"Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis"

'Blue Valentine', 1978

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According to SecondHandSongs, “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” is Tom’s most-covered song.

Now, let me state up front I don’t think that’s correct. A guy named George over at the Tom Waits Fan Forum has been meticulous collecting Waits covers for years, and he has a number of songs with more covers than “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” (which from now on I’m abbreviating as “Christmas Card” because that is too damn long to type). Number one, with 118 versions, is actually last week’s song: “Chocolate Jesus.”

But most-covered or not, “Christmas Card” still gets covered plenty. SecondHandSongs lists 45 version, and that’s not even all of them. As you may know, I love covers — I run a whole site about ‘em, and have written two covers books. I also love “Christmas Card.” So I listened to all 45 of them – plus some extras I found on YouTube – in an effort to find my five favorite versions.

My top criteria was “good” (duh). But my secondary criteria was: The more different than Tom’s the better. So no solo-piano weepers below. I had to cut so many cocktail-lounge ballads. A lot of them weren’t bad either! But I went searching for covers that took bigger swings.

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The first cover I can find came out in 1981, three years after Tom’s, by the band Interzone. It’s in German, and boasts the new title “Karl.” Regardless of language, it brings a big ‘80s rock sound a far cry from the weep-jazz original.

Bonus cover: The following year, Israeli superstar translated the song into Hebrew. His version sounds different enough that I wasn’t convinced it was the same at first. But when you watch him play it solo acoustic, it’s easier to recognize Tom’s melody.

This song does not have any big hit versions like “Downtown Train” or “Jersey Girl,” but these next two are probably the best-known. They both appeared on tribute albums. First up, Magnapop were a college-rock band in the ‘90s that, though they never became huge, had some big champions in that scene. Michael Stipe of R.E.M. produced their first album; Bob Mould of Hüsker Dü produced their second. Not long after, they dropped this cover on the 1995’s Step Right Up: The Songs of Tom Waits. It’s weird as hell, a Beat-poetry thing as much as it is a song. It works.

Five years later, another Tom tribute dropped: New Coat of Paint: Songs of Tom Waits. This one kicked off with one of the all-time great Waits covers: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “Whistlin' Past the Graveyard.” Neko Case’s “Christmas Card” isn’t far behind, just her singing over a church organ.

Next, this 2009 YouTube upload by the user smallchange (big Waits fan, clearly) was used in the TV show Peaky Blinders. If you know the show, this instrumental version apparently scores a scene in Season 1 Episode 5 where Grace and Tommy dance. And if you don’t, don’t look it up now – apparently the music in that scene was later changed. Perhaps because, as the YouTuber notes in the comments, the BBC did not contact him or her to license this recording. Whoops.

I said no solo-piano, but I didn’t say no solo-guitar. There are a number of versions like that, just the singer and six strings. I’ll give the slight edge to Erin McNamee’s, but also worth checking out are similar (but different enough) takes on this approach by Clever Girls, Megan Dooley, and Stefanie Boltz. Okay, I think maybe there are two guitars on that last pair. Disqualified!

The very definition of a “character,” Kinky Friedman these days may be best known for stunts like a failed run for Governor of Texas that his Wikipedia page drolly terms “ostensibly serious.” But he is a musician, touring with Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue in 1976 (plug: I recently interviewed about that for my next book) and putting out quite a few albums that decade.

In 2015, he released his first in a decade. The Loneliest Man I Ever Met included this piano-plus-harmonica cover of “Christmas Card,” with Kinky reciting the words like late-period Leonard Cohen.

Speaking of Leonard Cohen, defunct Danish band Workers in Songs took their name from one of his lyrics. They’ve covered that song too, but here we’re looking at a killer country-leaning “Christmas Card” they posted on YouTube. With two different singers alternating parts, and building to a passionate crescendo, you can imagine this being a real barn-burner live. By the halfway point, one singer is howling his lungs out, before they bring it back down for the twist ending. This might be my favorite find of the whole batch.

Breakout jam band Goose have performed it live a few times too. To be honest, “Christmas Card” doesn’t seem particularly jam-friendly. At least, not as much as “Gun Street Girl,” which they’ve also covered. But they deliver some tasty licks (ugh) and it works quite well.

This is getting longer than I intended (you may have noticed I blew past the “five favorites” framework a while back), but even leaving out all the piano ballads there are still a lot of good versions. Such as this skuzzy electric-guitar version – I’d call it “scorching” if it wasn’t so slow – by Tom Wilcox. Sleazy Detroit garage-rockers Electric Six have a somewhat similar version as well.

At some live performances, Tom prefaced “Christmas Card” by crooning a bit of “Silent Night.” Toronto jazz band Art of Time Ensemble expand on that concept, having one singer belt the traditional holiday tune before another takes over for Tom’s part. The music transitions too, abruptly segueing from lush classical to Beat jazz. Then at the end they bring it all back home by doing both songs at the same time.

That’s the final cover! So to close what has turned into an unusually long newsletter, here’s Tom doing his version of that same combo:

Coming up next: Tom Waits meets Schoolhouse Rock