The majority of this album’s original songs, both music and lyrics, were written by Maury while he was a Yale music professor, and includes something of a Star Wars fan favorite, What Can You Get a Wookiee for Christmas When He Already Owns a Comb?, performed by “The Star Wars Intergalactic Droid Choir and Chorale”, which was really Maury’s voice, auto-tuned, and multi-tracked. He is also the voice of Santa on the album’s The Meaning of Christmas, and additional vocalist on Sleigh Ride and Merry Merry Christmas. George Lucas graciously provided the “voices” of Artoo and the Wookiee, and Anthony Daniels (Threepio) who flew to NY for the recording. This material was written in 1979, before the darker Empire Strikes Back (1980) appeared, and the fun and light tone of it was targeted towards the younger audience.
In addition, this album was among the entire music industry’s first non-classical-or-jazz projects to be recorded and mixed digitally, and when What Can You Get a Wookiee reached No. 69 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1980 it was only the third digitally recorded single in the chart’s history.
