What Are Your Top Five Christmas Albums From The Golden Age (1950's to the 1960's) ?

The Phil Spector album is a must have for any serious collector of holiday music. I really miss Darlene Love going on Letterman and singing Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) every year and Jay Thomas telling his Lone Ranger story. How I long for the old days.

 

A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records (or Phil Spector , later). When Apple Record got distribution, it became Phil Spector's Chrismas Album.
The only one that matters to me. Back to Mono for Christmas.
The rest for me are singles from this Era. I do have the Ventures' Christmas Album but to me it's just background music.

 

This is a genre of music where I prefer Various Artists collections with a great variety of genres, instrumentation, etc.

Maybe my favorite is a 3-CD set from Reader's Digest.

As for those from a single artist

1. -- A Winter Romance -- Dean Martin... my fave crooner is my Christmas King

The rest, in no particular order:

The Christmas Song -- Nat King Cole
Merry Christmas -- Bing Crosby
The Beach Boys' Christmas Album -- The Beach Boys
A Charlie Brown Christmas -- Vince Guaraldi

But there ain't no Christmas in my crib without Elvis' "Blue Christmas", The Drifters' "White Christmas" and
Charles Brown's “Please Come Home for Christmas” and "Merry Christmas, Baby".


Santa's helpers agree with me:

 

You had me up until you posted the jive-ass contemporary strippers. This would be a more appropriate image:

 

Another really great album from the Golden Age of Christmas is that great duets album from Steve & Edie, That Holiday Feeling. Besides Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton's double platinum selling Once Upon A Christmas, which definitely falls outside the Golden Age period, this is really the only great holiday album that features mostly duet performances that I know about. Another great choice on your rather splendid list of great albums from this amazing time period. Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood also did a pretty decent one as well with some nice orchestral arrangements, but once again this one only came out a couple of years ago and does not fall into our great time frame.

 

Whoops, thought it said songs..not albums..
So those singles and these albums

Phil Spector Christmas Album (A Christmas Gift For You)
Vince Guaraldi Charlie Brown Christmas
John Fahey New Possibilty
Charles Brown Please Come Home for Christmas
Cool Cool Blues of (has original Merry Christmas Baby -Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers

 

Fantastic picks all around. The Phil Spector album is an absolute knockout, especially if you can get a hold of Vic Anesini's terrific remastered version of the original mono on CD.

 

At least my "jive-ass contemporary strippers" weren't into S&M!

(Note the whip that your innocent-looking Santa's helper is holding! )

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Nat King Cole - Christmas Song
A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra
Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas
A Christmas Gift from Phil Spector
Elvis Presley's Christmas Album

Picking 5 was pretty easy, although Bing Crosby and Beach Boys should really be on the list.

 

I love so much of the Christmas music from this era! These are the ones I come back to year after year:

1. A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records, various artists (Philles, 1963)

2. Merry Christmas, Johnny Mathis (Columbia, 1958)

3. A Charlie Brown Christmas, Vince Guaraldi Trio (Fantasy, 1965)

4. A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra, Frank Sinatra (Capitol, 1957)

5. A Very Merry Christmas, various artists (Columbia Special Products, 1967)

The last of these has sentimental value. My parents bought it at a W.T. Grant store during that Christmas season, and it was the first "adult" LP they allowed me to play. It has 14 songs, both well-known and obscure, plus it included what at one time was a great rarity, "The Star Carol" by Simon & Garfunkel. Among its contents: the beautiful "Sweetest Dreams Be Thine" by Theodore Bikel; "Touch Hands on Christmas Morning" by Mike Douglas; "Santo Natale" by Patti Page; "Do You Hear What I Hear" by Bobby Vinton; "The Twelve Days of Christmas" by Burl Ives; a great organ piece by E. Power Biggs; and, in conclusion, "Hallelujah" from Messiah by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. I love this album.

 

Frank Sinatra
Nat King Cole
Elvis Presley
Andy Williams
Phil Spector

 

I like the pop sides of the first two Andy Williams Christmas albums, but not the religious sides.

I have contemplated gluing the two together to produce a single 180-gram Andy Williams Christmas pop album.

 

I believe that this would make a very interesting album. I do love sacred carols that are strongly associated with Christmas and the birth of Jesus, but I am not to keen on it, when artists started putting religious material outside the Christmas genre on their holiday albums. Now I dig me some gospel music, do not get me wrong, but not mixed in with a Christmas album. I know this was done sometimes to help fill in the gaps in this Golden Age of holiday music period and Elvis even did it on his iconic Christmas album, but this was really before gospel music really became such a large commercial force. When an artist includes truly gospel material on a Christmas album that is not strongly associated with Christmas, than it really takes me out of the whole feeling of Christmas. Just my two cents for whatever it is worth.

 

Man, that Grants store Columbia compilation has an absolutely stellar line-up and is way overdue for a remaster and release on CD. Chip Arcuri over at the YuleLog.com loves these Grant and Goodyear albums and has been trying to get Real Gone Music to put them out on CD for years. I believe the main problem is the copyright issue being so complicated with the Grants name being used as well as Columbia Special Products (Now under the Sony Music control). You have two separate entities that have some claim to the name and use of the product. I know they will keep trying to get it released. My suggestion is to go to the Real Gone Music site and request this get released in their suggestion box.

 

I guess it depends in part on upbringing and how Christmas was celebrated. I grew up in a postwar family, with mid-century modern architecture and furniture. Christmas was a secular, seasonal holiday in our home, and we never played religious Christmas music. At that time, I don't even remember the local pop radio stations playing much religious music either, only the secular pop stuff.

My mom is on the Harry Simeone Chorale Sing We Now of Christmas album on 20th Century Fox, later reissued as The Little Drummer Boy. That was the one religious Christmas album we had, and truth be told, I don't' even remember our playing that album very much at all.

 

Three pages in and we have not mentioned the two Chipmunks Christmas albums on Liberty. I played these to death as a kid.

 

I quite like the Phil Spector Christmas Album.

 

That is a very cool thing! That Harry Simeone album is very iconic to say the least and of course I think that The Little Drummer Boy is about the biggest Christmas choral hit in the history of the Billboard music charts. I have that album on a CD and it is fantastic. I love this thread and its fascinating that some members on this forum actually have connections to some of these truly historical Christmas albums and the great artists that made them so iconic.

 

Christmas is not Christmas without hearing Christmas Don't Be Late by the Chipmunks and Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer at least once or twice. I love those novelty numbers, surely not as much as Johnny Mathis or Nat King Cole, but they are very endearing in their own right.

 

What a simply superb list! You cover a lot of great ground here with these stellar picks.

 

Lots of folks may not realize what a mega-seller the Harry Simeone album was. It held the record for the best-selling album of all time in the US, before Thriller or something similar surpassed it.

 

A Merry Christmas with Bing Crosby & The Andrews Sisters
The Williams Brothers Christmas Album
Antal Dorati, The London Symphony Orchestra - The Nutcracker Ballet
Irving Berlin's White Christmas Expanded Edition (Rosemary Clooney)
Andy Williams The Complete Christmas Recordings

I have a feeling "Season's Greetings from The McGuire Sisters" will be on the list (arrives tomorrow).

 

So did my niece, that's why I hate them...lol.

 

That's a leash, dude.

 

For me the golden age of Christmas music ran from 2006 to 2012, during which time Sufjan Stevens released his two box set collections of his nearly annual holiday EPs- "Songs For Christmas" and "Silver & Gold"!!!

That said... also Yay! for The Vince Guraldi Trio, everyone in Phil Spector's stable of seasonal wonders ("A Christmas Gift For You" artists), Elvis Presley & The Beach Boys, from before Sufjan Stevens made my all-time faves!!