CHRISTMAS STAR CAR TUNES:"SNOOPY'S CHRISTMAS"-THE ROYAL GUARDSMEN #1 1967
It's December 1967 and you're still driving the relatively new Plymouth 440 GTX you bought a few months earlier.
That's how it was back then-you drove cars like this summer and winter, 440 or no 440, traction or no traction in winter. You turn on the car radio and this catchy little Christmas tune comes on the AM dial.
You really had to be a kid to get this song back in late 1967.
As luck would have it, there were millions of baby boomer kids who got “Snoopy versus the Red Baron” by the Royal Guardsmen.
This song had it all-a comic book dog icon named Snoopy taking on the “bloody Red Baron” in mortal combat, and a catchy mid-60s sound from a one-hit wonder mid-60s band.
But it ended up with Snoopy taking out the Red Baron in mortal aerial combat-not the kind of Christmas message you wanted kids to hear, so along came “Snoopy’s Christmas”.
This time Snoopy was in the gun sights and this is what happened that fateful night “The Baron had Snoopy dead in his sights He reached for the trigger to pull it up tight Why he didn't shoot, well, we'll never know Or was it the bells from the village below”.
You knew at the time that this song would end up being a Christmas classic simply because the “Peanuts” franchise never died. If anything, it came to be a marketing juggernaut for the late Charles Schultz, so this funny little seasonal classic about a flying Beagle taking on a legendary WW1 German ace was a bull’s-eye.
Snoopy’s Christmas is like those 50-60 year old Disney classic movies that never really go away because once one generation of kids grow up, their parents are going to expose their offspring to the same traditions that made Christmas so much fun for them 30-40 years earlier.
This 44-year-old Christmas song about a cartoon character will still be around in other 40 years, because fun and positive messages at Christmas will never go out of style- “The Baron made Snoopy fly to the Rhine And forced him to land behind the enemy lines Snoopy was certain that this was the end When the Baron cried out, "Merry Christmas, my friend".
That’s why the Red Baron didn’t blow the Beagle and his Sopwith Camel airplane out of the sky-“ Christmas bells those Christmas bells Ringing through the land Bringing peace to all the world And good will to man”.
That's the kind of Yuletide message that sells.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rx17EDelnc
Jerry Sutherland
