Jackie Gleason - White Christmas

White Christmas was a pretty hard album to date. There doesn't seem to be a lot of good information on it, but the nearest I can figure is Capitol licensed this out to Pickwick, who packaged it up and released it in 1970. It's a compilation taken from some of Jackie Gleason's prior holiday releases, with seven songs pulled from 1956's Merry Christmas and two from 1967's 'Tis the Season.

From what I've read about budget reissues, less is more - but most of the time, it's just less.

This was one of the many Christmas albums I snapped up from the dollar bin, and this cleaned up amazingly well. It's nearly perfect. What a score.

Here we have The Great One (who was the great one long before old 99 laced 'em up) pulling out all of his lush strings and easy listening magic and applying his touch to nine holiday classics. I'll admit, this was never my favourite style of music, but there is a certain nostalgic charm to this stuff - in small doses. I can deal with a short collection of relaxing and "happy" strings.

It's funny, Jackie Gleason, depending where you are on the curve, is known for The Honeymooners and his awesome chemistry with Art Carney, or playing Buford T. Justice in Smokey and the Bandit. As a kid, I have some vague memories of watching him as Ralph Kramden and thought it was funny. I remember hearing about his "mood music" and thought it would be comedy, kind of like Victor Borge. It wasn't funny.

The thing about Mr. Gleason's secondary career is that it wasn't a joke. Although he's largely forgotten now, there was a time his style of "mood music" was what was happening, baby. When he released his debut record Music for Lovers Only in 1952, it went to number one and, from what I read on the wiki site, stayed in the Billboard Top 10 for 153 weeks. That's pretty astounding.

He released an impressive number of albums, and by 1972, twenty years after his debut, he'd release his last album - not counting the endless CD compilations that would follow.

So with White Christmas we get a decent collection of the best standards, all lavishly arranged, and frankly sparkling with Christmas cheer. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard a less sombre version of "Blue Christmas." It's almost too bad this wasn't a vocal version, as it would be awesome to hear the singer try to convey the blues over this cheerful arrangement.

I love the copy on the back. Whoever was working at Pickwick had gone to the more is more school of advertising copy. Don Draper, eat your heart out.

"The Christmas card, wassail bowl, gifttrim, plum pudding, giftwraps, snow carols, firtrees, sleighrides, logfires, turkey, candles—all that is Christmas. Bright and joyous is in the winter wonderland of this record."

That's a pretty tall order, and I will admit this made me think of my mum and dad, and I'll probably put this on for her when she's here over Christmas. It'll be a welcome relief from having to play Ebb Tide by Frank Chacksfield & His Orchestra.

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and it was one of the albums I really wanted to get back after a basement flood wiped out my vinyl collection in the '90s (when no one really gave a shit about records, and my insurance gave me a couple hundred bucks for an appraised $10,000 collection). Way back in 1984, my (dearly departed and greatly missed) buddy Dave let me borrow his cassette copy, which included a bonus track of "Get It On (Bang A Gong)." When I eventually bought the album, I didn't know it was a bonus track, or even what a bonus track was. If that sentence was hard to read, just go back and skim it. I'm sure you'll get the gist. I'd find out later Billy was an off-and-on-again member of Nazareth and wrote some absolutely killer songs for them. At the time, though, all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the opening cut, "Baby Come Back," then proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another bef...

Styx - Paradise Theater

Styx was hands down one of my favourite bands as a kid. They were a strange band, even back then. They were a hard rock, almost progressive at times who had a penchant for sucky ballads. I know there's a tendency for people to zero in on "Babe" as the song that killed the band's credibility. The roots go way back to almost the beginning when Styx released "Lady" on their second album. It showed a side to the band that needed to be kept in check, and for the most part the band kept things on a pretty tight leash. The band had been setting a gruelling pace, releasing an album a year (two in 1972) and by the time they released Paradise Theater (if I end up writing theatre later it's because that's how we spell it here) in 1981 they'd dropped ten albums in less than a decade. I snapped this up as soon as I saw it, and it became a fixture on my turntable. Like the band had announced on "Borrowed Time" from 1979's Cornerstone , "Don...

Gary Numan - The Pleasure Principle

"Cars" was really the only song I knew by Gary Numan. I knew the name of the album the song came from. Over the years bits and pieces of trivia are accumulated, but in terms of his music it was still distilled down to one song ... It would be too easy to write Mr. Numan off as a one hit wonder, and I suppose in terms of actual chart hits this was his defining moment as a solo artist. Of course this really means nothing, as Gary Numan would drop an album a year pretty much through to the end of the '80s. He'd then slow down a little but continues to make music. While The Pleasure Principle was Gary Numan's debut solo release in '79, he actually cut his teeth on a couple of albums in a band called Tubeway Army, first with the band's self titled release in 1978, and then on Replicas that came out in April of '79. By the end of Tubeway Army's run most of the band would follow Gary into his solo career. Paul Gardiner who had been with Gary from the beg...

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