Christmas Time Will Soon Be Over: A Song History

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"Christmas Time Will Soon Be Over" is an old-time reel from north Georgia. Its first strain sits in A major, and the second slips into the A mixolydian mode; fiddlers play it in standard tuning or in the AEae and ADae cross-tunings.[1] Fiddlin' John Carson and his Virginia Reelers recorded it in 1927.[1][2] Carson was already a pioneer by then. His first record, made for OKeh in Atlanta in June 1923, sold far beyond the company's expectations; the New Georgia Encyclopedia dates the birth of the country-music recording industry to that session. He went on to record about 165 songs.[3]

Winslow Homer wood engraving of children and adults dancing in a ring around a Christmas tree in a parlor

Winslow Homer, The Christmas Tree, wood engraving, 1858. The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

A version was also played in Mississippi by fiddler Stephen B. Tucker, under Carson's title and the alternate title "Christmas Time in the Morning." It was recorded in 1939 and appeared in 1985 on Great Big Yam Potatoes, an LP of Mississippi fiddle music.[4][5] According to the Traditional Tune Archive, Tucker's coarse (low) strain carries the song's melody, while his fine strain sounds more modal than Carson's string-band version.[4] Fiddle players can also find the tune in print, for example in Phillips's Traditional American Fiddle Tunes (1994).[1]

The tune also has a bluegrass relative. The Traditional Tune Archive describes Tex Logan's "Christmas Time's a-Comin'" as derived from Carson's tune.[1] A 2018 post on the blog of the Hillbilly at Harvard radio program notes that the two share a melody but are different songs, since Logan wrote new words and added a second part as a chorus.[2] Both pieces appear, as separate titles, in Stephen Seifert's mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam II.[6]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Christmas Time Will Soon be Over".
  2. Hillbilly at Harvard: "Extra! Fiddlin' John Carson Played Tex's 'Christmas Time' in 1927!".
  3. New Georgia Encyclopedia: "Fiddlin' John Carson (ca. 1868–1949)".
  4. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Annotation:Christmas Time in the Morning".
  5. Folk Music: An Index to Recorded Resources (ibiblio): "Folk Music Performer Index - Tuc to Tz".
  6. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam II".