Judy Garland, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"

[mahatmakanejeeves]

I just caught the parody of this at JoeMyGod. While looking at this, I noticed that the film from which this clip was taken was released on November 22, 1944 - 70 years and four days ago.

Enjoy.

[Carolina]

1. Thanks for posting this

... still the best rendition ever. The film it's from -- Meet Me in St. Louis -- brings back fond memories of the wonderful Thanksgivings of my younger days, so long ago in a different time and place.

The song itself and Judy Garland's voice singing it truly warm my heart... someday we will all be together

Happy Thanksgiving

[SunSeeker]

2. Sniffle.

[SidneyR]

3. I read somewhere

that she sang this song to troops on leave during WWII. Wish we had a video of that! I understand it was an emotional event.

Note the original lyrics, later changed to make it more upbeat and less timely. One example, the tentative "next year all our troubles will be out of sight" changed to "from now on . . ."

[panfluteman]

4. Well Done!

I once read the words of a music critic who denigrated Judy Garland's singing skills by calling her "a vibrato in search of a voice". Upon listening to this rendition of a famous American Christmas carol, I see just how arbitrary and cruel a critic's denunciation can be. Sure, she has a very pronounced vibrato, but the voice, and her vocal control and artistry, were all there - she didn't have to go searching for anything.

[markpkessinger]

6. Some singers manage to totally transcend any technical vocal faults . . .

. . . And Judy Garland certainly had some of those. But she actually managed to use those technical flaws expressively, to the benefit of her performance. Ultimately, it was her masterful styling, musicianship and guts-on-the-floor expressiveness that she was able to combine to carry off a song so incredibly well. Granted, in her very late performances, as the effects of her various addictions exacted their price, she became a bit of a caricature of herself.

And Garland had a contemporary from the world of opera who similarly came in for frequent, shallow criticism of her technical vocal flaws. And, like Ms. Garland, as he health began to diminish, so too did her technical vocal skills. I am speaking, of course, of Maria Callas. Her life began to fall apart when her long-time paramour, Aristotle Onassis, left her in favor of a new, younger interest: the recently widowed wife of President Kennedy. Callas was devastated, and her emotional state took a severe toll on her technical vocal abilities. And yet, despite a rather dramatic vocal decline, there is such an incredible power and depth to her later performances that the vocal flaws simply fade into insignificance.

Any critic whose first criticism of a world-class performer like Garland or Callas is about technique is an ignorant, uncultured fool.

[markpkessinger]

5. I once saw a clip from Judy Garland's weekly variety show in the early '60s . . .

. . . in which she sang "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" as a duet -- with a VERY YOUNG Barbara Streisand! It was amazing! Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find that clip since!

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. YouTube comes up with another duet right away:

I'll keep digging.