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Ed McCray

Dec 3 • 8 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X

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1967's Cricket on the Hearth is the 2nd Rankin/Bass Christmas special. It aired as an episode of the Danny Thomas Show.Thomas was a devout catholic and his deep Christian faith is apparent through this special.He also founded St Jude Children's Hospital.

His daughter Marlo co-starred in this special and later appeared in her own Rankin/Bass TV Special, That Girl in Wonderland. She was starring in her own sitcom at the time Cricket aired, That Girl. This may be the only time they appeared together as father & daughter.

The source material is suggested by one of Charles Dickens Christmas novels of which there's 5.He also wrote dozens of Christmas short stories.These are often reprinted as Christmas Books and Christmas Stories. The story is a soap opera with a touch of fantasy.

This is a deleted demo song from the special dubbed over the scene where it went compared with the final song. I don't know why it was changed but this gives you an example of how sometimes songs are rejected/replaced for musicals. They deal with the same story points.

This song is the centerpiece of the special. It was released as a single but never caught on. This was mainstream network TV in 1967. No one complained and no one was offended. Jesus was always the reason for the season in many of these fantasy Christmas specials.

This is the song on side B of the single with an image of the original cast album LP(although this song wasn't on the cast album.)This shows what a major production it was at the time because it had a cast album. No other Rankin/Bass special but Rudolph ever had a cast album.

Danny Thomas' devout catholic faith is all over this Christmas special. Take a look of the imagery in this sequence. Can you see a network Christmas special with content like this today?

Cricket on the Heart aired for a few years before it vanished from the growing glut of Christmas specials. It was later rediscovered & released to VHS in 1998 & is readily available on DVD but most people don't realize what it is. It's not great but shouldn't be forgotten.

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Ed McCray

@Real_Ed_McCray

Dec 8

This morning we're going to unpack some of the history behind 1958's three-time Grammy award winning The Chipmunk Song & the road to the once popular perennial Christmas special from Chuck Jones, 1981's A Chipmunk Christmas.This may be a story few today remember or are aware of.

Ross Bagdasarian was a musician/actor down on his luck (he's the piano player in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window.)With his last $200 he bought a two reel tape recorder & began experimenting with recording his voice at different speeds. The result was the novelty hit Witch Doctor.

The song was a big hit but Bagdasarian knew he could do better.He wanted to inject personality into these trick voices so he created the Chipmunks named after three record executives Alvin, Simon, & Theodore.He wrote a song where he'd interact with them as David Seville & it was a smash hit.

Read 17 tweets

Ed McCray

@Real_Ed_McCray

Dec 6

1970 brought us Santa Claus is Comin' to Town,one of the best Christmas specials ever produced.This story is a Christian parable about religious conscience making it one of the first casualties of PC culture. It pulled from network TV in the early 80's you'll soon understand why.

The special is suggested by the famous song. This is the first time it was ever performed in Aug 1934 as a charity rallying cry with the forgotten verse. Eddie Cantor is the performer who debuted this song.Given how famous he was he's the most forgotten celebrity of all time.

Romeo Muller created this story &,like the others,it contains much of his innocence,humor,& worldview.We forget the context that at the height of the cold war a totalitarian government vs freedom was something that was in pop culture when the Soviet Union controlled East Germany.

Read 18 tweets

Ed McCray

@Real_Ed_McCray

May 24

On @AtTheMicShow with @KeithMalinak I cited a book I found in the trash of a library in the early 2000's called The Story of the Negro. It's written by one of the first black historians and told a version of American History I'd never heard before and caused me to dig deeper.

The book follows the story back to african roots but has a very different take. The unsolicited slaves who were brought to Jamestown were viewed as chosen people like Joseph because that slave ship was lost at sea killing all on board but those sold to the Jamestown colonists.

There was a textbook taught in America's schools unto the Woodrow Wilson Administration had it pulled called Colored Patriots of the American Revolution that went even more in depth on this chapter.

Read 7 tweets

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