This is my version of The 12 Days of Christmas.... with errors! i just realised verse 10 or 11 is the wrong length, so please sing-a-long... but be warned!
You can hear my wonderful new Christmas album at http://www.joolsscott.co.uk or http://www.firesidecarols.co.uk
There's piano, cello, guitar, double bass, trumpet, lots of singing, cheer and jollity. "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is an English Christmas carol (Roud # 68) which enumerates a series of increasingly grandiose gifts given on each of the twelve days of Christmas. It is a cumulative song, meaning that each verse is built on top of the previous verses. It has been one of the most popular and most-recorded Christmas songs in America and Europe throughout the past century.
"The Twelve Days of Christmas" is a children's rhyme that was originally published in a book called Mirth without Mischief in London around 1780. It was originally a memory and forfeit game and it was played by gathering a circle of players and each person took it in turns to say the first line of the rhyme. When it is the first player's turn again he says the second line of the verse and so on.
Years later the game and rhyme were adopted by Lady Gomme (an English collector of folktales and rhymes) as a rhyme that "the whole family could have fun singing every twelfth night before Christmas before eating nine pies and twelve cakes."
"The Twelve Days of Christmas" is a cumulative song, meaning that each verse is built on top of the previous verses. There are twelve verses, each describing a gift given by "my true love" on one of the twelve days of Christmas.
One peculiar aspect about this song is how the second through fourth verses use a different melody for the second through fourth items than in the fifth through 12th verses. Before the song gets to the "five golden rings," the melody, using solfege, is "sol re mi fa re" for the fourth through second items, as later found in the last verses for the 12th through sixth items. In the sixth through 12th verses, the melody for the fourth through second items is as shown above in the insert.
It has been suggested by a number of sources over the years that the pear tree is in fact supposed to be perdrix, French for partridge and pronounced per-dree, and was simply copied down incorrectly when the oral version of the game was transcribed. The original line would have been: "A partridge, une perdrix."
A bit of modern folklore claims that the song's lyrics were written as a "catechism song" to help young Catholics learn their faith, at a time when practicing Catholicism was discouraged in England(1558 until 1829).
Comedy versions:
Stan Freberg's "Green Chri$tma$" works parts of this song's melody into advertising for 1950s innovations such as tubeless tires.
Allan Sherman recorded "The Twelve Gifts of Christmas", in which the gifts are early 1960s garage-sale items, such as a transistor radio with a broken earpiece.
Sears, Roebuck & Co. and the The Walt Disney Company used Walt Disney Pictures' adapted character Winnie-the-Pooh for a "Twelve Days of Christmas" themed coloring book in 1973. It included such items as "five acrobats", "two pogo sticks", and "a hunny pot inna hollow tree".
In her act, Las Vegas entertainer Fay McKay performed "The Twelve Daze of Christmas", with a different alcoholic drink for each day, starting the song sounding sober and ending up sounding extremely inebriated and disoriented.
The Muppets version of the song, accompanied by John Denver, employs the normal lyrics, with the humor coming from the Muppets' unique twist, such as Miss Piggy's continual overplaying of the "Five Gold Rings" line.
On the late-night sketch-comedy program Second City TV in 1982, the Canadian-rustic characters Bob & Doug McKenzie (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, respectively) released a version on the SCTV spin-off album The Great White North, in which the gifts are obscure Canada-oriented items.
Seattle, Washington radio personality Bob Rivers has performed an on-air parody of the song, "The Twelve Pains of Christmas" (1987), in which people complain about the hassles of the holiday, e.g. sending Christmas cards, facing in-laws, and no parking spaces at the mall.
In 1994, the hip hop duo Insane Clown Posse recorded a short version of the song on the EP Carnival Christmas.
Blue collar-themed comedian Jeff Foxworthy performs the parody "Redneck Twelve Days of Christmas" (2003).
In 2007, a YouTube viral video of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" by the undergraduate a cappella group Straight No Chaser included the group's failure to be able to count the 12 days, and interspersed snippets of other songs including "I Have a Little Dreidel"
Best Christmas Album - Christmas Music Online
http://www.bestchristmasalbum.co.uk and Toto's "Africa".
Christmas song 2010
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the change in tune at 5 gold rings has copyright by the way...
Theshoerules 2 years ago
for my album 'Fireside Carols' I've changed the melody at that point, which should prevent complications!
joolsscott 2 years ago