12/16/01

Ron Clancy spent 12 years of his life lurking in musty library warehouses and going cross-eyed researching song lyrics so people like you can have the Christmas song collection of your dreams.

Actually, it's the Christmas song collection of his dreams, and the stuff he did to achieve this goal would make heaven and nature sing. Clancy, a New Jersey Christmas music buff of all buffs, is producing the ultimate collection of Christmas songs, an impressive combination of historical perspective, art, song lyrics and music CDs.

The country's leading authority on Christmas music, William E. Studwell, calls the project "the ultimate Christmas collection." The collection's author is the ultimate Christmas music fan.

While shepherds watched their flocks, Clancy warmed the wooden chairs in countless esteemed libraries all over the East for years, buried in his research, surrounded by towering stacks of books about carols. "But meanwhile, I had to earn a living," he says. He was self-employed as an executive recruiter for high-tech companies at the time.

"I'd earn a fee then take off for a couple weeks and live at the Library of Congress in Washington or at the Smithsonian," Clancy says. He had a mission.

"Even before the tragedy of this year, I felt that people wanted to look back at a simpler time," he says. "That was the time when all these songs came out."

Clancy has been an avid collector of Christmas music for years. He started giving cassettes of his collection as gifts, jotting little notes about the carols to accompany the music. "I bought a lot of stuff most people don't hear," he says.

"That's not true in my case," he says. His American Christmas Classics collection is about 70 percent copyrighted lyrics, he says. And lo, it meant a major headache to produce. He had to track down all of the copyright holders and get permission.

"When I started this project in 1989, I didn't think it would take this long," he admits. "For one thing, I didn't intend to be the publisher." That's another story.

Clancy was so excited about his project, so sure of its uniqueness, he knew a publisher would snap it up. No way -- not when they learned about all the copyrights involved.

"I finally said to myself, 'If you don't do this, it may never get done." So he started accepting all those credit card offers that came in the mail and collected a dozen. He used them to finance his project -- $100,000 worth -- and published the books himself.

He approached all the record companies about producing the CDs. They all turned him down. The copyrights would be a nightmare, they told him. He'd NEVER get "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby. And forget about Nat King Cole and his chestnuts roasting on an open fire. But let nothing this guy dismay.

"I'm a pretty persistent person," Clancy says. "And there was no way I was going to have anyone else sing 'White Christmas.'" He tracked down Nat King Cole's oldest daughter in California and sent a pleading letter to Universal Music asking for Bing.

By the end of April, Clancy was ready to go to print. He double-checked his gigantic database of copyright information to make sure all the t's were crossed.

"I had one copyright request still out," he says. "It was Bing Crosby's 'White Christmas.'" Frantic, he begged Universal Music for the rights. He had 171 copyright approvals, he told them. They were the only one hanging.

"It was a tough deal," Clancy says. They wanted $16,000 up front. "I didn't have the money," Clancy says. But -- strike the harp and join the chorus. Sony, who had agreed to produce the musical end of Clancy's venture, forked over the cash.

John Penn was vice president of marketing and sales for Sony Music Special Products when Clancy called with his idea. He was the only one, Clancy says, who showed any interest.

"Ron had a fire in his belly about this," Penn says. "He wanted to put this together not for its commercial value, but to create the best collection of Christmas music there is, which is what's great about it."

And rare about it, Penn adds. Record companies don't want to spend the time it took Clancy to get all the permission needed for the project, he says. "Most people are looking for a quick hit -- they want to put together a Christmas CD in the summer and have it out by Christmas," Penn says.

"Ron was willing to take the time and the risk. It became his whole life."

"There were a lot of headaches involved, but I couldn't help it," Clancy says. "That's our history. I wouldn't water down the collection. This is my baby and I wanted to do it my way."

Love of music started early

To understand where this passion for Christmas music started, you need to hearken back to a scene that might have been written by Charles Dickens. Clancy was raised in St. John's Orphanage in Philadelphia from the time he was 9 months old. "In a Catholic orphanage, you go to church practically every day," he says.

But one day stands out in his mind. "It was 1950," Clancy says, "and we were at midnight mass on Christmas Eve. The orphanage chapel was filled with Christmas trees, and it made it smell so wonderful. There was a huge manger scene, and the nuns were singing the most beautiful Christmas carols.

"It was midnight, and I was 6, so I was in this drowsy, semi stupor, but I remember thinking I was in heaven," Clancy says. "Everything was so beautiful. It's so indelible in my mind, even today. "I've loved Christmas music ever since," he says. "I just love the stuff."

His books are packed with trivia that prove it. Clancy's readers will learn that "O Holy Night," a wonderful French carol, was detested by church authorities. Or that the great German composer Felix Mendelssohn was commissioned to write music for a festival celebrating the 400th anniversary of Johann Gutenberg's invention of the printing press, only to have it coupled -- much to his chagrin -- to the words for Charles Wesley's hymn, "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing."

The final touches

After four or five years of researching the music, Clancy felt something was missing.

"Art," he says. "The project needed beautiful art." It meant more research. Once again, while the snow was falling and friends were calling yoo-hoo, Clancy holed up in museums.

"I felt the art on the pages had to come from the same era and the same country as the music or lyrics on each page," he says. He waded through hundreds of art books, looking for just the right images to illustrate the carol lyrics. He pawed through library collections of dusty old Christmas cards, not filed neatly, but dumped in dirty boxes. "I looked at thousands of images," Clancy says.

But that was only the half of it. Most of the images he wanted to use were protected by -- you guessed it -- copyright. At least by then, Clancy knew the drill.

And the cost of these painstakingly produced packages? "As low as I could possibly do it," Clancy says. The "American Christmas Classics" set of book and three CDs costs $59.95. "Best-loved Christmas Carols," which includes the book, a CD of 25 carols and a songbook for singing along sells for $39.95.

Clancy quit his job as an executive recruiter and started marketing the books himself.

He got Amazon.com to sell them. He went to the book expo in Chicago to show them. He convinced arty gift shops at the Smithsonian Institution and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. to carry the collection.

Next month he'll start his third volume -- children's Christmas classics. In true Clancy style, it will go beyond Rudolph to include excerpts from the Nutcracker Suite, old English carols and something from Hansel and Gretel.

"Let's enjoy this music, reflect upon it, remember why it was written -- to commemorate the birth of Christ," he says. "The essence of it now is the same as when some of this music was composed in the 15th century. "Some of these lyrics are so humble," Clancy says.

" 'Jesus, Jesus, rest your head' -- they come from a simple folk song sung by people in the Appalachian mountains. 'I wonder as I wander' was a song a young girl was singing in North Carolina, and somebody happened to write the lyrics down. Hear Mahalia Jackson sing it, and this is the essence of Christmas.

"This," Clancy says happily, "is what I was going for."