The Quest Love Show is a production of iHeartRadio.

Some of y'all this is Quest Quest Love Show.

It's the holidays, and if you know me, I love curating music.

I'm the guy that will, you know, sit for five hours and do deep dives and looking for the perfect song to capture the mood.

Even though I've taken a year off from CQLS, wasn't the only thing that I needed time away from.

I once had the dawning task of curating four hundred playlists a month for people two times over.

Actually, you know, I would do slow songs in fast songs.

So there are a bunch of people sort of tugging all my cotails for Christmas music recommendation, So I guess I'll share some of my favorite ones with you.

Of course, you know what the all time classic Christmas time is here, Vince Garaldi and Charlie Brown.

I recently found out how unsupportive the CBS network was to the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, which I believe that special is now sixty years old.

Actually I heard that because they rejected it so late, they actually never wanted to air it at all.

It was jarring for them to see a Christmas special, you know, with a manically depressive kid as the lead, and even the fact that they said that, you know, jazz music's going to turn off their viewers, like everything is wrong about this, and so they kind of were forced to air it because they had nothing else to put in this place into Much to their surprise and chagrin, it wound up being a hit.

I know that one of the things that they insisted on was that one of those jazz songs had to have vocals on it.

So at the very last minute, I believe one of the execs at CBS, who was sort of in charge of the project, had their kid and his classmates go into the studio at the last minute to sing Christmas time is here.

So it's kind of like an eleventh hour decision.

But you know, they kind of accidentally stumbled onto a classic.

So that's for that.

There's a song that I feel is Philadelphia to its core whenever I hear it.

Sometimes I like listening to the song even on non holiday timelines, and that is a song called Merry Christmas All not too original of a title, but this is by the Sassol Orchestra, led by remixer and editor and producer Tom Moulton, It's just a very jazzy Philadelphia song.

I was under the impression that anything that came out of Sigma Sound Recording Studios, the same studio that all those disco classics came from in the seventies, The Sound of Philadelphia, and also five roots albums came out of there as well.

I was under the impression that they were all kind of like one giant organization, only for me to realize that various Philadelphia producers had no choice but to use the same musicians.

So yes, even though this is the sound of Philadelphia and this sounds very much like something Gamble and Huff would do for their artists, the only common ground is that after Gamble and Huff is done, therefore our session, another producer's coming in to use the same musicians, and he hands out the sheets and they play the same thing, same engineering, same texture, the same sound.

So I was kind of the impression that this was a Gambled and Huff song, But no, it was recording the same studio, same musicians, but totally different production.

But Merry Christmas all one of the jazziest, coolest Philadelphia songs ever.

Third up Okay, So James Brown.

I will say that his Christmas album was probably the very first James Brown album I ever heard.

I remember listening to that record at my aunt's house, my aunt Barbara, that would be the destination for Christmas time every year from my childhood on up to maybe stop going when I was twenty something.

But she used to always play the Soulful Christmas Album by James Brown and the opening cut go Power.

At Christmas time when you're three years old, I have no idea what James Brown is singing, so I thought he was talking about gold power, like gold metal flower, give me some gold Power.

Never understood why James.

I thought he was frying chicken or something.

I don't know, but I now realized.

I guess go Power was kind of his motivational give me some excitement for Christmas.

But yeah, it's one of those old timey terms like elbow grease, like something you don't hear anymore.

Also, the title cut Soulful Christmas.

It's probably the first time I heard Clyde Stubblefield drum before I discovered Funky drummer.

Like.

Honestly, it's weird that James Brown's most popular boutique song was the one flop in his otherwise flawless top ten run between nineteen sixty five and nineteen seventy five.

Most of the singles that he released between sixty five and seventy five were at the very least top twenty singles on the Soul chart.

Eighty percent of them were top ten songs.

A line share were top five and number one songs.

But the one single that he released that didn't farewell on the Black charts was an instrumental called Funky Drummer and the irony of that.

But that drum pattern that's done on Funky Drummer is also done on Soulful Christmas Time, and so that holds dear to my heart.

So I will say that even as a kid, I used to practice Soulful Christmas just to get that left handed kind of a ghost note thing that Clyde Stubblefield does with the snare drum.

As an album, if you are into psychedelic pop, psychedelic soul, or just psychedelics, I highly recommend the Rotary Connection album called Pa Rotary Connection.

Of course, the Chicago outfit that includes Maya Rudolph's mother Minnie Riperton, also produced by Charles Stephanie, who later produce an amazing band called Earth Wind and Fire, to whom I just finished directing.

Their documentary will be out on HBO soon.

But that entire Peace Album is just weird.

It might be like the Dark Side of the Moon of Christmas albums, and it's less about the holidays and more about peace.

Because of course they are all hippies, so stamn hippies want piece all the time.

But yeah, for a cohesive listening experience from start to finish that you could put on at any time period, I would highly recommend the Peace Album by the Rotary Connection you know on QLs.

Of course, if you listen to who Are Very First or was it Our Second Christmas Special?

When Fante talks about the magic of hearing Silent Night by the Temptations, Yes, that is definitely one of the classics.

But I will say that Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer by the Temptations, which, of course, if you are familiar with DMX's kind of rendition of it the beginning, he's basing it on the Temptations.

There's Dancer and parents and Vixen.

Like when you listen to that intro that DMX does.

He's basing it on the Temptations version of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.

I only pick it because, you know, I know motown acts of the sixties, they had to sort of straddle, just ride that line between sophisticated pop and just enough blackness to not scare Middle America.

But this version of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, like, there's so many correct incorrect notes.

If you're a real musician, you know what I'm talking about.

When I mean incorrect notes, I don't mean like they played something wrong, but there's just a soulful way that black keys are used.

Sometimes when you're taking pop songs that are Christine and major key and you put it in a minor key from Eddie Kendricks is singing to James Jamerson's baseline delivery.

This is probably the blackest thing that pre Psychedelic Temptations has ever done.

So I recommend that I've recently discovered that on the Earth, Wind and Fire Christmas album, which I think came out in the last ten years, that they've also remade September into December.

Genius ideas.

So when you're tired of listening to, you can also listen to December and it's Christmas apropos lyrics for that, So of course shout out to Earth Wind and Fire.

I think the Jackson five Christmas album should be also in every household.

This is probably their last album of that kid innocence era before they all turn to teenagers.

You know, a year later they're going to do like Dance Machine.

But there's two songs on that record that I always wondered about, because again I encountered this record when I was like two or three, and of course I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus is a song in which the child does know that daddy's really Santa Claus and why is Mommy kissing the stranger?

But the way that Michael and the bridge will yell out and I'm gonna tell my daddy.

I didn't know about the legend of Joe Jackson back when I was three, But you know, just just transferring and paralleling it to my own household, I wouldn't want to snitch on my mom like that, Are you crazy?

Dish is thrown everywhere.

No, so Mike, stop snitching.

But also the monologue, while most of America would ask their kids to come down.

Like I lived in the seventies and when the seventies was the last decade where the adults would have a gathering, and it was pretty much expected once a month that you would be awaken out of your sleep to come downstairs in front of the poker table or the drinking table, wherever the adults are, and then you provide entertainment a mere sing a dream the impossible dream.

Watch he can sing this, and you know, or Amir, do the robot by the Jackson five, and then you know, just be one in the morning.

I'm like sleep dancing, but I would often my family would get tickled by my rendition of the monologue of Remaine Jackson crying after getting dumped by his girlfriend on Christmas.

Won't be the same this year.

So literally, Amir, do the speech.

Do the speech.

Oh he's crying, you know, and now we have to listen, just listen to Christmas won't be the same this year, by the Jackson five and that whole monologue where Jermaine gets dumped and whatever.

Like I somehow committed.

That's the first Jackson five song I committed to memory.

So that's that I'm rounded out with, of course Otis Reddings Merry Christmas Baby, weirdly enough sampled by Prince Paul in Queen Antifa's Mamma gave birth to the Soul Children, which is how I came to know it.

But I will actually say that now that I'm familiar with the entire Stax vault cannon for the early part of the MG's and I'm talking about the legendary booker t Al Jackson, of course, the late Steve Cropper on guitar, I will say that's probably, and you know, of course, like everyone knows Soul Man, and like just all these other iconic Steve Cropper guitar performances.

But for me, his guitar performance on Merry Christmas Baby, for Otis Writing to me, is one of the most flawless, awesome examples of his kind of gut bucket down South Quartec gospel sliding on a guitar.

That's one of my favorite songs ever.

I'm gonna close this out with a Christmas song that I wish I made, The Dap Kings.

I'm a big fan, so big I stole two of their members for the roots.

Shout out to Dave guy and Uncle Chief Ian Hendrickson of the Dap Kings and their version of God Resci Marry Gentlemen.

There is somewhere on the shelf a roots Christmas song using Matt Music as the backdrop that we created that we never release.

There's a lot of songs on the shelf.

So the Dap Kings got Rescy Marry Gentleman is definitely a favorite.

The last two, I will say.

Fishbone released two EPs in early in their career.

The second one is called We're going to Have a Wonderful Life, which is kind of a Christmas EP, and there's a song called slick nick You, Devil You, which Angelo, the lead singer Fishbone, sort of expresses his disdain for Santa Claus and the fact that he's been neglectful and delivering the wrong gifts, that his health is you know that he has poor health, and basically it's an eleven year old telling him about himself, which you know.

It's called slick nick You doub you.

And I will close it out by giving my man drum I haven't heard from a long time.

Drum you need to, you know, come with it, all right, So I will say that drum his Christmas EP, he does a duet with his mother, Big Baby Mom, and they're rendition of silver Bells is one of my favorites.

It's so good, I can't believe.

I actually talked Jimmy and the staff of the Tonight Show of having them do it on the show.

So those are kind of my off the top.

Go to Christmas Choices and you have a great Christmas