When I heard that the Blind Boys of Alabama made an Xmas album called Go Tell It On The Mountain, I knew it would move me and make me dance. When I heard the title track, I was amazed to find Tom Waits sharing the lead with Clarence Fountain. What a brace of voices! I never thought I'd hear Waits sing an Xmas song, but really, who better to express the gut bucket of sin and salvation? Only Johnny Cash and St. Augustine could do it as well. When Waits testifies, "I was a seeker…" I had to shout out, "Amen, brother."

To my ear, this is the finest Xmas album, bar none. That's why it opens and closes my playlist.

Most Xmas albums sound the same, presenting the same songs from a limited songbook. When your favorite recording artist sings them all in a row, even your fave starts to sound boring. Go Tell It On The Mountain overcomes this limitation by matching the Blind Boys with guest artists such as Mavis Staples, Aaron Neville, Solomon Burke, Les McCann, even Shelby Lynne. The result is a startlingly fresh range of sounds, from blues to dancing-in-the-street R&B to the sweetest a capella gospel.

One track reluctantly left off the list (I have to save something for next year) is Little Drummer Boy, featuring rapper Michael Franti. The standard, treacle-suffused version can induce convulsions, but this one haunts me. It gets as close as any song I know to the profound mystery involved in the act of giving and receiving.

Go Tell It On The Mountain is now in its third season of heavy rotation at my house. I haven't stopped dancing and singing with it yet. Hallelujah!

Run, Run, Run to Bethlehem: Here's something rare in the Xmas songbook, a new composition by Dave Brubeck. This is a celebration song with the urgency of Go Tell It On The Mountain.

Santa Claus Is Coming To Town: The first time I heard Brubeck's take, I was transported back to a time when my dad pounded out "naughty or nice" in the same stride piano style. I was sitting in his lap. In an 80th birthday interview in 2000, Brubeck said all he wanted out of life was the opportunity to play stride piano every day. He's still doing it. God bless him!

Philosophers will debate the question for eons to come. Not Kant vs. Kierkegaard, categorical imperative vs. leap of faith. No, the conundrum is this: if you were stranded on a frozen desert island with only one version of Jingle Bells, would it be by Duke Ellington or Count Basie?? Here's your chance to listen, compare, and choose.

The Basie cut comes from Yule struttin', a jazz compilation featuring Blue Note artists such as Chet Baker, Dexter Gordon, Elaine Elias and Bobby Watson. If traditional Xmas music makes you reach for a stiff drink, this is Straight, No Chaser jazz on the bop bandwidth.

The title is a pun on Sonny Clark's 1958 Blue Note classic Cool Struttin'. The cover art extends the pun into (ahem…) visual rhetoric. It wins my vote for Most Salacious Xmas Album Art.

Cool Yule: The tune was written by 50s funny man Steve Allen, who counted jazz piano among his many talents. Remember when he riffed behind Jack Kerouac on Lonesome Traveler? So we have Steve to thank for the hipster holiday homily,
"Have a Yule that's Cool."

Pops was postmodern at least a generation before there was anything modern to subvert. At the risk of sounding like one of my Michaels (Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel Foucault), I'll restrain the theorizing and save it for another venue. Take it as a leap of faith, Louis Armstrong knew what he was doing when everyone else thought he was just clowning around.

Try some of what gets slipped under the door in Zat You, Santa Claus? Then listen to these tracks.

I hear undertones in Louis's version of White Christmas that Irving Berlin and Bing Crosby never dreamed of. Sometimes subversive, always authentic: this is the voice that gave us all permission to sing and swing.

And his take on The Night Before Christmas makes me want to climb back into my Grandpa Popo's lap to hear the story. Popo had the same kind of wheezy laugh that wouldn't wait for a punch line. I love the way Pops plods through the dowdy cadence of Clement Clarke Moore's 19th-century poem. It's like fitting an anaconda into a corset. You know Pops wants to break out and swing it, and by the lines about the pipe and bowl full of jelly, he does.

A Merrier Christmas gets my vote for the best Thelonius Monk Xmas tune. Well, it's probably the only Monk Xmas tune. Thanks to my friend bob Grubbs for turning me on to this gem. It was unknown until 1990, when Blue Note brought it out on the Yule Struttin' collection. It is performed here first by pianist Benny Green, then Dianne Reeves sings it with an opening verse of her own added to Monk's original lyrics.

The Christmas Song: Talk about old chestnuts… I had to include this one. It was hard to bypass Nat King Cole and Mel Torme (who wrote it), but this version by Lou Rawls sounds fresh and warm on a cold December night.

Merry Christmas, Baby: I wanted to fit Elvis in here somewhere, so this classic by bluesman Charles Brown became the vehicle. When he wasn't trying to squeeze into one of those sequin jump suits, Elvis could loosen up and get down. Thanks for this one goes to my big sister Diana, Source of All Things Elvis.

Can I get away with three versions of Silent Night in a row? Indulge me on this, friends.

Stanley Jordan's take is badass. Can I say that about a venerable Christmas hymn? His blues guitar licks pare it to the bone like a diamond wind slicing across ice. Dave Brubeck's piano interpretation is quietly contemplative, then opens out into the grandeur of star-filled heavens.

But I couldn't let it go until I heard the warmth and solace of the human voice again, Ishmael's still small voice, the loving gospel according to Clarence Fountain and the Blind Boys of Alabama.. Amen, and good night.