Sooner or later we all go astray.

Everyone of us needs to be saved.

And, no one alive can survive without tidings of comfort and joy.

Comfort and Joy.

Too easy to default to dismay.

Hark! Hark! Hark!

Trust in the tidings.

Tidings of Comfort and Joy.

I have been an admirer of T Bone Burnett since his days in The Alpha band and his sojourn with Bob Dylan.

The thread connecting all his output as an Artist and Producer is an acute sense of how to establish mood spotlighting the virtues of a song through the adept balance of instrumentation and vocals.

Now for some more vintage Yuletide Jazz.

Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra cutting quite a rug on Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town.

Whether you’re on the naughty or the nice list this one will get your Foxtrottin’ feet gliding for the next three minutes or so.

Tommy, of course, on the Trombone.

Vocals by Cliff Weston and Edyth Wright.

Paul Weston provided the fluid arrangement.

Mac Cheikes on Guitar and Sid Stoneburn on Clarinet add the filigree.

Dylan Thomas was never going to make old bones.

When the following recording of ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’ was made in 1952 he had less than two years to live.

He never saw his 40th birthday yet he had already, though he spent his gifts profligately, laid down a legacy of immortal incantatory poetry which will always call out to be spoken and sung.

Whatever his excesses he was a true Poet well acquainted with close and holy darkness.

Pull up your most comfortable chair and follow Dylan’s sonorous voice as he leads you spiralling through the years to the heart of a child’s Christmas.

Always on Christmas night there was music.

An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang “Cherry Ripe,” and another uncle sang “Drake’s Drum.”

It was very warm in the little house.

Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird’s Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed.

Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed.

I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.           

Next Alphabet Post on the 17th. M for …. Stay tuned!