Do You Hear What I Hear?

The uncle I was named after worked for Goodyear Tire, and among the things in my house growing up were a bunch of Christmas records featuring the Goodyear logo. These records (apparently a new one was put out each year) featured holiday standards sung by various artists of the day.

Among my favorite songs from these albums was "Do You Hear What I Hear?" sung by Andy Williams. Now, I don't remember exactly what made me look this up a few years ago, but it turns out this song has a very interesting history.

From WikiPedia:

"Do You Hear What I Hear?" is a Christmas song written in October 1962 with lyrics by Noël Regney and music by Gloria Shayne Baker. The pair . . . wrote it as a plea for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Baker stated in an interview years later that neither could personally perform the entire song at the time they wrote it because of the emotions surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis.

"Our little song broke us up. You must realize there was a threat of nuclear war at the time."

Kind of puts a whole new spin on it, don't it?

At any rate, without further ado, here is Andy Williams performing this wonderful Christmas tune.

PS: Man, do I love YouTube. After writing the above, my plan was to simply find a video of Andy Williams singing it, but then I found this:

"From the 1966 LP: "Goodyear's Great Songs Of Christmas Album 6" (Columbia Special Products CSS-388)"