Shortly after Thanksgiving is when the song by the lovely and still very much active Kay Starr, The Man With the Bag begins to play on the radio, in malls and stores all over the nation. A big hit for Miss Starr in the 1950s, it nonetheless in this day and age has no quality videos representative of it. Many, like myself, enjoy the vintage acts as a part of music history and become all frowny when we receive hear of archives being destroyed through neglect, mishap or because they were not considered important enough at the time to save for the future. Considering how popular The Man With the Bag was I'm surprised Kay Starr did not sing it for film or television. I would have expected a Scopitone at the least. If she ever had recorded the tune in any other media of the era then I can't find it or sadly there is no publicly available or archived footage of that particular performance.
As much as I generally dislike a static image used for a music video there is not a lot of suitable footage of Starr that I could artfully apply to this song. Many of the fan-made videos while heart-felt include images or scenes that kind of bug me, only because I'm old. So I put together a fake-ish LP cover to accompany the tune. I also included the lyrics because while this is a song which nearly everyone is familiar with very few know all the the words to it. Sing along and Enjoy!
Oh, Mr. Kringle, is soon gonna jingle,
The bells that’ll tinkle all your troubles away
Everybody’s waitin’ for the man with the bag,
‘Cause Christmas is comin’ again.
He’s got a sleigh full, it’s not gonna stay-full
He’s got stuff to drop at every stop on the way
Everybody’s waitin’ for the man with the bag,
‘Cause Christmas is comin’ again.
He’ll be here,
With the answers to the prayers that you made through the year
You’ll get yours
If you’ve done everything you should, extra-special good.
He’ll make this December, the one you’ll remember,
The best and the merriest you ever did have
Everybody’s waitin’ for the man with the bag
Christmas is here again!
Oh Mr. Kringle, is soon gonna jingle,
All the bells that’ll tinkle all your troubles away
Everybody’s waitin’ for the man with the bag,
Christmas is here again.
He’s got a sleigh full, and it’s not gonna stay-full
Got stuff that he’s dropping every stop on the way
Everybody’s waitin’ for the man with the bag,
Christmas is here again.
He’ll be here,
With the answer to the prayers that you made through the year.
You’ll get yours
If you’ve done everything you should, extra-special good.
He’ll make this December, the one you’ll remember,
The best and the merriest you ever did have
Everybody’s waitin’
They’re all congregatin’
Waitin’ for the man with the bag!
Better watch out now!
I'm pretty sure it's "tingle", not "tinkle" all your troubles away, as much fun as that sounds.
ReplyDeleteBells tinkle.
ReplyDeleteI agree that bells don't "tingle," I'm just listening to the song. She clearly makes a rhyming triplet of Kringle, jingle, tingle. I don't know if these are the published lyrics or not, but quite often official published lyrics are different from what the artist sings in the studio, so it could be argued that both are correct.
ReplyDelete*WHEW* another of the world's problems averted! Now let's work on world peace.