Overlooked and Underappreciated Christmas Gems

Glad I'm not the only one out there who is powerless over Johnny Mathis Christmas songs!

 

True story: my wife was at K-Mart last week, and found a DVD for a buck fifty featuring an hour of nothing but a nice roaring fire in a fireplace, backed by some generic choral Christmas songs. At that price, she bought it for a laugh.

So this past Sunday, we put it on, and the music was, of course, horrible. So we turned the sound down, turned off the lights, and fired up the new reissue of Johnny Mathis' Merry Christmas.

Perfect!

 

One song by The Christmas Jug Band (Dan Hicks, et. al.) -

"Somebody Stole My Santa Claus Suit"

 

Believe it or not.....The Mariah Carey Christmas Album is surprisingly fun and stands up to repeated listening.......Too bad the same can't be said of most of her regular CDs.

 

For acoustic guitar/bluegrass aficionados, I'd recommend Dan Crary's Holiday Guitar (Sugar Hill 3871). Beautifully-picked renditions of Christmas songs old and new.

 

Two more I don't see mentioned much:

Manhattan Transfer--The Christmas Album. Tony Bennett even pops in for some chestnuts. This one's warm, lush and classy, thanks to the tight four-part harmonies and nice arrangements by Johnny Mandel.

For something a little more lively, Roomful of Blues gives us Roomful of Christmas. A nice change of pace with some jump blues swagger to it.

 

Rudy - Taking on your suggestion, I listened to a copy of Something Festive that has been in the family as long as I can remember. I like it! I can't remember listening to the whole thing before.

Our copy is in remarkable condition and looks hardly played. No scratches or marks. So I've cleaned it and I've been transferring it to CD-R yesterday and today.

It kinda reminds me of some of the music used in the Austin Powers movies. Probably due to the Burt Bacharach song and a few others.

Anyway, I also found a pretty clean 45 of Herb Alpert (solo) doing "The Christmas Song" b/w Herb & Tijuanna Brass doing "My Favorite Things". Interesting that the catalog # is 1001. Is there anything special with this 45 that I should use it for bonus tracks on Something Festive?

I don't have Herb's Christmas album so I have nothing to compare the mixes to. The single is mono. Are these fold-downs or unique mixes?

Thanks!

 

Hiya Mac!

That sounds like a good CD to hunt down. I've hardly bought any this year.

 

Something Festive has become a holiday favorite of mine also. They aren't that difficult to find, actually. I made my own extended version, finding other A&M tracks from the same era, and filled out the rest with more TJB tracks. Other tracks I found were:

Wes Montgomery: "Greensleeves" (It's on one of his A&M/CTi recordings...possibly on Greatest Hits...I don't have it handy to check)

JJ & K (or K & JJ...Kai Winding and JJ Johnson): "Little Drummer Boy" (from Betwixt & Between)

Carpenters: "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" (the slowed-down single version), and "Merry Christmas Darling" (another single)

Miguel Rios: "A Song of Joy"

Canadian Sweethearts: "We're Gonna Stand Up On The Mountain" (not quite Xmas, but sort of a church-y type of song )

Baja Marimba Band: "Las Mananitas" (from For Animals Only; this is a different mix of the same song that appears on the TJB Xmas album)

Claudine Longet: "I Don't Intend To Spend Christmas Without You" (a non-album single...better than "Snow")

I did not include a recent Herb Alpert/Jeff Lorber recording of "Winter Wonderland, nor Lani Hall's "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", since they sounded too contemporary against the other tracks.

I'm still trying to locate "A Christmas Song" by Shawn Phillips, but have had no luck yet. And I'm always watching for other Xmas songs from that same 60's to early 70's era. Since I now have better gear for recording (24bit/96kHz), I'm going to re-do the CD for next year. Hoping to find a cleaner version of the Canadian Sweethearts song in the meantime, too.

As for the Herb Alpert single: if it's like other 45s, this would have been a mono mix. If I had to guess, it could have been a Larry Levine mix. Except possibly for a promo copy, the album these songs appeared on was early in A&M's stereo-only era.

I do own it--it's the first "real" 45 I ever owned, at three years old. Mom bought me a little GE "suitcase" record player, and there was an alleged loss of bladder control on my part when I heard my new record.

 

Coooooool....this is one I'm going to have to get. I've been getting into Kenton's music more lately.

 

David Grisman's "Acoustic Christmas" is a bit underappreciated IMHO. Fantastic album, great instrumental playing. It is an acoustic Bluegrass album with maybe a slight jazz feel to it at times.

 

I also don't see the Kingston Trio's Christmas album talked about much. That is another great one.

 

The ultimate marriage of technology and tradition! My wife loves Johnny's Christmas albums, too. All you bachelors out there take note!

 

Steve Vai's "Merry Axemas" various artists guitar compilation contains an incredible Jeff Beck on Amazing Grace.

 

Yes, and it was directly inspired by an even more obscure Christmas album -- The Weavers' Christmas album, which was issued in 1952 or thereabouts.

Originally, it was only issued as a 10-inch LP and was never reissued on 12-inch LP, as far as I know; in the early 1990s there was a straight reissue on CD by MCA Special Markets.

This is the source for the first recording of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" that almost every folkie has done in the years since, the one with the lyrics "Once in a year, it is not far amiss..." and climaxes with the lines "Why can't we have Christmas the whole year around? Why can't we have Christmas the whole year around?" That song, too, is an underappreciated gem.

 

In the early 1990s, MCA Special Markets reissued the entire Weavers Christmas CD under the name We Wish You a Merry Christmas, and it must have been in print for slightly longer than the length of a snowfall in Miami. I found a copy in a used CD store several years ago.

More recently, MCA Special Markets put together a collection combining five Burl Ives and five Weavers tracks, including "We Wish You a Merry Christmas," on the same CD called Burl Ives and the Weavers Sing the Biggest Christmas Hits; this one I actually found at a retail store several years ago, but it, too, seems to be out of print.

 

That is indeed a very beautiful album.

I also like the song "Christmas Time Is Here" by Ray Parker Jr, the Ghostbusters guy. It's a really nice, mellow tune.

 

Christmas with John Fahey, Vol. II (1975 vinyl) that we played a lot over the past 20 years. Nice guitar work, of course.

I second the Bruce Cockburn Christmas CD.