As it's Christmas I thought I'd do a little animation for this post instead of the usual photos.
I don't have this record, but a friend of mine does and I was able to photograph it recently and hopefully may get my hands on it one day.
Recorded in 1977 for a TV Christmas Special, 'Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas', this collaboration was only available as a bootleg for the first 5 years of it's life, released as a "partly unofficial" 45rpm by B&B Records in 1978 backed with Bowie's 'Heroes' from the same TV show.
RCA eventually issued a commercial release in 1982 in a couple of formats, the normal 7" single and this one, a 12" limited edition mono picture disc. Side 1 was the full unedited version of 'Peace on Earth / Little Drummer Boy' with the introductory dialogue. Side 2 was Bowie doing 'Fantastic Voyage'. Unusually the label was oversized, a full 7" label on the middle of the 12" disc.
The reason the track is a combination of 2 different songs is because, to quote Bowie, "I hate this song. Is there something else I could sing?" In a frantic effort to come up with something, musical supervisors Ian Fraser and Larry Grossman along with scriptwriter Alan Kohan huddled around a piano in the basement of the studio and wrote 'Peace on Earth' in an hour. Bowie sang that as a counterpoint to Bing.
There are stories of the weirdness of this whole TV show and recording, but in the spirit of Christmas I'll leave that for anyone to look up if you're interested. In the meantime, this is my wife Tracy's favourite Christmas song and so regardless of the circumstances, let's just be happy it exists.
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