christmas tunes, Brown's further work in the Christmas genre carried through into the Fifties and Sixties when new originals and novelties began to sweep the pop, rock and country charts. And of course, his original hit has become a staple in the rock and blues fields. Because getting paid for your work has tended to be a sporadic proposition in the music business, blues artists with long careers have often re-recorded their best-known songs for multiple labels in hopes of putting food on the table. So here comes Brown in 1994 with a full CD of Christmas music, revisiting some of his favorites like "Merry Christmas Baby," Billy Ward's "Christmas in Heaven" and "Please Come Home For Christmas." To those, this CD adds "Christmas Comes but Once a Year," "Santa's Blues," a gospel-tinged "Silent Night," "Bringing In a Brand New Year" and "A Song For Christmas." Surprisingly, he throws in a couple of non-holiday originals, the uptempo "Stay With Me" and the ballad "To Someone That I Love." The Brown oeuvre is a bit on the mellow side (see Elvis Costello's great story about writing for Brown on his "A Case For Song" video), but this album is a good way to remember the late bluesman.