Jon Wiener: From The Nation Magazine, this is Start Making Sense. I’m Jon Wiener. Today we feature songs for the last Christmas before Trump returns to the White House. So deck the halls – for some very special music. That’s coming up, in a minute.
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This is our Christmas show, and now it’s time for our special Christmas music feature. Our guest is Sean Wilentz. He’s the official historian at the official Bob Dylan website. He also teaches American history at Princeton. He’s written many books, including The Age of Reagan. It’s out now in paperback. We turn to him today to help us understand what the heck is going on with the new Bob Dylan Christmas album. We reached him today in Princeton. Sean, welcome back to the program.

Sean Wilentz: Great to be back, Jon.

JW: I want to start by listening to track one, “Here Comes Santa Claus.” It’s a Gene Autry song, which I have to say is one of the most irritating holiday songs ever written — even before Bob Dylan sang it.

MUSIC:

Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus Lane

Vixen and Blitzen and all his reindeer, pullin’ on the reins

Bells are ringin’, children singin’, all is merry and bright

Hang your stockings, say your prayers, ’cause Santa Claus comes tonight

JW: Hang your stockings, say your prayers. Sean, what is this? Is this a joke of some kind?

SW: [Laughter] No, it’s not a joke at all. Although you could turn it into one by imagining that the person who’s really singing it is Vincent Price. It gives a certain macabre aspect to the song. So you can look at it that way. You can look at a Bob Dylan song any way you want, but no, no, no. This is all very, very straight.
This is Bob Dylan, in many ways, looking back to his own childhood. And he’s singing the songs that he heard as a kid in Hibbing where everybody listened to Christmas music, whether you were Jewish or not. And he’s recalling those times and those songs and that spirit.

JW: And I understand that the album itself is a benefit and that the royalties are all being donated to charity? 

SW: In perpetuity, that’s right. The royalties are going to Feed America in the United States, and I think that there’s a group in the UK and there’s another group too, to feed the homeless.
Basically, this is Bob Dylan in some ways being the character Pretty Boy Floyd from the old Woody Guthrie song. He’s providing Christmas dinner to the families on relief. It’s just that he’s not sticking up a bank, he’s sticking up his own fans.

JW: Let’s listen to another one. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” I have to say, when Bob Dylan sings “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” you have to wonder: is this a promise? or is this a threat?

MUSIC:

I’ll be home for Christmas, you can plan on me

Please have snow and mistletoe and presents on the tree

Christmas Eve will find me where the love light gleams

I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams

JW: Bob Dylan, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” It sounds like a reason to bolt your doors, Sean.

SW: [Laughter] Well, it’s hard to say what home is for Bob Dylan because he’s on his bus so much of the time.  Being home for Christmas is a big deal for him because he’s not on his bus.
But this is part of what the album’s about. That’s a song that was originally recorded by Bing Crosby as were, I think 13 of the 15 songs on this album. It’s his tribute to Bing Crosby, among other things. But in 1943, remember Christmas songs during World War II had a whole different meaning. It was very touching, actually, very moving. It was the music actually that held people together, wondering whether their boys, and in some cases, girls, overseas, would ever come home alive, ever.
So, this is a very moving song. It was moving in the forties. And then after the war, Christmas music became a way to assert, with some aggressiveness, to assert a kind of normality which a lot of people in America hadn’t felt since the beginning of the Depression back in the early thirties.
So he’s trying to recapture that, in part. Recapture that mood, which is bigger than Christmas. Bigger than Christmas in America. It has to do with a specific time in a specific place. And it’s also, as I say, a tribute to Bing Crosby. He doesn’t have Bing Crosby’s voice, but he’s copying Bing Crosby’s phrasing. And I know he admires Bing Crosby’s phrasing, so that’s his chance to do that too.

JW: Let’s listen to another one. Do you want to say anything about this one, “Must Be Santa?” This one includes our own David Hidalgo, the great East LA musician who’s a big favorite of ours here.

SW: Indeed, from Los Lobos. He’s the man. He’s maybe one of the most gifted musicians that Dylan’s ever worked with. “Must Be Santa” is my favorite song on the album. It’s a polka song. It’s basically ripped off from the arrangement of a Texas rock polka band.  But it also recalls, again, his Christmastime, because it recalls the great polka bands of the Midwest of the 1940s and 1950s. People like Whoopee John Wilfahrt– his real name. And Frankie Yankovic.

JW: Would you please spell the last name of Whoopee John Wilfahrt, please?

SW: W-I-L-F-A-H-R-T.

JW: Are you sure that this is not one of Bob Dylan’s many pseudonyms?

SW: [Laughter] Like “Roosevelt Gook”? No. I have a photograph of Whoopee John Wilfahrt at the Minneapolis airport, taken at about the same time, about 1948, with his band. And I happen to know a lot about Whoopee John.  He was quite a character. When he died, it turned out he had left money in most of the hotels of the Midwest. Stashed away lots and lots of money, and basically hiding it from the feds. And he lived quite a wild life, as you might imagine, by a man named Whoopee John.

JW: Well, let’s—

SW: Which I would never call you, Jon.

JW: Thank you. Thank you for that. Sean Wilentz, the official historian of the official bobdylan.com website. From the Bob Dylan Christmas album – let’s listen to “Must Be Santa,” featuring David Hidalgo of Los Lobos.

MUSIC:

Who’s got a beard that’s long and white?

Santa’s got a beard that’s long and white

Who comes around on a special night?

Santa comes around on a special night

Special night, beard that’s white

Must be Santa, must be Santa

Must be Santa, Santa Claus

Who wears boots and a suit of red?

Santa wears boots and a suit of red.

Who wears a long cap on his head?

Santa wears a long cap on his head

Cap on head, suit that’s red

Special night, beard that’s white

Must be Santa, must be Santa

Must be Santa, Santa Claus

JW: They’re dancing in the corridors here at KPFK. “Must Be Santa,” Bob Dylan with David Hidalgo from the Dylan—

SW: I’m dancing here in Princeton. I’m having a great time.

JW: Let’s listen to another one. Here’s Bob Dylan’s “Winter Wonderland.”

MUSIC:

Wonderland, winter wonderland. Wonderland

Sleigh bells ring, are you listenin’?

In the lane, snow is glistenin’

A beautiful sight, we’re happy tonight

Walkin’ in a winter wonderland

Gone away is the bluebird

In his place is a new bird

He sings a love song as we go along

Walkin’ in a winter wonderland

In the meadow, we can build a snowman

Then pretend that he is Parson Brown

He’ll say, “Are you married?”, we’ll say, “No, man

But you can do the job when you’re in town”

Later on, we’ll conspire, as we dream, by the fire

To face unafraid, the plans that we’ve made

Walkin’ in a winter wonderland

JW: Bob Dylan. He sounds like your grizzled old uncle who’s had a little too much of the spiked eggnog at the family gathering.

SW: [Laughter] I think that’s the point actually, Jon. Actually, there’s the Wonder Bread Singers, the whitest of white bread singers I’ve ever heard there. But you also, listen closely and you hear Donnie Haran on the pedal steel.
I think it’s the first time that “Winter Wonderland” has been done, at least in recent memory, with a pedal steel guitar. Dylan adds always a touch. There are touches of the current Bob Dylan along with what Bob Dylan was hearing when he was seven years old.

JW: This whole project made me think of Dylan’s radio program on the Sirius-XM satellite radio where we see what a connoisseur and scholar Bob Dylan is of these pre-rock, earlier 20th century genres. In a way, this is part of that project.

SW: Very much so. This could be a show from that series called “Christmas.” But the difference is that he sings all the songs. He doesn’t just introduce them.
But in fact, one of the songs, “Must Be Santa,” actually did appear in – I forget the name of the band, but anyway, on his Christmas show from Sirius XM. So yes, there is a similarity. He knows a lot about it. This is an active archive. He’s an archivist among other things, and this album is an example of that.

JW: Let’s listen to another one. Of course, he has to do “Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem.”

MUSIC:

O, little town of Bethlehem

How still we see thee lie

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep

The silent stars go by

Yet in the dark streets shine

An everlasting light

The hopes and fears of all the years

Are met in thee tonight

JW: Bob Dylan’s “Little Town of Bethlehem.” I can only say, there must be some way outta here.

SW: [Laughter] This is not one of my favorite cuts on the album. There are others that are better. “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” not his best performance here. Some of the songs—

JW: Well, you know, we—

SW: Some of the songs just don’t – Christmas produced a lot of interesting, wonderful music, which is why so many people cut Christmas albums. Everybody from Frank Sinatra to Ray Charles to Barbra Streisand. Even the Jews cut Christmas albums, right? Neil Diamond has a new one, even, the second one. So there’s a songbook, a real songbook.
But some of the songs are very difficult. This is one of them, actually. And the Christmas song, the famous Mel Torme song is also. You need a real range to sing those songs well. And I’m afraid that this doesn’t quite do it. At least not for me.

JW: We’re speaking with Sean Wilentz. He’s the official historian at the official Bob Dylan website, bobdylan.com.
One thing that strikes me about this music that’s so puzzling, so confusing, so troubling to the Bob Dylan’s fan base: Bob has always made a practice of pulling the rug out from under fans who thought they had him pegged. He spent a lot of his career refusing to fulfill his fans’ wishes. And this is certainly part of that.

SW: You could see it that way. The other thing is this is a cover album. These are all cover songs. There’s not a single Bob Dylan song on here that he wrote. Whenever Bob Dylan does a cover album, it usually means that there’s a change gonna come. He did “Self Portrait,” which got roundly panned, especially by, I don’t know if I can say this on the air, but you’ll remember Greil Marcus’s famous first line of his review in Rolling Stone of that album, which is, “What is this–blank”?

JW: “What is this crap?” But not quite “crap.”

SW: Not quite that, yeah. And then he went on to do “Blood on the Tracks.” Then he did the cover albums in the early 90s, the two folk acoustic albums, “Good As I’ve Been to You” and “World Gone Wrong.” And then next thing, he comes out with is “Time Out of Mind,” which is a whole different thing. So, who knows what’s going to come? Here’s another cover album.
So it’s Bob Dylan trying to – and I actually mean this – it’s him plumbing his depths. He’s trying to find something. He’s trying to locate something in his soul, in himself, in his music, and this is the way he does it, by singing other people’s songs, singing a whole album of other people’s songs. So, it’s interesting for that. You have to watch out for that.
The second thing is, this is the first time he’s done a Christian album since “Shot of Love.” In other words, this is a spiritual record. This is about his beliefs. He’s a Christian, of a very weird kind. So you have to see it in that context too. There’s a lot of different ways in which Dylan is – and that also disappointed his fans, by the way, when he went gospel, people thought, “What’s going on?”

JW: ‘Disappointed’ is putting it mildly.

SW: Yeah, people went nuts. Although I think that in retrospect, if you go back and listen to some of those albums, not all of them, not “Saved” – but if you listen to “Shot of Love” again, you’ll be very surprised. There’s a lot of really good music on there.

JW: Well, “Gotta Serve Somebody,” in retrospect does have some strengths.

SW: “Slow Train Coming,” absolutely. But go back and listen to “Shot of Love” sometime. The song about Lenny Bruce, it’s him being semi-secular.
But anyway, my point is only that Bob Dylan is doing a lot of different things at the same time, and he’s doing a lot of different things at the same time in this album. It just sounds so schmaltzy and innocuous. But nothing with Bob Dylan, even at its most schmaltzy, is to be taken completely at face value.

JW: I think we’ve got time for one more. Let’s listen, from the Bob Dylan Christmas album, to “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

MUSIC:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas, make the yuletide gay
Next year all our troubles will be miles away
Once again as in olden days, happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us will be near to us once more

JW: “Faithful friends who are dear to us.” Sean Wilentz, I don’t know, you can say this isn’t singing, it’s croaking. But when Tom Waits croaks, a lot of people think it’s great. Louis Armstrong sings this song, and he doesn’t have a beautiful voice either, in the classic sense.

SW: Absolutely. I don’t know what the complaining’s about. I really don’t. It’s the same voice that sang “Love and Theft.” I don’t quite get it. I think it has more to do that you’re used to hearing these songs sung by Nat King Cole or Mel Torme, someone with a very smooth voice.
So Bob Dylan is certainly adding a new dimension to Christmas, that we didn’t hear before. But it’s a voice that is instantly recognizable, much as, say, Louis Armstrong’s was. When you hear those voices, it takes you two nanoseconds, you know who you’re listening to. And so immediately that conjures up a whole series of associations. And then it’s not just the voice, which at times falters, it doesn’t hit the notes, on that track in particular.
But again, it’s about the phrasing. Listen to how he’s parsing out his words. Listen to how he’s doing that with the music. It’s actually a very much more complicated record than people would think about, because he’s taking all that seriously. Maybe more seriously now than anyone else because this song has been sung by a million other people.
Bob Dylan, when he sings “Summer Days” or any of the songs that he’s done recently, he’s the only person who does those. Maybe Sheryl Crow will do them too, but very few anymore, right? It’s not like Peter, Paul and Mary. It’s his song. Now, he has to go up against the entire galaxy of American singers going back to Eddie Cantor and before. So he has to add something new to a tradition, and that’s part of what’s going on here too.

JW: Sean Wilentz is the official historian at the official Bob Dylan website. He also teaches American history at Princeton. Sean, thank you — for helping us understand.

SW: [Laughter]  Thank you, Jon. It’s always a pleasure.

JW: We spoke with Sean Wilentz about Bob Dylan’s Christmas album in December 2009.