Download Instrumental   We’re goin’ country here, folks.  You walk into your local country bistro on a cold December night, and there onstage is a really, really, REALLY good lead guitar player…. in a Santa suit!  It’s Christmas, after all.

“Jingle Bells” was originally titled “One Horse Open Sleigh” and written by one James Lord Pierpont (now there’s a privileged name if I ever heard one) in the mid 1800’s.  According to thefactsite.com, this tune was the very first song broadcast from outer space.  Who knew?  It was the 16th of December, 1965, when two astronauts (Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra) from the Gemini 6 space program, sent the following message to mission control:  “We have an object, looks like a satellite, going from north to south…I see a command module and eight smaller modules in front.  The pilot of the command module is wearing a red suit.”  It was then they broke into “Jingle Bells” with a harmonica and sleigh bells they had smuggled on board.  The 16th?  Seems Santa had an early start that year.

I don’t know a guitarist who can play quite this well (it’s much easier on a keyboard with guitar voicing), but I’m sure there’s one out there somewhere.