I hear lots of voices

An Evening In December; First Call; David Maddux, singer and arranger

It seems odd to tell you that, as my sisters and I celebrated Christmas in our house during our formative years, we didn’t really listen to a lot of Christmas music. We didn’t have a stereo in the kitchen or in the living room or anywhere in the downstairs. I don’t remember what we did to make us feel that we had satisfied that void. I must have played Christmas music on the piano. And we probably listened to Christmas music on the radio. Mom had a radio station that she liked to listen to from the afternoon of Thanksgiving Day to the afternoon of Christmas Eve; a two-hour show called Holiday Inn with Ray “Lofty” Loftesness as the host.

My sister K., at some point, asked me if I had any Christmas cassette tapes to play on our tape player while we opened presents. It dawned on me, with her query of recorded Christmas music, that we had deprived ourselves for so many years of one of the greatest joys of celebrating Christmas. So, my sisters and I set out on an unspoken mission: to amass the largest collection and diversity of recorded Christmas music that the three of us could muster. About that time, Mom discovered the Hallmark Presents Christmas series and started assembling a sizable reserve of Christmas music. So, when all of us finally got together to celebrate Christmas, one of the first questions posed as we burst through the door: “What did you bring for Christmas music?”

One year, we asked D. what she had brought home for us to listen to. She said, “I don’t know.” K. and I looked at each other with an expression of ambiguity, and then K. said, “Explain.” As it turns out, D. had heard some Christmas music that she liked coming out of someone else’s dorm room at college. So, she asked her friend to make a cassette tape of this music for her so that she could share it with us on Christmas morning. When she brought the tape home, she found that her friend had only written down the title of the album, not the name of the group that recorded it. The tape bore the title, “An Evening In December”. And, in those dark ages before the world wide interweb, the group who made this fine recording remained a mystery to us for a few years.

In 1985, a group named First Call put out an acapella album called “An Evening In December”. I had difficulty at first deciphering the exact make-up of the group: Choir or otherwise? And what comprised the “otherwise”? For the first hearing, though, it didn’t matter. This album knocked me out cold. We didn’t have four part harmony here; I counted as many as sixteen parts, covering three, bordering on four, octaves. I heard towering harmonic structures, with dominant ninths, minor sixths, augmented fifths, decadent thirteenths and demolished tenths, cementing together some of the closest harmony I have ever heard with minor seconds about every other floor. I felt like the proverbial Midwesterner walking down New York’s Fifth Avenue, looking up with his mouth wide open.

With one person on a part, First Call created a unique Christmas sound using multi-tracking and studio finesse techniques to create tiers upon tiers of delicate harmony, bringing fabulous flavor and texture to melodies and texts that shine and glow with the luster of eternity.

Credits: To those who plenish the chambers of their soul with that most expensive of all sounds that express the inexpressible, that takes the intangible and puts it in the palm of our hands.