What’s the first thing you think of when you hear this song? Do you imagine a living room tucked away in a log cabin house burried in the mountainside amongst the pine and evergreen trees? With tons of snow all around and even more coming down out of the sky? In front of the couch in the living room is a massive stone fireplace with a good sized warm fire is burning intently.
That’s my thought. That’s a classic Christmas scene to me anyway.
What’s your classic Christmas scene? What’s the song that accompanies it?
In the world of the music business you have to obtain a license to use songs that still fall under copyright. In the project I’m finishing up, I’ve got Christmas past. All those songs are over 100 years old and are in the public domain. Then there’s Christmast present. All those songs are song within the last 100 years. Meaning they are in need of a license to pay the writer(s). Then there’s Christmas future. All those songs are songs either written or co-written by me and including a couple I didn’t write.
Getting a license to sell a song you’ve done a cover version of, is fairly simple these days. Simple if the writer and publisher are smart enough to put their material at Harry Fox Agency. They make getting a license simple. There was one song, out of the 10 I needed to get a license for, that wasn’t on
The song in question: Grandma Got Runover By A Reindeer. So I had to attempt to contact Dr. Elmo. He’s the cat that wrote it. His people got back to me, sending me on to the correct person for the license. The funny thing they wrote back saying sure and asked for a mp3. Then I got an e-mail from Dr. Elmo himself saying he really dug my version. That’s pretty cool when an artist makes a point to contact you about doing a cover of their song.
But this is not about Grandma, this is about The Christmas Song. Apparently written in the San Fernando Valley in the middle of summer or so. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. One of the most recognized songs in the world comes from the heat. Then to top it off it was supposedly written in 40 minutes. Not a bad afternoon’s work if you ask me. Especially with the returns and residuals he’s got in his banking account.
Despite all that its still a classic song and if you don’t have it you best get on the ball and snag this before anyone finds out your don’t have it.
(** Disclaimer: should Mel’s label ruin my classic christmas in any way or form, I’ll be revising my goal by removing audio immediately. The post will remain to explain. **)