Bing Crosby – Silent Night

This will be the last Christmas post of 2023. I’m sure a lot of you are relieved!

This song is not only my favorite Christmas Carol… I think it’s up there with the best songs ever written. I hope everyone has a great Christmas/Holiday this year…not only that but have a Happy New Year in 2024.

There are over 26,000 different versions of “Silent Night” on Spotify, meaning you could listen to a different rendition of the carol every night for 72 years.

Halfway through December 1818, the church organ in St. Nicholas in Oberndorf, 11 miles north of Salzburg in what is now Austria, broke (a popular version of the story claims that mice had eaten out the bellows). The curate, 26-year-old Josef Mohr, realized it couldn’t be repaired in time to provide music on Christmas Eve. He told his troubles to his friend, a headmaster and amateur composer named Franz Gruber, while giving him as a present a poem he had written two years earlier. Gruber was so taken by the rhythm of the poem that he set it to music, and on Christmas Eve there was music after all. Mohr played his guitar while the pair sang the song. It was the first public performance of “Stille Nacht” or as we know it “Silent Night.”

It is believed that Silent Night has been translated into over 300 languages around the world, and it is one of the most popular carols of all time.

From Songfacts

Bing Crosby’s version became his best-seller of the 1930s.

Music licensing company PPL announced in December 2010 that this carol tops the list of Britain’s “most recorded Christmas song of all time.” Said Mike Dalby, Lead Reporting Analyst at PPL: “Silent Night is a beautiful carol which encapsulates the feeling of Christmas entirely. Everyone from punk band The Dickies right through to Sinead O’Connor has recorded it, which exemplifies just how much it resonates with all different types of artists.”

According to PPL, Sinead O’Connor’s 1991 recording was the most popular version of the carol in Britain.

When the organ builder finally did show up to repair the St. Nicholas organ, he was given a copy of the “Silent Night” composition and brought it home. From there, traveling folk singers got a hold of it and began incorporating the carol into their repertoire. It didn’t make its way to America until 1839.

As the song gained traction throughout Europe, Franz Gruber composed several different orchestral arrangements. He donated all profits from the carol to local charities for children and the elderly, and eventually died penniless.

According to Steve Sullivan’s Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings, Crosby, a devout Catholic, refused to record the religious song, arguing it would be “like cashing in on the church or the Bible.” Crosby met with Father Richard Ranaghan, a priest trying to raise money for overseas missions, and decided to donate the royalties to the cause. But Ranaghan died in a car accident later that year, so the money went to several charities throughout the US and abroad.

This song lends itself to interpretation because the first four bars are all on the same chord. Jim Brickman explains: “There’s room to treat it dynamically in a different way: in the tempo, in the sounds and silences, in the time signature.”

Silent Night

Silent night, holy night.
All is calm, all is bright.
‘Round yon virgin mother and child.
Holy infant so tender and mild.
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace.

Silent night, holy night.
All is calm, all is bright.
‘Round yon virgin mother and child.
Holy infant so tender and mild.
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace.

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

25 thoughts on “Bing Crosby – Silent Night”

  10. It’s a beautiful song, one of my favorite old time Christmas songs. Did not know the origin story, so that’s appreciated. My favorite Christmas song is Oh Holy Night, which is in the same vein as this one. Happy you choose to Go Big for Christmas every year.

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    1. That is a great one. I promise next year I’ll make more new ones…some though I can’t leave out like this one. Thanks for reading! I’ll be around soon Lisa…took my sister home and had to jump on a meeting during my vacation….which I did not like.

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      1. I understand about favorites. I also understand about being made to work. My younger son is on vacay this week and already said he will be doing some work. As if he doesn’t already have enough to do! Poor guy never gets a break. Glad you did get to spend some time with your sister. Does she have kids?

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      2. Thanks Lisa…yes my sister has one child…he was born in 1976…I’ll never forget it because we were at the State Fair the night before and my sister was pooching out lol. He was over for Christmas…him and his family.
        It’s the principle of the work that makes me upset…I get paid salary so I interupt my day…but it is what it is.
        If it were an emergency…yes…that is IT’s job…so I get that…but on a senseless meeting…no. I’m sorry your son had to work!

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      3. That’s awesome you have a nephew and you were having fun when she went into labor. Never heard that term “pooching out” before but I got the gist. I remember when I was working and called in sick (not just me but my co-workers also!) one of my bosses made it a point to call us over any kind of measly thing. I think he may have been just seeing if we were home (this was in days before cell phones where you could be anywhere) and that used to p*ss me off because some of those times I was really sick and maybe had just fallen asleep, etc. and the last thing I wanted to do was crawl out of bed and answer the d*mned phone. I should have just let it ring.

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      4. I could have used a better description!
        What your boss did was a power move…a control thing. Our ownder does it also sometimes. Calls me when I take a vacation…I know it’s a control thing. I can tell he has no real question to ask me….just wants to know if I pick the phone up.

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      5. Grrrrrrr oh the stories I could tell you about him. He was such a good guy in some ways, but in others…. Your owner is a d***** (I’ll let you guess what that word is.) lol

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