Sunday, October 25, 2015

Behind the Music: Peace On Earth


Everyone knows Bing Crosby from his biggest hit, "White Christmas," which was released on Christmas Day in 1941, and became the best-selling single in history.
White Christmas by Bing Crosby on Decca Records
The crooner went on to star in a movie named after the song in 1954 and became the perennial guest host of The Hollywood Palace Christmas specials throughout the 1960s.
Bing's final television appearance was on his own 1977 Christmas special, Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas, with special guest star David Bowie. Crosby suggested they sing another 1941 classic Christmas carol, "The Little Drummer Boy." But Bowie liked to march to his own little drummer boy, so he and the show's writers, Alan Kohan, Ian Fraser, and Larry Grossman (Snoopy: The Musical), composed a new counterpoint melody entitled "Peace On Earth."

And thus a new Christmas standard was born of an old one.

Peace, out.

Candycane