Wizzard star reunites with original child choir from 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday'

18 December 2024, 09:31

When the snowman brings the snow...

Wizzard just came up short in the glam battle for Christmas No.1 in 1973, but that hasn't stopped 'I WIsh It Could Be Christmas Everyday' becoming a seasonal classic.

It's every bit as good as the eventual winner – Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody' – and is every bit as welcome on the radio this time of year.

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It has all the ingredients for a Christmas cracker, and then some. There's the Christmassy lyrics, sleigh bells, Phil Spector-style brass, and a tinsel-packed video with Roy Wood dressed as Santa being covered in glitter snow.

Best of all, there's an authentic kids' choir – though the Wizzard superfans among you will know that the gaggle you can hear on the record aren't actually the children you see on the music video, or that rocked up for their Top of the Pops performance.

The actual choir on the song was made up of students in the first year at Stockland Green School, credited for "additional noises" on the sleeve as Miss Snob and Class 3C.

Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday (Official Music Video) [HD]

Now, just over 50 years on, Wizzard's keyboard player Bill Hunt has reunited with the very same children for the Christmas Unwrapped Podcast.

They were also given a special Top 10 Chart award for the song's continued success.

"Hello, my name's still Bill Hunt, and I was one of the original members of Wizzard," said the keyboard player.

"I have here with me the original singers, schoolkids, from 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday', from Stockland Green Bilateral School."

He added: "The record got to number 4 I'm told in the charts in 1973 and I can't shake it off, it's been playing every day since."

Hunt has previously revealed that it was his job to assemble the choir for the original recording of the song.

Wizzard reunite with singers for I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday Top 10 Award presentation!

"[Roy] wanted a choir of children on the track, and he insisted it had to be Birmingham kids, even though we were recording in London, so I got the job of sorting it out," he told The Guardian.

One of the students, then-schoolgirl Hilary Gunton told the paper: "My mother didn't want me to go. I was just 12 and she was worried about what might happen to me with these rock types, but I said I would never ever talk to her again if she stopped me.

"One day at assembly, the music teacher auditioned us by having us sing hymns unaccompanied in front of the whole school. It was incredibly embarrassing but I knew that if I wanted to meet Wizzard, I had to do it."

It's been claimed that when Roy Wood re-released the song in 1981 the masters were lost and the whole song had to be recorded from scratch.

That's the version you're most likely to hear on the radio today, and for the record he replaced Stockland kids with a new choir from Kempsey Primary School in Worcester. Or did he?

"I may not have a musical ear, but I can tell it is us singing," Susan Doyle, who was then 11-year-old Susan Powell, told the BBC in 2013.

"All the chatter and that at the end, you can't recreate it. You just can't."

[Christmas TOTP] Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday - 1984 [Remastered]

However producer Muff Murfin, who owned the studio where the 1981 Roy Wood & Wizzard re-recording was made, is adamant that it's a different set of kids on the new version.

"There were some pretty good audio engineers who could help make it sound pretty much identical," he said.

"It's likely the recording of the original chatter would have been mixed in with the new singing."