... 

Now listen kids and listen good,

If we don't eat the things we should,

No electric trains or dolls with shoes,

We'll wake up Christmas morning
with the Santa Claus blues.

Let's eat the good things on our plate,

'Cause if we don't cooperate,

The benefits we've got to loose,

We'll wake up Christmas morning
with the Santa Claus blues.

Jingle bells, jingle bells, are coming right our way.

But don't forget,
we've got to get,
the Santa Clause OK.

Now I've been through it so I know,

And if you want your tree to glow,

Be sure to mind your P's and Q's,

Or wake up Christmas morning
with the Santa Claus blues.

...

Now I've been through it so I know,

And if you want your tree to glow,

Be sure to mind your P's and Q's,

Or wake up Christmas morning
with the Santa Claus blues:

Wake up Christmas morning...

With the Santa Claus blues.

Thank you for taking the time out of your busy holidays to visit my new Christmas Page for 1998.  You can still view the 1997 page: I'll Be Home For Christmas.

Here is the full story of the origins of this page. Fairly late in 1993 I decided  to design an animated video of the Elvis recording of I'll Be Home For Christmas (see that page for more details). Most people who saw the VHS tape loved it, so in 1994 I figured I would make a new video.  This video would be based on the 1950's song Santa Claus Blues as sung by Jimmy Boyd.  The only copy I have of this song is a 45 rpm single that was one of my parents when they were growing up.  As with the previous year, all the images I used would be animated on my old Apple IIgs.  An Apple IIgs was the 16 bit computer Apple built in the popular Apple II line. Among many wonderful features, an Apple IIgs could output a color composite video signal straight into a television or VCR. I then set about designing in my mind the frames to the video. Since Santa Claus Blues is a frivolous song,  the animation could be less artistic and funnier.  Then using drawing/animation software, I generated the eleven frames to the video.  For reasons I cannot remember, there should have been twelve, but the directory that would have held frame ten was empty.  Some frames are repeated several times in the song.  There was also a credit sequence designed using different software.  Each frame was 320 pixels by 200 pixels which just so happens to have been one of the normal resolution on an Apple IIgs.  Then disaster struck.  First I lost a cousin and then two grandparents.  Late in December I realized the project was in pieces and probably would not get done.  Then on December 22, 1994, the computer material was complete, and the whole thing was recorded onto VHS video tape.  Because of how miserable I felt while completing the project, this was to be the second and last Christmas video  of this type I ever made.

Since the source for the Santa Claus Blues song is an old 45 rpm vinyl single, I have been looking for a CD copy of the performance.  Originally I simply played the record straight into my VCR.  I thought this song must be commonally available everywhere if one just looked hard enough.  To this day I have not located one.  So since one cannot legally purchase a copy of this song unless you find it in a used record store, I have had the song digitized in three audio formats.  I  must say at this point that I have the coolest set of friends with the coolest equipment around.  To digitize this we took the 45 rpm record and inspected it.  In 1994, I had cleaned it, and it was still was free from dust and foreign particles.  After playing the record, a discovery was made.  Even though it was a monural record, the left channel sounded scratchier than the right channel.  This was probably due to the record being played with a damaged needle sometime in it's history.  To correct this, we sent the right channel to the computer on both right and left channels.  Once the analog signal reached the computer, a Sound Blaster AWE 64 and a companion program called Creative Wave handled actual digitizing.  When all was said and done, the resulting single channel file's size was 13,803,346 BYTES - THATS OVER 13 MEGABYTES!  After I was pulled from the ceiling, I was shown that the song was digitized at CD quality (44100 Hz at 16 bits) using Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) saved as a Windows WAV file.  To make the file more usable, we dropped the quality down to 8000Hz at 8 bits and received a file I could carry on a floppy disk.  This new file sounds like a telephone call or AM radio.  Then through the miracle of M-PEG 3 (MP3) compression, we took the original 13 MB file and compressed it to a size that could fit on a floppy disk.  As a last request since the hour was getting late, we super compressed the original file using MP3 at 11 kHz to receive a 381 KB file.  The sound is mostly clear, but there are a lot of "blops" in it where the compression could not keep up with Jimmy's voice.  Needless to say, only the three files that can fit on a floppy disk are available at the bottom of this page.  I am still looking for a better copy (vinyl or digital).  To aid anyone in the search, I had the record labels scanned while scanning record labels for a 1950's themed users' conference at work.  You can see the label and the flip side (I Saw Mommy Do the Mambo) at this page.  If you do locate a legal digital copy, please e-mail me where I can purchase this at drwho@korrnet.org.  Also if the copyright holder(s) feel their copyright is being infringed upon, I will remove the files or alter this page to make everyone happy.

Starting on November 13, 1998 (yes, Friday the Thirteenth), I located the three 800K floppy disks formatted with Apple PRODOS.  I paintakenly converted the images to the GIF format, used the same serial cables used last year to transfer the files, and with terminal emulation programs, copied the series of images. Now the images could be read by modern paint programs.  Using Microsoft's GIF Animator, I generated the new animations with different timings. I left the size alone, so the frames are the original 320 x 200 size.  The ending credits began during the last two lines, so I have had to make new slides. Now with this free home page from Geocites, and the animated GIF's above, I can share the experience with anyone. I still say the video experience is the best, but if you cannot catch the video this year, this web page is the next best thing. By the way, this page has been visited times so far since 11/23/1998.

Return to the Chris Augustus Christmas Central Page.  Have a merry Christmas!

Filename

Size (bytes)

Format

Actual Quality

Comparative Quality

389,149

1,226,014

1,245,671