Put down the Turkey sandwiches, finish cleaning up the crumbs from the Christmas dinner table and eat up the leftover cakes, it’s time for a special Boxing Day blog post!

Pictured: Bobby Sheen “Bob B. Soxx” (Vocals), Darlene Love (Backing Vocals) and Fanita James (Backing Vocals)
A vintage track that jumped out to me during my radio show planning like The Polar Express skids on ice – “The Bells Of St. Mary’s” by Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans, an early 1960’s vocal trio comprised of Bobby Sheen, Fanita James and Darlene Love, is a vocal version of a traditional 1917 classic that was originally written by A. Emmett Adams after seeing St. Mary’s Church in Southampton. The lyrics actually have no direct correlation with the festive season, but the track has since been considered a more traditional Christmas song due to being used in a scene of a Christmas Pageant in a 1945 Bing Crosby film with the same title, as well as being used in a scene for “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”. The Drifters also performed a cover for the 1990 film, “Goodfellas”. Later cover versions include a 1965 version by Andy Williams and a 2008 version by Sheryl Crow. In fact, you could probably say that it’s a Hollywood treasure!
“The Bells Of St. Mary’s” by Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans is a winter warmer of a vintage track, which is destined to get you in the festive feeling for this celebratory time of year. A lesser-known christmas song, it’s filled up, like a Stocking on Christmas Eve night, with solid and feel-good male harmonies and an orchestral arrangement of strings and backing vocals behind it. Sheen pours out the joy and love with: “The young loves, the true loves/That come from the sea/And so my beloved when red leaves are falling” before he proclaims: “Love bells shall ring out/For you and me”, aided by James and Love, in a call-and-response manner. It has a very traditional feeling to it, as the bells ring in the background of the track and the percussive instruments shake with the roll of a sleigh sound. The track was later released in 1963 on Phil Spector’s “A Christmas Gift For You” compilation of festive carols and it fits right in with all of the seasonal hymns we usually sing year-on-year. The album in question was a huge favourite of Glasvegas Frontman James Allen, who said in an interview for NME, “I used to listen to it every day, even in summer. I think my neighbours thought I was mental”. It’s a bit of an old one and it might come off a bit fuddy-duddy for some listeners, but it’s a timeless tune that is deserving of some more love than it usually gets for Christmas and I don’t think that Allen’s mental at all.

Pictured: Cover Artwork for Phil Spector’s “A Christmas Gift For You” compilation album (1963)
Thank you for reading this post! I’ll be back tomorrow, as usual, with a look at a track from a UK-based Bassist and Producer who found success as part of progressive rock bands King Crimson and Emerson, Lake & Palmer! It’s a festive track, which reached #2 in the UK Singles Charts, so it isn’t quite time for you to start looking into the new year ahead just yet! If you really liked what you just read, why not follow the blog to get notified when every new daily post is up and why not like the Facebook page here?: https://www.facebook.com/OneTrackAtATime/














