History
Who to "Thank" for the Barking Jingle Bells
The Sun Chronicle, December 2009
My dogs have recently acquired a strange new habit. As of late, whenever I am working around the house and turn the stereo on, they abruptly stop whatever they are doing and perch themselves within staring distance of the speakers.
At first I had no idea what was going on, but I quickly realized that they were waiting to hear a song that they love so they could dance and woof along. I think the dogs are convinced that if they stare in the direction of the stereo long enough, they are sure to hear the arfing sounds of their favorite bark-stars come blaring into the living room.
Here’s the poop scoop: my doggy divas are shameless groupies of that furry quartet that barks “Jingle Bells.” I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’ve even caught myself barking along once or twice this season. Although we love this song in my doghouse, the irony is that a New York Times survey of 579 seasonal songs revealed that the barking Jingle Bells was ranked the least favorite holiday song among people.
Don’t tell my dogs, but the song was actually created as a sort of joke in 1955 by a man who was quite annoyed by the sounds of barking dogs. The song’s creator, Carl Weismann, was actually a renowned ornithologist; this is a person who studies the sounds of birds.
Unfortunately for the Danish scientist, the yaps of barking dogs often interrupted his field recordings of sweet bird melodies. In order to remove these unwanted dog barks from his scientific soundtracks of wild birds, Weismann spliced the hound sounds out by using scissors. The result was a mulching of bark bits on the cutting room floor.
For fun, the clever scientist pieced the barks together to the simple melody of “Jingle Bells” in a medley with a few other nursery rhymes. This project was quite involved, however, as Weismann had to use hundreds of hours of barks in working with the technology of the time in order to fashion the seemingly seamless pitches and tones that became the final recording. The original version also included a carnival barker and was released by RCA Victor here in the US. In 1955, the song sold 500,000 copies.
In 1971, RCA reworked the Jingle Bells segment of the record into a 2-minute holiday single by adding an extra bridge and a full chorus to the track. This is the version that we still hear on the radio today.
I’ve stuffed the dogs’ stockings with an MP3 version of the song and I was able to download Karaoke lyrics from the Internet. I’m only hoping that they won’t be too disappointed if Santa Paws doesn’t bring them live concert tickets.
Wags, Tracie