"White Christmas" ( Rus. White Christmas ) is an American pop Christmas song written by Irving Berlin and first performed by Bing Crosby in 1941. Crosby's “White Christmas” record became one of the most popular songs of the 20th century : according to the Guinness Book of Records , more than 50 million singles were recorded worldwide with the recording of the song [1] [2] [3] .
| White christmas | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bing Crosby Single | ||||
| Side B | "Let's Start the New Year Right" "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" | |||
| Released | 1942, 1946, 1947, 1950, 1955, 1983 | |||
| Format | 7 ", 10" | |||
| Recorded by | May 29, 1942 March 19, 1947 | |||
| Duration | 3:02 (1942) 3:04 (1947) | |||
| Producer | ||||
| Composer | ||||
| Songwriter | Irving Berlin | |||
| Label | Decca (1942-1973) MCA (1983-1985) | |||
| Bing Crosby Singles Timeline | ||||
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Original version of Bing Crosby
White Christmas was first performed by Bing Crosby on Christmas 1941 in the NBC broadcast The Kraft Music Hall. Formally, the first studio recording of the song took place on May 29, 1942, accompanied by the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers vocal ensemble. The album with the song was released on July 30 via Decca Records as part of the soundtrack for the movie Holiday Inn (six songs of the film were released on three discs, since the format of the long-playing record did not exist yet). By the end of October 1942, the song topped “Your Hit Parade”; on the 1st place of the Billboard magazine charts , the song spent 11 weeks in 1942. The song received an Academy Award in the category "Best Original Song" in 1942. In the Christmas season of 1945 and 1946, the song again topped the charts. Due to the wear and tear of the original recording matrix, Crosby was forced to rewrite the song on March 18, 1947 with the same accompaniment, trying to convey the original version as accurately as possible. In 1949, Crosby released the long-playing album Merry Christmas, which included White Christmas. In 1954, Crosby starred in the movie "White Christmas", with the song of the same name which he became increasingly associated.
Other versions
White Christmas has firmly entered the musical repertoire of the Christmas season. To date, the song has been recorded by many orchestras, ensembles and solo musicians of various musical genres and in different languages (including Russian ): Frank Sinatra (1944), Perry Como (1947), Elvis Presley (1957), Andy Williams (1963), The Supremes (1965), Bob Marley (1965), Dean Martin (1966), The Beach Boys (1964), Barbra Streisand (1967), Mireille Mathieu (1977), New Kids on the Block (1989), Michael Bolton (1992), Garth Brooks (1992), Chicago (1998), Linda Ronstadt (2000), Il Divo (2005), Twisted Sister (2006), Taylor Swift (2007), Boy George (2009), Coldplay (2011) ), Angelina Jordan (2014) and others.
An interesting fact in the history of the song was that it, broadcast on the air, became a code signal for the beginning of the last operation of the American troops in South Vietnam - “Frequent Wind” (April 29-30, 1975), the evacuation of the American embassy and all those who remained in Saigon Americans on ships in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Notes
Links
- Library of Congress essay on Crosby's version on the National Recording Registry .