The Andy Williams Christmas Album

To prepare for this holiday season I went to my go to store and decided to take advantage of their Black Friday sale and pillage their dollar bin and see what was there. I ended up finding an even dozen albums and with the discount (yeah, I'm so cheap I was looking for a deal on albums in the dollar bins) I was out of there for less than ten bucks.

Here we are December 1, and we're (the Royal "We") going into the Christmas pile and starting off with Andy Williams' classic from 1963. You never know what you're going to end up with, but I wound up with a very nice copy, and as a plus the jacket still had it's original shrinkwrap. I still find it odd when I find a record thusly wrapped. I had friends who told me never, ever, ever leave that shit on - it'll warp your records.

Anyway, I've always loved Andy Williams. As a young kid I have a handful of memories. From the Andy Williams show I remember The Cookie Bear. Don't ask me why. The other was making my mum comb my hair like Glenn Campbell - if she couldn't get my side part to curl up properly I'd not want to go to school. Ah, the early 70s - they were the best of times.

This album remains one of my favourites, and all of the big songs are here. The ever ubiquitous "White Christmas" gets a wonderful rendition and the number of wonderful songs here is only marred by "A Song and a Christmas Tree" which is an odd rendition of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" a song that tries a variation on a theme and misses (by that much). Still, there's an almost hypnotic quality to Andy Williams voice that just melts me. Of course I have to call out "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" as the album's great contribution to the Christmas Carol Cannon.

It's interesting that every artist, even Andy had to take a crack at the penultimate Christmas song "White Christmas" but to me a close second is "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" as it too is a signature song, and oddly enough few artists have tried to cover it. Oh, I know there have been a few who've tried, but you never hear them.

One tends to forget how big a deal Mister Williams was at one point, even if he's remembered for nothing other than his Christmas album he'll still live on.

I like that he writes Happy Holidays on the back cover. To those who like to argue this takes the "Christ" out of Christmas weren't paying attention to the songs on the album.

It really is the most wonderful time of the year.

Comments

Billy Rankin - Growin' Up Too Fast

Growin' Up Too Fast was never widely released on CD (if at all), and 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 that had a bonus track of " Get It On (Bang A Gong)" that when I bought the album 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. However, at the time all I knew was this guy laid it out cold with the first cut "Baby Come Back" and proceeded to lay down one killer tune after another and closed out the album (sans any...

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...

Lighthouse - Sunny Days

Bin diving at my local record store where there were more than a few choices to make. After picking out a half dozen treasures, I figured I'd stop looking and leave before I caused myself trouble at home. Lighthouse was one of those ridiculously large bands in the early 70s I didn't understand. I mean really, BTO was just four guys, The James Gang was three, until they weren't, what in the world do you do with a dozen guys in a band? Of course I had a radio — it was the first significant purchase I made with my money from cutting lawns. I think at the time it cost about 35 bucks, and had FM and other high frequency things I never got to use living out in the suburbs away from the reach of the big city FM signal. "Sunny Days" was a great song. I remember thinking it was cool and didn't switch to the other AM station when it came on. A few years later, when I got my first record player, the obligatory K-Tel anthologies would feature a myriad of cut up and edited...

Old Enough to Forget

Search This Blog