Patti O'Shea's Blog

Yesterday, I began my quest to hunt down the Hawaiian Christmas song I’d heard on the radio over the weekend. I went to the station’s website, and while they did list the songs they played, it was only for the day, not for last Saturday. Uh-oh, I thought.

Fearing the worst, I did an online search for Hawaiian Christmas song and in a miracle of the season, I hit it on the first try. The title is Mele Kalikimaka. Half the battle was won. All that was left was figuring out who sang the version I heard and where to buy an MP3 of the song. It would turn out that my answer to both would be in the same place–Amazon.

In the back of my mind, I figured it would be Don Ho or some other Hawaiian musical artist, but I discovered the song was widely recorded by a lot of singers–a surprise to me since I’d never heard it before–and that none of them were Don Ho. My top three candidates ended up being Bing Crosby (that was a surprise!), Jimmy Buffett and Chris Isaak. I decided Isaak was a long shot because I have his Heart-Shaped World CD and this didn’t sound like him.

I listened to a clip from Bing Crosby and I was pretty sure it wasn’t him, but these darn snippets are so short, it was hard to be 100% certain. I listened to Jimmy Buffett next. Hmm. Maybe. I tried Chris Isaak and I was right–it wasn’t him. I listened to a few other versions, but it was definitely between Bing and Jimmy. After listening to each clip one more time, I decided it must have been Jimmy Buffett and bought the song. If I was wrong, it was only 89 cents. After listening to the entire thing, I know I picked the right song.

So Mele Kalikimaka! It’s the thing to say on a bright Hawaiian Christmas Day.

Tags: holidays, music, searches

This entry was posted on Friday, December 21st, 2007 at 10:26 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.