Suave, Like Nobody’s Business
By David McGee
(Ed. Note: Raul Malo was a friend to TheBluegrassSpecial.com and to Deep Roots, and we hope we returned the love in full and then some. A bonafide generational artist, a singer almost without compare outside of classical music, and a man whose art brought multiple cultures together in harmony, in diversity, in inclusivity that comes when music communicates beyond geographical and cultural boundaries. And with all that, Raul and his fellow Mavericks, were one hell of a rock ‘n’ roll band, as potent, as powerful, as substantive, as deep, and as relevant as any other of their time—truly epic in vision and execution.
We can’t say enough good about Raul Malo and all the goodness, indeed all the humanity, his music brought to the world for three decades-plus. So, in paying tribute to an artist who made the world a much better place than he found idt and before he left it on December 8, and being confident of the cancer that took him never silencing him, Deep Roots is coupling previously published reviews of Malo’s and The Mavericks’ Christmas albums, and, in the forthcoming Pt. 2 of this tribue, interviews we conducted with Raul over the years, allowing him to explain himself and his animating passions in his own words. Raul Malo, walking on, as the Native Americans say, on December 8, 2025. Godspeed, good man.)
MARSHMALLOW WORLD & OTHER HOLIDAY FAVORITES
Raul Malo
New Door Records (2007)
From Deep Roots, published on December 18, 2012
In one of the most classic of The Honeymooners’ Classic 39 episodes, “Alice and The Blonde,” Ralph Kramden’s sidekick, subterranean sanitation engineer Ed Norton compliments Burt Weidemeyer on the appearance of the Weidemeyer apartment (newly inhabited by Burt’s blushing bride, the “Blonde” of the episode title, who has an overtly Jayne Mansfield flair about her) by declaring it to be “suave. That’s a long-winded way to make the point that Raul Malo’s stunner of a Christmas album, the benignly (or retro-) titled Marshmallow World & Other Holiday Favorites, is many things, all marvelous, but mostly it is suave, like nobody’s business–-much like Malo himself, come to think about it.
At the Duck Room in the Blueberry Hill club in St. Louis, 2011, Raul Malo tells the story behind the story of why he recorded ‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’ before performing the song.
Working economically, Malo assembled seven other musicians to support him, all but two (John McTigue III on drums, Neil Rosengarden on trumpet) playing multiple instruments. Malo himself works out on four instruments–including the Danelectro baritone guitar with the deep, fat twang that has become a mainstay of Malo’s sound–and his catholic touch is all over the arrangements, which range from big band swing, to cheery R&B, to saloon-style blues, to south of the border flavors; but in the end, for all his mastery of every aspect of his art, Malo’s voice and scintillating attack, so unpredictable and so richly informed by history, puts this album in league with the finest holiday albums of all time.
Raul Malo, ‘Marshmallow World,’ at The Ark, Ann Arbor, MI, December 12, 2011
For instance, “Marshmallow World” is taken at an easygoing, mellow pace, as Dean Martin did, but where Dean had an orchestral backing, Malo strips it down to the basic band with woodwinds fluttering through the arrangement, plus a honky tonk piano courtesy Robert Chevrier, a jazzy, wailing clarinet and male backing vocalists to give this Carl Sigman-Peter DeRose classic a whole new coat of dazzling pop paint. “Not So Merry Christmas,” the least known of the “Holiday Favorites” here, comes from Bobby Vee’s 1962 Snuff Garrett-produced Christmas album, but Malo’s version imagines it as it might have been done by Roy Orbison, with all the attendant heart wrenching drama he can bring with his robust, expressive voice in lamenting the love he lost a year earlier at Christmastime, as the memories pile up in his mind and that lonely sounding baritone guitar adds an epic quality to the air of despair permeating the track. With organ and clarinet prominent, our man gets into a finger popping reading of “Jingle Bells,” with a little Elvis swagger in his delivery, and a sly nod to Sinatra’s version in his “j-jingle bells” stutter.
Raul Malo, ‘Silent Night,’ at The Ark in Ann Arbor, MI, December 12, 2011
‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas,’ Raul Malo, from Marshmallow World & Other Holiday Favorites
Speaking of Elvis, Malo channels the King with regularity here. Though the spare arrangement of “White Christmas” has a jazzy feel in its walking bass, snapping percussion and woodwinds darting here and there, Malo’s cool, understated singing hardly masks its indebtedness to Elvis’s phrasing on the same song, as it does on a sensitive inquiry into “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” here offered in a pronounced blue hue, with the singer opting for melancholy over optimism, a mood enhanced by Jim Hoke’s mournful clarinet solo over Chevrier’s teary interior monologue on piano. He departs from Elvis’s versions, though, on a midtempo, R&B-styled “Blue Christmas” and on a churning, horn-infused small combo R&B reading of “Santa Claus Is Back In Town.” Elvis also recorded a lovely version of “Silver Bells,” but he didn’t do it as a tango, as Malo does for the first 2:35 before he and the band, with Jim Hoke’s pumping horns setting the pace, break into a sprint for the last minute-plus of their revelry. The Malo bloodline is all over a jubilant version of Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad,” not only in the mariachi horns but also in the supporting singalong by a family of Malos including his son Dino along with Victor Malo, and Carol and Norma Malo in a rousing, rock-inflected bit of Latinalia that honors the Malos’ Cuban roots and the family’s assimilation into American life and culture (hence, one supposes, the wailing rock guitar way down but clearly audible in the mix). And what the heck? Why not slip an ironic 53-second Hawaiian-ized rendition of “Winter Wonderland” onto the end of the disc, with Malo fashioning a bouncy rhythm on ukulele and not singing but whistling his way through the tune? It’s not like Hawaii sees much in the way of winter wonderlands come the season, but then Marshmallow World & Other Holiday Hits is not much like any other Christmas album either, thanks to Malo’s soulful communiqués and his suave, unruffled, ever-cool presence throughout.
Do yourselves a favor, dear readers, and don’t overlook this album as your faithful friend and narrator did for far too long. Buy it and put it in heavy holiday rotation, because it deserves to be there alongside Elvis, Frank, Nat, Der Bingle, Jo Stafford and latter-day masters of Yuletide cheer such as Brian Setzer. Feliz Navidad!
Mavs Make Christmas Merry
By Billy Altman
From Deep Roots, November 22, 2023
HEY! MERRY CHRISTMAS
Mavericks
Mono Mundo Recordings
When it was first released in 2018, the Mavericks’ Hey! Merry Christmas! was a quietly received but nonetheless welcomed addition to the sizeable body of holiday-themed music albums, and one of the neatest things about it was the fact that group leader Raul Malo decided to go all in on the project by himself composing all but two of the collection’s ten songs. Considering how just how many cool Yule tunes have come down the chimney over the years, that’s not a particularly easy challenge to give yourself as a songwriter or performer. Still, as longtime Mavericks fans can well attest, and as per the title of his band’s best-known album, 1995’s Music for All Occasions, if there’s something to sing about, Raul Malo is one vocalist who can certainly do it.
‘It’s Christmas Without You,’ Mavericks, from Hey! Merry Christmas!
‘Hey! Merry Christmas!’, Mavericks, title track from the band’s holiday album
Blessed with one of the best set of pipes in all of pop music–he could probably, as the saying goes, sing the phone book and make it entertaining–Malo and his hard-working group nimbly glide from egg nog-fueled dance numbers such as the shuffling leadoff song “Christmas Time Is (Coming Round Again”) and the swingin’ Louis Jordan-styled title track to fireplace-ready ballads such as the touching “Christmas For Me (Is You)” and the wistful “It’s Christmas Without You.” And, just to add a little nod-and-a-wink to the proceedings, there’s the bluesy, double-entendre packed “Santa Wants to Take You For A Ride,” to be listened to, preferably, after the little ones are all tucked away safely for the night. Throw in a few more goodies, like the sweetly spiced, accordion-accented “I Have Wanted You (for Christmas”) and several (Phil) Spector-ian production numbers such as (cue the glockenspiels) “Santa Does” and a top-notch version of Darlene Love’s 1963 classic, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” and, overall, Hey! Merry Christmas! more than fits the bill as a worthy stocking stuffer–for this or any other holiday season.
