Glen Campbell - Christmas with Glen Campbell

Christmas with Glen Campbell and The Hollywood Pops Orchestra with The Voices of Christmas there's a mouthful. This is a new to me record, so I'll have to take a listen through to get myself oriented to what's going on.

Another of my Christmas bin treasures. This was in reasonable shape, but has a couple of ticks, mainly on the first side - but nothing skips and that's really all that matters. I'm finding with a lot of these older Christmas albums that there is no date on the jacket or the record. So it's off to the internet to try and date this "timeless" release. According to the pretty reliable discogs.com this was released in 1971, and that makes sense. The production with the strings is pure shrill cheese, and I wonder if this was a contractual obligation album, as there's very little out there on this one.

Ah, I've just gone through the first side and I think I get the long title now. There are five songs here by Glen Campbell, and a few songs each by the Hollywood Pops and The Voices of Christmas. An early example of vinyl click bait before the term existed. Regardless, half the album is Glen, although one of the tracks is a spoken word version of "The Night Before Christmas" that doesn't really count.

I guess the best way to listen to this is to pretend it's a vinyl version of The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour presenting a Christmas special. Which doesn't really make it any better, but it helps and I can see playing this in the background - I hate to say it, but it's a very uneven effort by Mister Campbell who sings over the lushly arranged and orchestrated songs conducted by Al De Lory. No guitar gymnastics, nothing that stood out, or called to mind the great work he was releasing at the time. "There's No Place Like Home" for all my moaning about the strings and lack of guitar is one of the best song on the album and after a couple of times through now, Glen's warm voice and delivery save this song. The production was very much of its time.

The selections by The Hollywood Pops Orchestra, conducted by William Loose feature a lot of bells, that ring out to the point of feedback - someone really liked sustain. Weird, but oddly cool at the same time - but not a good cool, more like a WTF cool (I don't think that's a thing, I'm just reaching for something positive to say). The selections performed by The Voices of Christmas are equally forgettable.

I was pretty excited when I found this, hoping it was a long lost treasure - sometimes things are buried and lost for a reason. That said, when I was seven or eight years old, this would have been new, and back then I wanted to be Glen Campbell - perhaps young me would have been more forgiving. Look at that hair. I would make my mum comb my hair like that, and if she didn't get that little flip right with a wet comb I didn't want to leave the house.

So I'll give Glen a pass here. For a guy who cut his teeth as a session player and one of the best to ever strap on a six string it is nice to hear his voice get the spotlight. Too bad it wasn't on a better album.

It's Christmas for crying out loud, I need to take a page out of Glen's songbook and "Try a Little Kindness"

Garfield - Strange Streets

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Hoodoo Gurus - Mars Needs Guitars!

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Saturday Night Fever - The Original Movie Soundtrack

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Old Enough to Forget

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