Overlooked Christmas Music Recommendations

Bargains Galore - Dennis Berry

 

This is a favorite of mine, especially early.

If you don't have this already, Real Gone just released a set of the complete Chet Atkins Christmas recordings, which includes both versions of this album, his later Christmas album, and other recordings.

Chet Atkins - The Complete RCA Victor and Columbia Christmas Recordings

 

Another favorite that I like to put on early, also released by Real Gone last year:



The Ventures Christmas Album CD

Has the stereo and mono mixes.

Or if you can find it, there is a Razor and Tie CD mastered by our host (stereo mix).

 

From Dan Fogelberg's The First Christmas Morning.

 

First To Eleven sound pretty darn great.
They've got a whole collection of Christmas tunes, and somehow if I had to listen to their versions over this period, I wouldn't mind so much.

 

A wonderful song from Joy Williams:

 

Any of the 3 Over The Rhine Christmas albums

 

Nice to see City On A Hill mentioned. That's one I try to get to every season.

 

Cherry Red is re-issuing Annie Haslam's It Snows In Heaven, Too.
Annie Haslam / It Snows In Heaven Too

 

While I've had Darkest Night and Snow Angels for years, I didn't know about Blood Oranges until after the season was over last year. It's first on my list to be listened to when we reach the accepted start date (Black Friday) this year.

 

"Majestic Cascades" - Camarata

 

Nat King Cole's Christmas album, today known as The Christmas Song, gets lots of airplay every year -- except, oddly enough, one song that rarely is heard on the radio. It's the beautiful "A Cradle in Bethlehem":

 

Shawn Colvin's Holiday Songs and Lullabies is a wonderful album. The highlight to me is this relatively obscure tune that I first heard some years ago on Cities 97 in Minneapolis, "Little Road to Bethlehem":

 

Another overlooked Nat King Cole Christmas song:

 

I first heard this song on a small radio station from Farmville, Va. (about halway between Lynchburg and Richmond) several years ago. Shazam didn't register it at the time, so I emailed the station in hopes of finding out what it was. A day later, I got a response! The charming song I heard was "Your Christmas Day" by Laura Allan:

 

The Staple Singers - 25th Day of December is fantastic. On the religious side of Christmas songs, recorded in the early sixties right before they took their music in a more secular direction. it's great stuff.

 

In 2012, just before Starbucks got out of the music business, its label, Hear Music, assembled a great compilation called Holidays Rule. It had a version of "The Christmas Song" by Paul McCartney (with Diana Krall on piano), but the real highlights to me were the now-defunct duo The Civil Wars doing "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" and Calexico reviving the carol written by Henry VIII, "Green Grows the Holly."

The Civil Wars:


Calexico:
Calexico - Green Grows the Holly

 

I like the Holly Golightly track!

Here's another nice 'holiday' themed track from The Civil Wars...

Tracks in the Snow - The Civil Wars

 

Kacey's always capable of going very kitsch, in a knowing way.

 

This is a really nice one by Rufus Wainwright -- Spotlight on Christmas

 

And one from the New Pornographers -- Joseph, Who Understood:

 

Low -- Just Like Christmas. This is pretty much my Christmas theme song. Keep the Courier and Ives and the hullabaloo, and give me the moments of intimacy and unexpected joy.

 

Overlooked Christmas song by an underappreciated band: Big Star -- Jesus Christ

 

Badly Drawn Boy -- Donna and Blitzen. A modern Spector-style Christmas song with a nice forward looking message: