Royal Guardsmen were at the center of ‘Beaglemania’

Here’s another question in the category of “holiday music trivia” for this Christmas season: Can you place The Royal Guardsmen? 

The six-member band came out of Lake Weir High School near Ocala, Fla. The group had a big holiday hit with “Snoopy’s Christmas” in 1967.

The song was the most successful in a series of novelty tunes that featured the cartoon character of Snoopy the beagle and the Red Baron of Germany as World War I fighter pilots. 

The song that started it all was written by Dick Holler in 1962, known simply as “The Red Baron.” Holler patterned it after the history-minded hits of Johnny Horton (“Sink the Bismark” and “The Battle of New Orleans”).

Dick Holler is in the center of this photo.

 

He told of the real-life air battles of the original Red Baron – Manfred Von Richthofen – who was credited with 80 air combat victories during World War I. 

Holler went to great pains to include “airplane sounds and machine gun bullets.” He took the demo performed by the trio Dick Holler and The Holidays around to every major record label, but nobody wanted it, so the recording “sat on the shelf for four years.” 

Holler’s music career basically stalled as well. In 1966, “I was a single dad raising two kids in a two-room apartment, working at a music and sporting goods store and playing at a piano bar at night in Goldsboro, N.C.,” he said. 

“Unbeknownst to me, producer Phil Gernhard started seeing the Peanuts comic strips featuring Snoopy and The Red Baron,” Holler said. Gernhard wove Snoopy into “The Red Baron” by writing lyrics to additional verses for the song. 

“Phil gave it to a group he’d been working with – The Royal Guardsmen,” Holler continued. “They were exceptionally good considering most of them were still in their teens. The Royal Guardsmen’s arrangement really gave the song a great feel.” (The tune was renamed “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron.”)

 

Charles Schulz, the cartoonist who created Snoopy in 1950, first drew a comic strip with Snoopy as a WWI flying ace in 1965.

 

The curator at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, Calif., said: “Snoopy envisioned himself soaring through the clouds in pursuit of his nemesis, the infamous Red Baron. Snoopy sat atop his doghouse, which he imagined to be a real British biplane known as a Sopwith Camel. He wandered through parts of Europe that World War I aviators genuinely traversed, stopping in cafés to quaff root beers and flirt with French lasses.”

 

Schulz and United Features Syndicate sued the recording company for using the name “Snoopy” without their permission. The plaintiffs prevailed yet reached an agreement that allowed for more Snoopy songs to be created. 

One of The Royal Guardsmen band members referred to this time period as “Beaglemania.”

“Snoopy’s Christmas” in an important song that was written by music industry kingpins George David Weiss and Hugo & Luigi (cousins Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore). 

It’s all about Snoopy picking a fight with the mighty Red Baron on a bitterly cold Christmas Eve. Sing along:

 

…The Baron had Snoopy dead in his sights

He reached for the trigger to pull it up tight

Why he didn’t shoot, well, we’ll never know

Or was it the bells from the village below?

 

…Christmas bells those Christmas bells

Ringing through the land

Bringing peace to all the world

And good will to man

 

…The Baron made Snoopy fly to the Rhine

And forced him to land behind the enemy lines

Snoopy was certain that this was the end

When the Baron cried out, “Merry Christmas, mein friend!”

 

Shall we sing the chorus again…with gusto?

 

…Christmas bells those Christmas bells

Ringing through the land

Bringing peace to all the world

And good will to man