No one is more surprised by the success and longevity of the Baltimore classic Christmas song “Crabs for Christmas” than its composer, Baltimorean David DeBoy.
You can hear DeBoy and De Hons (back-up singers he claims do their best to drown him out as a public service to the audience) on Friday, Dec. 22, in his Crabs for Christmas Concert in Havre de Grace.
“If you would have told me that my song would be playing 40 years after the fact and that people would still be buying it, (and of course, 40 years ago, what Spotify was) and that people would be coming to hear live performances of me doing it, I would have told you you were crazy,” DeBoy told Baltimore Fishbowl in an interview.
DeBoy released the tune in in 1981 after seven years working as a professional actor, writer, director, and voiceover artist.
“I started out in live theater,” DeBoy said. “I worked for about five years as an equity actor in the dinner theaters here in town, and that’s where actually I started to write plays and musicals and musical reviews. So also, I was writing songs during those times.”
DeBoy also started singing jingles around that time.
“Now, people wouldn’t hire me to sing the beautiful, mellifluous voices,” he said. “They only hired me when they needed a singing tennis shoe or a singing elf or a singing cow. Because I could do characters. I could sing like a cow. But I really had fun singing in front of a microphone. So, I thought ‘well, wouldn’t it be fun to write my own song?’”
Convinced he couldn’t pull off a tune like “White Christmas,” his ideas hit a wall until he heard the song “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer.”
“It wasn’t until 1979 or ’80 when I heard this song on the radio called ‘Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer.’ And it wasn’t this beautifully orchestrated Christmas song with Bing Crosby or Bob Hope or anything. It sounded like a bunch of drunks in a basement and they were just recording for fun. And I thought, ‘I can do THAT. Yeah, I can do that,’” DeBoy said.
He decided on a Christmas song, deducing people were more apt to buy music around the holidays, and went with a local theme to appeal to people in the region. Is there anything more local to this region than crabs?
DeBoy had the title “Crabs for Christmas” before he’d written the song. He pondered who might be pining for Maryland crabs — is it an astronaut on the Space Shuttle? It had to be someone who was from Maryland, but no longer there.
“Then I thought, ‘well, wait a minute. If it’s a Christmas song, you got to put Santa Claus in it.’ And somehow, the very first line of the song popped into my head: ‘In a department store north of Houston,’ because the guy had to be away from Maryland. You couldn’t get crabs or crab cakes or anything outside of this region. And so that’s how the first line of the song started,” DeBoy said. The Bawlmorese accent was a foregone conclusion since he was already known for singing characters.
The next challenge came with getting radio stations to play it. In 1981, radio stations were truly local enterprises, mom and pop businesses. DeBoy looked in the Yellow Pages and called each radio station and pitched his song, asking them to play it on the station.
“’Hi, I’m David DeBoy. I’m a local actor and singer and I’ve written a song called ‘Crabs for Christmas,’ and I’d like it to play on your radio station,’” DeBoy said was his approach. “Well, then the lady who answered the phone, and it was always a lady who answered, said, ‘Well, then you want to talk to the program director.’ Well, then the next radio station, ‘Could I please talk to the program director?’”
Nearly every program director understandably asked for details after hearing the song’s title. After hearing the explanation, they’d invite him in to play the song for them. That was his foot in the door.
“They put the record on, and they played it while I was sitting there watching them and every now and then they just go to look over at me like ‘You’re serious about this?’ and bless them. They never gave me a definite answer. They would always say ‘Well, I got to play for the big guy, you know.’” DeBoy said. “So, I said, ‘Thank you very much.’ And the next thing I knew it was playing on the radio station, the AM stations in town.”
Most car radios at that point had only AM stations, but DeBoy says when people heard it in their cars, they’d get to work, or get home, and call up the FM radio stations that played in their offices or homes and request the song, too. Popularity soared from there, and 40 years later has not flagged. He sold 10,000 copies that first year and had to reorder for the following year.
“I thought if I sold enough records, just to cover the expense of the of the recording session, and if it played for a year, I’d be thrilled. Well, it covered the costs and paid me enough to even do another single the next year,” DeBoy said. “I went back in 1982 and recorded ‘Down the Ocean,’ and that went down the toilet.”
On the B side of “Down the Ocean,” though, DeBoy recorded “City Fair,” which is a song he has continued to update over the years. In 1970, the first year of the Baltimore City Fair, the sites where the Inner Harbor buildings now sit were primarily dirt lots. The song contains references to local places and people from the 1970s and early 1980s that make an updated version sensible.
In 2000, DeBoy was on “The Morning Show” on WJZ with Marty Bass.
“Marty said to me, ‘You know, next year is the 20th anniversary of Crabs for Christmas.’ And I said, ‘Oh!’ And he said, ‘Well you’re going to put out a 20th anniversary album, aren’t you?’ and I said, ‘Well, SURE! Absolutely!’ I had no plan to do it whatsoever.” DeBoy said. But he got to work immediately, and decided to include an updated version of City Fair.
In the original version, the singer is reminiscing about his days at the fair, but in the new version, it’s a grandfather speaking to his grandsons, who were voiced on the album by DeBoy’s sons.
“In 2000, there wasn’t even a city fair anymore. What I had to do was go back and I create a whole scenario where I’m talking to my grandkids who are actually my two boys. That was their voices. So, what I had to do was rewrite new lyrics about what the city fair was. That’s how I got to throw in Marty and Oprah, and all the other people and even now, a lot of those references are ancient history,” DeBoy explained.
Another song to which DeBoy has re-written lyrics is not an original song of his, but “Maryland, My Maryland.” Formerly the state song of Maryland, DeBoy sought to make the lyrics more representative of what the state means to him. Though the original was a Confederate love letter to the South, DeBoy’s version pays homage to the mountains, rivers, scenery, history of staying with the Union, and fighters for freedom. Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, H.L. Mencken, Babe Ruth, and Thurgood Marshall all make an appearance.
In his book, “I Gave Baltimore Crabs! (For Christmas),” DeBoy explains the evolution of the song, and his efforts to get an updated version adopted as the new state anthem. He’s submitted his version and the idea to open it up for revision to people in Annapolis, but admits it’s been a tough sell.
“I thought, you know, we really don’t have an anthem for the state of Maryland. What I said in the book was, ‘Look, I wrote the lyrics to this song back in 2001, so I’ve chosen things that are representative of my perception of Maryland. Now, my perception is not everybody else’s perception,’” DeBoy said. “[In the book,] I said I would like to open the door for other people to write what Maryland means to them and what’s important to them. Let’s have an anthem for the state of Maryland that covers a lot of different viewpoints. And let’s really make it something that we can sing at the Preakness and sing at ball games and, and really have it mean something to us.”
The Crabs for Christmas with David DeBoy and Da Hons concert takes place on Friday, Dec. 22 from 6 to 9 p.m. It will be hosted at the State Theater of Havre de Grace, located at 325 St. John St. in Havre de Grace, Maryland. Tickets range in price from $20 to $50, and can be purchased by clicking this link.
