We made a little holiday video for the pagan Christmas carol classic “Big Surprise” from the movie The Life & Adventures of Santa Clause. It’s by Rankin-Bass Productions, the company that ruined your childhood with many other scary puppet and animated movies.
TL&AoSC features this sprightly little number below, “Big Surprise”, about the invention of toys to fill bleak orphan lives with holiday hope. “Big Surprise” is a classic holiday song in every respect, yet is rather obscure. In fact, its season-neutral lyrics make it the perfect Kid’s Song for all time. It is suitable for classrooms year round, as it is for caroling on Christmas morning.
The songs switches key three times—from Bb, up to C, and finally up to D, higher and higher, each verse ascends by a whole tone, while maintaining the traditional song structure of three verses and choruses with a bridge thrown in the middle. Every Christmas song changes key at least once.
The simple animal-child relationship, the gaiety of the melody, and the overall fun quality and aforementioned obscurity make “Big Surprise” the perfect holiday cover carol for Los Doggies. Deck it out.
The very end of the song features the “Jingle Bells” chorus played on the glockenspiel as is tradition. This has probably been a Christmas cliche for a long time. An early famous example that comes to mind is Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song”. Another popular one is in Bruce Springsteen’s cover of “Santa Clause is Coming to Town”. In both examples, the melody is played from the 3rd, as it is in the original “Jingle Bells”. Recently, Jimmy Fallon, Maria Carey, and The Roots continued the tradition in a live toy rendition of Mariah’s song “All I Want For Christmas Is You”.
In a slight twist on this cheesy holiday cliche, Los Doggies transposes the melody up to the 7th, resulting in a Major 7th (Add 9) Chord. Drag over the noteheads below to hear the melody in its original key (A Major), then click on the chord to hear how it works over the D Major (as in the end of “Big Surprise”). Try hitting 64th notes on the glock, by quickly dragging your cursor past the row of C-sharps.
The Major 7th makes the cliche a little sadder. After all, it is the’ Chord of Love’, as they say. A staple jazz chord, the Major 7th appears in many classic jazz carol standards. The Charlie Brown song “Christmas Time is Here” by Vince Guaraldi features a memorable Major 7th Chord that is emphasized by the first note of the melody.
We also performed a version of “Christmas Time is Here” with our good friend Liana Gabel in honor of our mutual kickstarters happening this month.
