So here's a Christmas question for ya, or even a Christmas conundrum, if you will: When someone places themselves under the mistletoe during the holiday season, do they become fair game for kissing? For anyone? Like me, for example? Especially nowadays, with the "Me too!" movement and everything, we all need to proceed with an extra level of caution when dealing with the mistletoe situation, don't you think?
According to the LP liner notes (included below), José Melis has a wife and two kids...yet there he is on the front of my LP, gazing forth with provocative bespectacled bedroom eyes from underneath the mistletoe. Rrrrrroooowww!
Agh-hem. Anyway. José Melis was the musical director on "The Tonight Show" from 1957 to 1962, when it was hosted by his good friend Jack Paar. (Unfortnuately, Paar was openly hostile and disrespectful to the LGBTQ community in the 1960s and '70s. No mistletoe kisses for him!)
According to Wikipedia, part of Melis' regular routine on shows with Paar was "the telephone game," where he would "improvise a musical number based on the last four digits of an audience member's telephone number." I love this. I wonder what José would have made of "3214!"
"Christmas With Melis," released in 1958, is a popular holiday favorite in my humble Ballard apartment each year. For a little more information about the spectacularly talented Mr. Melis, you can read his 2005 New York Times obituary here.
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