Honky The Christmas Goose: An Underrated Holiday Classic
It might not rank up there among the Christmas favourites alongside Nat King Cole’s A Christmas Song, or Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, but anyone who doesn’t include Johnny Bower’s Christmas hit Honky The Christmas Goose among the ranks of holiday classics has never heard the tale of the song or was lucky enough to encounter the wonderful genuine joy that Bower brought to every day that he walked the earth.
It was in 1965 when Bower, the multiple Stanley Cup and Vezina Trophy-winning goaltender for the Toronto Maple Leafs, the favourite NHL team of the majority of Canadians, was approached about recording a Christmas song to benefit holiday charities.
“I was approached by a chap named Chip Young, who was a storyteller on the CBC’s morning show,” Bower recalled in his 2008 autobiography The China Wall. “He talked to (Leafs coach-GM) Punch (Imlach) to see if it was okay, then he came into the dressing room and said he’d come up with a song called ‘Honky The Christmas Goose.’ He wanted to know if anyone on the team will be willing to sing the song.”
“I’ve never seen so many guys undress and get into the shower so quickly in my life. I was the only one left sitting there.”
Knowing of Bower’s popularity, Young clearly wanted Bower to be the voice of the song. “There’s just something about you that seems right for this,” he told Bower.
Bower reluctantly agreed to give it a try, and the first step toward Honky honking his way to becoming a Christmas fable was underway.
A Family Christmas Project
Bower brought the lyrics home to practice. Together, he and his wife Nancy and their son John Jr. sang it together. “You know, this is cute,” Nancy Bower said. “It’s a nice children’s record. If only you knew how to sing.”
“I know,” Bower responded to his wife. “That’s the big problem.”
Finally, the time arrived to record the 45. Bower would be joined by his son and some of the other neighbourhood kids who’d form his backup band, Little John and the Rinky Dinks.
“Those kids were really good singers,” Bower said.
As fate would have it, the date they gathered to record the song was Nov. 9, 1965, the night that a blackout disrupted electrical power across the Eastern seaboard.
“I started singing and all of a sudden, all the lights went out,” Bower recalled. “I thought, ‘Oh John, now you’ve done it.’ I thought I blacked out the whole city just with my voice.”
“I opened my mouth and the power failed all the way to Miami.”
Once the power was restored, they got to work and were actually able to finish recording the song in only four or five takes.
Bigger Than The Beatles
Once the 45s were pressed, Bower made a number of appearances to help move the records.
“Musically, that was a really tough year for me,” Bower explained. “We were bucking the Beatles at the time. They had a pile of records out.”
“In fact, I went to Eatons across from (Maple Leaf) Gardens one day. I was sitting there, selling my records and there’s a big pile of Beatles records sitting on the table right next to me. So I took their pile of records and put them underneath the table.”
“After that, we were selling all of mine.”
Honky Was a Big Hit
On the CHUM radio charts leading up to Christmas 1965, Honky The Christmas Goose held its own against some of the biggest names in the music industry. The song climbed as high as No. 29 on the charts. It charted ahead of Frank Sinatra’s A Very Good Year (51st) and Yesterday by the Beatles (72nd).
“The first 7,000 singles sold before the record even hit the stores,” Bower said. “We sold about 40,000 of those records.”
At the time, that made Honky the biggest-selling Canadian-made record in music history.
It’s still a staple of Christmas celebrations in Canada, especially among Leafs fans of a certain age.
“I didn’t get a penny out of it,” explained Bower, who died in 2017. “The money was going to charity and that’s the only reason I did it.”
