Bing

Bing Crosby's album "White Christmas" has twelve songs. These years only about four of them get on my short list of seasonal music.

My favorite thing about Bing's style is the way he dances around the beat: a phrase will have an out-of-rhythm experience to the point where it seems to be getting lost, and then the next thing you know it's home safe and sound, like a ghost returning to its body or a plane to its aircraft carrier.

The second- and third-worst songs, in some order, are "Adeste Fideles" -- Latin with unapologetically American vowels ("A-des-tay Fee-day-lace") -- and the deeply hokey "Christmas in Killarney".

The absolute worst is "Faith of Our Fathers", the only one where Crosby's deliberate rhythmic looseness seems misplaced. He's doing it against a background of choral singing -- and in my opinion pretty lame choral singing and badly recorded at that.

Three of the best are those in which Bing is joined by the Andrews Sisters: "Jingle Bells", "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", and "Mele Kalikimaka"*. The sisters' tightly rhythmic self-contained harmonizing is just what Bing's loosey-goosey crooning needs, and vice versa. Each style enhances the other.

My other favorite is his heartfelt version of "I'll be home for Christmas". (Incidentally, this is what is playing in Nathaniel Fisher's new hearse at the big bad moment in the pilot episode of Six Feet Under.) This season I've been listening to Tony Bennett's cool and breezy version of the same song, but at this point I'm about ready to go back to Bing.

* This is deeply hokey, too, but in a good way.