Guest post by Nathan Arizona
It’s no art film, but “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” is one of the movies I look forward to most each holiday season. To me it’s not just funny but much smarter and more insightful than the other Lampoon movies — not that it avoids slapstick. It’s one of John Hughes’ best, if underrated, screenplays. Chevy Chase might really be a jerk, but he sure could pull off this kind of thing.
And it has Cousin Eddie in it. “Merry Christmas — shitter’s full!”
So it can be easy to ignore the film’s music. I’d recommend against that.
The song most likely skipped over might be the snappy “Hey Santa Claus,” written and first recorded in 1953 by the R&B group the Moonglows. There’s only a snippet of it in the movie, but that’s enough to bring on the Christmas spirit. A few guys with saxophones and Santa hats lip-synch it on a festive-looking street in downtown Chicago, where Clark Griswold works for his rotten boss. There’s traffic, scattered snow and a big, red donation bucket nearby. It leads right to another urban Christmas scene in a department store where Clark has his encounter with the sexy woman in a red dress. Yeah, it was “a little nipply out.”
Harvey Fuqua and Bobby Lester formed the Crazy Sounds in1949 in Cleveland then struggled a few years before hooking up with star DJ Alan Freed, who changed their name. Their first big hit was 1954’s “Sincerely,” which topped the Billboard R&B chart and reached No. 20 on the pop chart. The McGuire Sisters covered it a few months later and hit No. 1 on the pop chart for a lengthy stay. The Moonglows’ second biggest hit was “Ten Commandments of Love.” They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 by Paul Simon.
Another Hall of Famer, Mavis Staples, sings “Christmas Vacation” over the movie’s opening credits. Brill Building notables Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann wrote it. I’d like to hear it on the radio more often. The soundtrack also includes a melancholy ballad sung by Ray Charles and “Mele Kalikimaka” by Bing Crosby.
Here’s “Hey Santa Claus” by the Moonglows. All of it. The photo shouts “downtown Christmas” circa 1950s.
https://youtu.be/tsk98f2IWw0
The video of opening song “Christmas Vacation” by Mavis Staples features stills from the movie. Yes, Cousin Eddie is there.
And here are the Moonglows with their biggest hit.
