(Everybody's Waiting For) The Man With The Bag
Adam Lambert and Darren Criss having Christmas fun
I love the harmonies in this version so much. I hadn’t heard of the song before Adam Lambert recorded it but now I really love it.
The song was written in 1950 by Irving Taylor and Dudley Brooks. Hal Stanley knew Brooks and suggested his wife Kay Starr. He also took a co-writing credit for bringing them together and published it under their publishing company.1
This version appears on Criss’ 2021 Holiday album A Very Darren Crissmas. He wanted to do Christmas songs that were more obscure and for this one he called up his friend Lambert to join him. You can see some of that recording session here.
The video is the two of them setting a Santa trap. It’s setup like the Mousetrap game but on a bigger scale. But they made one big error…
If you’re curious, here’s the original recording featuring Kay Starr. Enjoy your song of the day!
This galls me. She’s the one doing the work and he gets the dollars. I can’t find anything about this publishing company so I have no idea what the split was there.
Wonderful SOTD, MK! I'm not sure I can forgive Darren, though, for his too-cute-by-three-quarters album title! But, it's easily forgivable here...I love seeing these two tackle a song that likely hadn't been written when their parents were born! And, yes, the harmonies! And, your adding the behind-the-scenes vid, as well as the Starr original was A+!
I find it astounding that after Kay's original in 1950, it was never (according to SecondHandSongs) recorded again until half-a-century later! The first post-Starr recording was in 2000 (Vonda Shepard, literally 50 years to the month)! I'm wondering if that had something to do with the possible publishing morass in some way.
Which means that nearly 80 recordings of the 73-year-old song have been made in the past 2 dozen years! Notables include former SNL comic, Ana Gasteyer (2019), and "Happy Days" Ralph Malph actor, Donny Most (2016..."Sit on it, Malph!"), "Family Guy" creator, Seth MacFarland (2014), and of course, The Muppets (2006)!