Song of the Day 12/16: Johnny and Edgar Winter, “Please Come Home for Christmas”

Brothers singing harmony always sound special, but we rarely got to hear these two together because they each led their own bands. Both Johnny and Edgar were musical prodigies, performing together even as kids. They first teamed up on this holiday blues in 1961, the year after it was written and recorded by Charles Brown. Johnny was already a hotshot blues guitarist and Edgar, just 14, played keyboards. Legendary Texas producer Huey P. Meaux released it on one of his numerous labels, but wasn’t widely available until 1971, after Johnny became famous, when his early singles for Meaux were packaged as “First Winter.”

When his brother hit the big time in 1969 Edgar was part of the backup band, but he left the next year after recording a solo album and forming White Trash. They occasionally appeared together on stage over the years, but it wasn’t until Johnny’s 1992 album “Hey, What About Your Brother?” that they went into a studio again. Edgar, who by then had become a sought-after session saxophonist, appears on three tracks on the album, playing both organ and alto sax on this extended remake of their early duet.

Here’s pianist Charles Brown’s original version, written in 1960 when pioneering record exec Syd Nathan challenged him to write “something as good as ‘Merry Christmas, Baby,’ a 1957 hit Brown had played on that eventually sold a million copies.