A gorgeous easy-listening holiday album (maybe the best ever). And, this time around, in stereo. And as credited to "George Jenkins."

 

Custom--a Modern/Crown sublabel.  Clearly a reboot of a Crown LP--in this case, 1959's Sounds of a Thousand Strings Plays for Christmas.  And Al Goodman received credit at some point, though I can't find the Goodman-credited release at Discogs right now.  This stuff gets complicated.

Last year, I revived the source LP, Singing Strings Herald Christmas, in this post (whose workupload link no longer works, of course).  That source LP was credited to The Stradivarius String Society and The Cologne Symphony Orch., conducted by Fritz Munch.  How those became the "Thousand Strings," I have no idea, though my guess is that the original label, Lester Records, folded quickly.  As in, very quickly.  All but the first track of this LP (White Christmas, and not from the Lester album) are in stereo, which means the original dates from either 1958 or 1959.  Thus, its migration to Crown happened right away.

These stereo tracks sound way better than the monaural Lester LP's, though only after a good deal of declicking.  VinylStudio knocked out the main extent of the surface noise, but there were still clicks and pops (both quiet and LOUD) which had to be manually removed in MAGIX.  It took me about an hour, or maybe an hour and a half.  It was worth the effort--these are among the best "beautiful music" holiday renditions every recorded.

And who is George Jenkins?  I have no idea, and neither does Discogs.  But, wait--wasn't he that cartoon character?  "Meet George Jenkins/His boy Elroy, etc."?  No, that was George Jetson.  My bad.

Cover painting is nice, with the same art on the back cover.  I did a good job photo-shopping the ring wear, I think.  

Reader/listener Ronald Sauer alerted me to this material.  Ron left the following comment, detailing his excellent detective work:

These songs were on albums issued by Parade, Spin-o-rama, Custom, Yuletide, and other budget labels. I first heard them in the late fifties or early sixties on "Al Goodman and his Orchestra play a Christmas Symphony" on Parade Records. In addition, those same songs were credited on other records to George Jenkins, the Sound of 1000 Strings, and others. I finally tracked them back to what I believe is the original source: The Stradivarius String Society and the Cologne Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fritz Munch "Singing Strings Herald Christmas" on Lester Records L1002. It was one of my favorites as a youth. It only took me about 50 years of searching for the source.

That's dedication! Many thanks to Ron!  And imagine the work involved in the days before Discogs and other sources.  Anyway, gorgeous tracks, fabulous stereo, and as for the opening monaural track--I have no idea from where that came.  But it fits in nicely enough.

Oh, and the track lineup is identical to that of the Lester Records original.  The only difference being the substitution of the monaural White Christmas.

DOWNLOAD: White Christmas--George Jenkins--The Christmas Strings (Custom CS 5; 1964?)

White Christmas

Silent Night

Come All Ye Faithful

Hark the Herald Angels Sing

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

O Little Town of Bethlehem

Deck the Halls

Joy to the World

The First Noel

Good King Wenceslas

O Holy Night

We Three Things

Lee