1. Bing Crosby – White Christmas. Obviously I’ve heard this song before, but I’d never listened to it carefully. Although I usually can’t stand Christmas music, this is actually a very pleasant and well-written song. I particularly like the part where Crosby drops out and his backing choir takes over, if only because it connotes its era so intensely. I’m not even sure why it sounds so early-40s, though part of it is certainly the recording quality (which sounds different from modern lo-fi recording), and part of it is the pronunciation — for instance, they sing the word “snow” with a pure, elongated /É”/ rather than the more informal or more modern (or maybe both) /oÊŠ/.  It makes me think “old cartoons,” which is nice.

2. Alvino Rey – Deep in the Heart of Texas. A big-band tune, so rhythmically clunky that it comes off like a glorified drinking song. But it does have a great clarinet solo that calls to mind early New Orleans jazz — really out of place in a song this white — and a number of sounds produced by instruments I can’t recognize at all. One is a recurring effect that’s obviously supposed to mimic a train-whistle, and the other is a solo early in the song, and their tone is so pure that they actually sound electronic. Maybe they are: the Ondes Martenot (sort of a keyboard theremin) was already over a decade old at this point. It sure doesn’t seem very likely, though. Anyway, another one to add to the list of “why does this exist?”

3. Kay Kyser – (There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover. You could compare this to “White Christmas,” in that both are crooner songs with breaks in which the backing choir comes to the fore. This one has a pretty standard big-band accompaniment, though, whereas “White Christmas” has a lush (almost too lush, but I like it anyway) orchestral part, and Crosby has a much better voice than Kyser. All in all it’s pretty forgettable, though it’s miles better than Kyser’s previous hit.

4. The Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra – Tangerine. Weird and good! First of all, what’s with these lyrics? In painting a portrait of this impulsive and flirtatious but ultimately self-destructive woman (hello, Breakfast at Tiffany’s! hello, Hollywood moralism!), they specify the particular brands of her clothing: “I’ve seen clothes on Tangerine / Where the label says ‘from Macy’s Mezzanine’.” There’s another line that seems to refer to a particular brand of makeup, though not one I’ve ever heard of: “With her lips of flame / If the color keeps Louis Philippe’s to blame.” The peculiar specificity of the lyrics make it seem like a song from a movie (compare the opening song in Georgy Girl), and according to Wikipedia, it is — except that there doesn’t seem to be any character named Tangerine in the movie, so I’m not sure what the lyrics are actually supposed to refer to. As for the music, it’s equally cinematic and equally strange: after a portentious, rhapsodic opening including a big pseudo-Romantic piano riff, it launches into the kind of slinky jazz you associate with film noir (there’s this distinctive drum sound — I think it’s brushes on a snare?), with a man who I assume is Dorsey singing. And then, after a sinuous yellow-orange sax solo, it suddenly switches to a faster tempo and does a sort of ballroom swing thing for a while — and then as soon as you’ve gotten used to that, it slows down into a third tempo, and a female singer appears and delivers all those strange lyrics I mentioned above. I love her voice, and I wish I knew who she was. In conclusion, I could probably deliver some rather suspect analysis involving postmodernism, jump-cut structure and the fusion of advertisement and pop culture, but I don’t really feel like it. ;)
[Edit: A clip on iTunes suggests that there are multiple versions of this song, so I'm not sure if this is the one that was a hit. I wish this didn't keep happening!]

5. The Mills Brothers – Paper Doll. The Mills Brothers are a close-harmony vocal quartet, and they’re a lot more polished and less bizarre than The Ink Spots. Their sound is nice, but oy, the sexist lyrics! The basic gist of this song is “All women are fickle and cruel, so I’m going to make a paper doll and then I’ll have a woman I can completely control.” Although it does also contain a reference to “the flirty, flirty guys, with their flirty, flirty eyes,” so I guess you could argue that’s it’s not so much sexist as generally misanthropic.