1. White Christmas 2. Away In A Manger (Once In Royal David's City) 3. For Love On Christmas Day 4. Everyday Will Be Like A Holiday 5. Christmas Tears 6. Home For The Holidays 7. Jingle Bells 8. Christmas In My Hometown 9. It's Christmas 10. Sentimental Moments 11. Lonesome Christmas 12. Silent Night 13. Merry Christmas Baby 14. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas |
Clapton's Christmas footprint is pretty light. Offhand, I can only think of "A Very Special Christmas Live" from 1999. He plays on several tracks on that set but is the featured performer only on Freddie King's "Christmas Tears", which he reprises here for "Happy Xmas". And he appears on the "Canned Heat Christmas Album" from 2007, playing "Christmas Blues" with John Popper. (There have been some pretty decent parodies, most notably "Santa"--to the tune of "Layla"--credited to Frohand and utterly unavailable anywhere...but thanks to my friend, mojochronic and the folks at DigiDesign, I have it on hard copy CD. I'd upload it to Soundcloud for you, but I think I'd run into some copyright issues.) Note: I earlier identified the credited artist as "Lowhand", not Frohand. My computer and CDs are currently in separate houses. So apologies for that.
In addition to "Christmas Tears", Clapton's Christmas album also includes covers of the Blues standards "Merry Christmas Baby", "Lonesome Christmas" and "Everyday Will Be Like A Holiday". We get religious standards like "Silent Night" and "Away In A Manger" and secular standards like "White Christmas" and "Home For The Holidays". And we get the Clapton original "For Love On Christmas Day". I confess that, at first glance, the titles "It's Christmas" and "Sentimental Moments" aren't ringing any holiday bells for me. Clapton says that even the standards will have "a slight blues tinge", something he says he perfected playing "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas".
As one little xtra that will probably be of significance to some collectors, the cover art is by Eric Clapton, himself. All in all, "Happy Xmas" looks to be a Must Buy of the 2018 Christmas music season. Look for it on October 12.