12 Days of Casey - Day 2

In somewhat of a countdown fashion, HERC will be featuring a different Casey Kasem Christmas show or countdown each day from now until December 25th, in reverse chronological order, starting with the most recent and ending with the very first American Top 40 Christmas countdown from 1971.

"Hi. Merry Christmas everybody and welcome to American Top 40. I'm Casey Kasem and we'd like to welcome you in fact to a very special AT40 countdown."

Day 2 of the 12 Days Of Casey is an episode of American Top 40, featuring the first half of Casey's very first "All-Time Christmas Countdown" of the Top 40 Christmas Songs.  This holiday countdown originally aired on Christmas Day 1971 but thanks to Premiere Networks, HERC has heard a replay of that show.  On the original broadcast, Casey gave listeners the details on a mail-in offer to get the Special Christmas Top 40 countdown list, as well as the 1971 Year End Countdown list (which he would count down the following week, the first week of 1972) and a groovy American Top 40 poster for their walls.  Another interesting thing about this particular show is the producers chose to play alternate versions of the charted songs instead of the more popular charted versions.  Other than that, as the Hideaway's unofficial AT40 Archivist and Guru noted:

Only three songs from the 1971 countdown failed to make the cut in 1973: “If Everyday Was Like Christmas” by Elvis, “Santo Natale” by David Whitfield, and “Christmas Dragnet” by Stan Freberg. They were replaced by “Lonesome Christmas” by Lowell Fulson, “Marshmallow World” by Bing Crosby, and “Merry Christmas Darling” by the Carpenters. (David Whitfield was a British singer with an operatic tenor voice, and “Santo Natale” was a hit at Christmas 1954. Lowell Fulson’s “Lonesome Christmas,” which dates back to 1950, is as far opposite “Santo Natale” as you can get on this planet.)

So it's Christmas Deja Vu all over again.

(1973 chart positions are listed in red on chart below.  Green still means unavailable via Spotify.)  

#	title	artist	year	1973
40	If Every Day Was Like Christmas	Elvis Presley	1966	-
39	Merry Christmas Polka	Andrews Sisters	1950	35
38	Santa Claus Is Watching You	Ray Stevens	1962	38
37	The Happy Reindeer	Dancer, Prancer and Nervous	1959	40
36	Little Altar Boy	Vic Dana	1961	36
35	Santa and the Satellite (Parts I and II)	Buchanan and Goodman	1957	37
34	Santo Natale	David Whitfield	1954	-
33	Baby's First Christmas	Connie Francis	1961	34
32	Little Saint Nick	Beach Boys	1963	33
31	Snoopy's Christmas	The Royal Guardsmen	1967	31
30	Pretty Paper	Roy Orbison	1963	30
29	Christmas Dragnet	Stan Freberg	1953	-
28	Mary's Boy Child	Harry Belafonte	1956	28
27	Santa Baby	Eartha Kitt	1953	29
26	I Yust Go Nuts At Christmas	Yogi Yorgesson	1949	27
25	It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas	Perry Como	1951	26
24	Home For The Holidays	Perry Como	1954	25
23	Christmas In Kilarney	Dennis Day	1950	24
22	Merry Christmas Baby	Charles Brown	1948	21
21	All I Want For Chirtsmas Is My Two Front Teeth	Spike Jones	1948	22

The pinch-hitters heard on the air were: 

• Andy Williams for #36
• Chipmunks for #25
• Bing Crosby for #23

Tune in tomorrow for Day 1 (the final day) of the 12 Days Of Casey for the second half of today's episode.  With HERC SR, HERC's Mom and all them visiting, The Hideaway will be dark until Friday, January 2nd, when we return with (what else but) an episode of America's Top 10.