Posts tagged christmas
Posts tagged christmas
Jean Shepherd - “Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid” (12/24/1974)
“A Christmas Story” is one of the goddamned greatest movies ever created.
There. I said it.
A few years back, the topic of Jean Shepherd came up during talk of how awesome “A Christmas Story” is. I spoke to my Dad, who was a longtime Shep fan. He had a couple of his books, and apparently used to collect Playboys “just for the articles”. No, really - he wasn’t just saying it (or so I would like to believe, anyway). It used to be the only way to get any new stories from the man was to pick up the latest issue of Playboy, as he was published often.
So, rather than being creepy and asking for a Playboy back catalog from the 60’s, I instead asked for a copy of “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash” that year for Christmas, and dove into it as soon as I got it.
The first story was “Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid”. OMG! THE “CHRISTMAS STORY” STORY! It was incredible to read the original work that the movie was based on after watching it for all those years.
The rest of the stories within were wonderful as well. The adventures of Shep (or Ralphie, or whoever the lead character was that he was writing about) and Flick and Schwartz enthralled me for a bit.
Being one who *always* needs more info about things he likes, I did some searching on the interwebs and learned more about Shepherd’s radio show. Each episode was broadcast weeknights during the 60’s and 70’s on WOR in New York, and, most times, made up ON THE SPOT. Shep would just pick a topic he wanted to talk about and talk for 45 minutes or so. Amazing.
It was through this search that I learned that Shep would read some of his holiday-themed stories on the air as a fun, seasonal type of thing. Each year on Christmas Eve, he’d read “Duel in the Snow, or Red Ryder Nails the Cleveland Street Kid” on the air, in edited form.
For your amusement, I have uploaded the first reading of the story that I had discovered online and listened to. The original air date was December 24, 1974. I was -5 years old at the time.
If you have some time to kill, I can’t recommend listening to this enough. That is if you like “A Christmas Story” and Shep’s narration during the movie. If not, you’re just not human.
As an added bonus: vintage radio commercials!
Enjoy.
Download: http://maskmusic.com/audio/1974_12_24_edit_Red_Ryder_WOR_Jean_Shepherd.mp3
More Shep radio shows: http://shepcast.blogspot.com/
