White Christmas: An Easy Listening Collection of 14 Christmas Favorites (Silver Bell Music; 1985)

 

This is an atypical budget Xmas effort, in that the audio quality is excellent.  Meanwhile, it's a typical budget Xmas effort in that the artist credits are nearly nonexistent, plus the label and jacket titles don't gel.  But details, schmetails.  We're in budget country.

Who are "The Holiday Singers"?  Dunno, but some of the tracks are instrumentals, so this credit is slightly misleading.  All I can say for sure about the Singers is that they are home to one of the worst Elvis imitators in the biz--I refer to the second track, Side One (I'll Be Home for Christmas).  But for connoisseurs of bad Elvis impressions, this selection is a must-hear and must-have.  And I know there must be some of you out there.  Admit it--you've been waiting with hungry impatience for such a track.

Nothing on this LP places it in the realm of weirdness (bad Elvis impressions aside), except for the fractured polyphony on Deck the Halls, a track which starts out with beautiful counterpoint but which ends up in a hiccup-style tangle of voices.  (Hiccup-style tangle of voices?)  This will hopefully make sense when you hear it.  I don't know what happened with, to, or in that arrangement, or if alcohol played a part, or what.  Most of the numbers are of a pristine type, though, and while there are no surprises in the playlist, these recordings have a fresh, new sound--even if they're from 1985.  I guess it's all relative.  That is to say, these sound fresh and new compared to my usual Xmas fare.

Oh, and courtesy of Discogs, here's the label for the cassette edition of Winter Wonderland.  Of interest, besides the altered color scheme, is the absence of Santa.  Maybe his contract only allowed for an appearance on the LP edition.

 

DOWNLOAD: White Christmas--The Holiday Singers (Silver Bell Music SB-3; 1985)

White Christmas
I'll Be Home for Christmas
We Three Kings
O Come All Ye Faithful
Away in a Manger
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day
What Child Is This
O Holy Night
Deck the Halls
Angels We Have Heard on High
Twelve Days of Christmas
Silent Night
O Little Town of Bethlehem
Winter Wonderland

White Christmas--An Easy Listening Collection of 14 Christmas Favorites (Silver Bell Music SB-3; 1985)

Lee

An assortment of 19th century Santa illustrations--repost from 2014

NOTE: This is a seven-year-old repost, and the scans are my own, all taken from old, old magazines and books presently taking up much space in my bedroom and Media Room.

So, Coca-Cola came up with the fat, jolly, human-looking Santa in 1931, eh?  Riiiight.  In fact, here's our man in a Dec. 11, 1884 Youth's Companion ad, dropping Waterbury pocket watches onto the Earth from a considerable height.  (Imagine the size of the impact craters when those things hit!) Is it just me, or does Santa look like he's about to be gored by one of the rear reindeer?

Next, a more Father Christmas-looking Santa ("tall and wrinkled and gray"), from the children's book, Evening Entertainments (W.B. Conkey, 1899).  Very interesting text, no?  "Your mammas have told you, I have no doubt, Of what the Christmas is all about."  The Christmas??  Anyway, this poem, which connects the Nativity with Saint Nick, sounds like it was written for Cab Calloway:

Regarding Santa and the Nativity, please note that folklorist Jack Santino--a former editor of the Journal of American Folklore, former president of the American Folklore Society, and famed holiday expert--regards Santa Claus as "primarily a Christian tradition" (New Old Fashioned Ways: Holidays and Popular Culture, 1996).  In distinct contrast, I might add, to stand-up comic Tina Dupuy's assertion that Santa is secular as can be.  Now, that's a toughie.  Who do we believe?  The stand-up comic or the scholar?  Hmm.

While we're pondering that, here's a rendering of Santa, sleigh, and reindeer from the same collection.  To my eyes, this could easily pass for a Mike Peters cartoon:

No date on this next kiddie publication (below), but I'm guessing late 1800s/early 1900s.  As you can see, my copy's had a rough existence (not at my hands!), but simply by having survived in any condition, something this old and cheaply made has beaten the odds:

We see, as ever, a 19th century Santa Claus instantly recognizable as same by modern eyes, but the really interesting thing is the amazing structure below the clouds, labeled "Santa Claus' Home."  Notice the Turkish look of the architecture?  Given St. Nicholas' place of origin, that makes perfect sense.

Here's a lovingly restored (with Paint) close-up:

Also interesting is the possessive apostrophe after "Santa Claus."  By modern standards, this is amazing on two counts: 1) it was used at all, and 2) it was used correctly--i.e. after, not before, the s.  You know we're looking at another era's work.  Today, this structure would be labeled "Santa Claus Home."   

Just inside the cover (after a filler page) is this cheaply printed but quite cool color illustration of our gift-bearing fireplace visitor, as fat and human-looking as he gets.  If he's not looking too jolly in this shot, maybe it's because he's deep in thought, wondering, at he looks at the slender chimney shaft, why he didn't bring Plastic Man along for back-up.

Same book--an illustration for the short narrative poem, "Santa Claus," which includes this gem:

Now, of toys he had no lack: 

They were carried on his back 

In a sack."

Santa leaves presents for everyone but Lazy Joe, whose stocking has a hole in it.  The hole being a violation of Santa/client policy, I guess.

And here's Kris--er, Kriss--Kringle, looking nothing like the Austrian and German Christkind/Christkindl, a.k.a. Christ Child, the gift-bearer often portrayed as a blonde female angel in get-up similar to that of the Good Witch in the 1939 Wizard of Oz.  (Follow that?  Me, neither.)  Anyway, this is a new depiction on me.  Google Images is no help--for "Kriss Kringle," it just gives me images from Miracle on 34th Street.  Why Kriss looks like a hobo here, I have no idea.  But he's certainly fat and jolly, and that's one big white beard:

With the exception of Kriss, every one of this post's Santas passes the Coca-Cola test, imo.  (No, I'm not referring to the classic leave-a-nail-in-a-glass-of-Coca-Cola experiment.)

Lee

Christmas Aloha--Mark and Diane, The Hawaiians With the Otis Skillings Orch. and Cho. (Tempo R-7126; 1975)

 

Mark and Diane Yasuhara have wonderful voices, and Christmas Aloha is as professional a production as you're going to get.  Despite the title, there's nothing campy about the proceedings, though things occasionally get a bit too praise-music-y for me (I've never been keen on that genre).  No biggie, since the quality of musicianship is so high--in fact, Christmas Aloha can almost be called art praise music.  If there is such a phrase (I sort of doubt it).

Art carols and concert holiday selections in the mix--Gesu Bambino, Bring a Torch..., and O Holy Night--to go along with the more pop material, such as Mele Kalikimaka (written in 1949, and recorded by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters in 1950), Winter Wonderland, and Silver Bells.  And doesn't the bridge on Mele sound like it was borrowed from Happy Trails, or is it just me?  (Actually, Trails came slightly after Mele.)

Charming holiday family photos on the back jacket--posed, but expertly so:

By some weird twist of fate, this is not a Diane gift to the blog, though by all logic it should be.  Because not only is Diane crazy about Hawaii, she has sent me some gospel titles by this duo--it's because of Diane that I knew who they were.  So, I suppose Diane gets partial credit.  It's just some quirk of chance that I found this all on my own.  The perfect music for 90-degree Noel.  (Actually, on line, it says that low 80s are more probable during the season in the Land of Aloha.  Heck, I'd take those.)

DOWNLOAD: Christmas Aloha--The Hawaiians With the Otis Skillings Orch. and Chorus, 1975.

Mele Kalikimaka (Anderson)
Gesu Bambino (Yon)
Gloria (Stearman)
Bells Medley: I Heard the Bells..., Carol of the Bells, Winter Wonderland, Silver/Jingle Bells, I Heard the Bells (Finale)
Medley of the Manger: Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella; What Child Is This?; Go Tell It on the Mountain
Some Children See Him (Burt)
This Little Child (Fisher)
O Holy Night (Adams)
Silent Night (Gruber)

Christmas Aloha--Mark and Diane, the Hawaiians With the Otis Skillings O. and Cho. (Tempo R-7126; 1975)

Lee

I just had to post this--sorry!

 

Be sure to listen to the entire track.  Recorded during rehearsal, please note! 

Lee

Merry Cheapmas: Christmas Party for Children (Yulesong SY0222)

I love this LP, and I don't know why.  Maybe because it's so unrepentantly cheap--so aggressively tacky.  I mean, it almost doesn't rate as a Christmas LP, given that merely eight of the twenty selections (that would be 40 percent, I think) are holiday songs (!).  Can you beat that?  The rest are standard children's numbers, like Happy Birthday to You, Hickory Dickory Dock, London Bridge, and Mary Had a Little Lamb.  The folks who put this together set something of a record in the area of budget-label indifference.

I guess I love the sheer weirdness of the album, which I first featured back in 2017 (and whose download link perished long ago): We're talking about Toy Soldier serving as the title for Parade of the Wooden Soldiers, Me and Teddy Bear instead of Me and My Teddy Bear, and hilarious affronts like that.  I can imagine the dialogue in the company office: "Just toss something together in, oh, ten minutes."  "Does quality matter?"  "You're kidding, right?"  Anyway, this is a record-settingly tacky Xmas cheapie.  So, naturally, I restored it with loving care, getting a much better rip this time.  Plus, it's in a higher bitrate, which may help, or which may not.  I'm not sure.

Without spending a lot of time investigating things, I would say that this playlist is a mix of Pickwick and SPC stuff, including some ultra-familiar Johnny Kay/Johnny Kaye tracks which managed to show up on every other cheap Christmas comp back in the day.  Kay/Kaye, of course, was that Perry Como soundalike who recorded for Synthetic Plastics Company.  At least once (on SPC's Promenade label), Kay/Kaye covered a Como hit (Catch a Falling Star).  He was clearly the right choice.

Johnny is always nice to hear, and meanwhile the other tracks range from okay to "Dear God!"  It doesn't help that the transfers are the pits (would we expect anything more?), or that, despite the claims to stereo, many (maybe most) of the tracks are anything but.  For me, these are all recommendations, not warnings.  I mean, classic Christmas tackiness is, well... classic Christmas tackiness.  In the zip, you'll find the A and B label scans, plus the front cover.  I didn't bother to scan the back jacket, since it's identical to the front.  On the technical front, I had to clone out some masking tape and a printed owner's name ("Jeff Smith").  For all its faults, this does have kind of a cute cover.  Tacky-cute, perhaps.

DOWNLOAD: Christmas Party for Children (Yulesong SY 0222)

White Christmas
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Toy Solider
The Night Before Christmas
Happy Birthday to You
The Bible Tells Me So
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
Alphabet Story and Song
Farmer in the Dell
Hickory Dickory Dock
Little Drummer Boy
Down by the Station
Me and Teddy Bear
The First Noel
Three Blind Mice
Jack and Jill
Silent Night
London Bridge
Mary Had a Little Lamb
Jingle Bells

Christmas Party for Children (Yulesong SY 0222)

Lee