Old Enough to Forget

Here we are in the post Christmas dead space between the turkey and New Year's Eve. It one of my favourite times of the year. We still have the tree up and Christmas music still plays while we lounge around the house. The Christmas Touch is another one of those "who is this guy?" Christmas albums. I got it because the 12 year old goof in me giggled at the album title. I could imagine it being sung to the tune of "The Bad Touch" by The Bloodhound Gang. I'm not proud of myself for this, but it is, what it is. I've accepted the things I can't really change about my sense of humour. I'd not heard of Johnny Tillotson before, but I scanned through some of my '60s collections, and sure enough in the early '60s he'd struck gold with songs like "Poetry in Motion" and "It Keeps Right On A-Hurtin'" with the latter being covered by the likes of Bobby Darin, Elvis, and even Slim Whitman. The album is a collection of mid ...

I figured, you can't really go wrong with Mr. Showmanship. I was still rooting around for records before Christmas, and honestly I ended up with more records than I had time to sit and digest. Oh, playing them was another matter, but sitting and taking it in and then trying to compose a pithy regurgitation of my auditory experience just took time I didn't have this season. Regardless when I found 'Twas The Night Before Christmas I was pretty excited, mainly because I'd be able to play it in the basement when mum was over, and not have her complain about the noise. After all, her favourite song ever, is Frank Chacksfield's "Ebb Tide" so her tastes run to the schmaltzy ... but in a good way. For me it just hearkens back to another time and it always feels nostalgic. I won't fall into the trap of equating them with the good old days, or a simpler time ... not being there I can't make such a sweeping generalization and not come across as a naive simpl...

Over the last few year's this has become part of our Christmas Eve, although usually in a truncated fashion. We'd all gather together in the family room with the lights out, the room a muted kaleidoscope of muted colours from the Christmas tree in the corner. We start with the CBC recording of Al Maitland narrating Frederick Forsyth's The Shepherd and then we'd play A Child's Christmas in Wales , by Dylan Thomas. Now I didn't have the recording, and we'd find selections on YouTube, but seldom the entire version. This one was important to my wife, and was more a nod to my her childhood memories. Last year I found this vinyl copy, and we forgot to go to the basement and listen to it as we got lost in the hustle of trying to ensure everything was in order for Christmas morning. This year I'm cheating, I am sitting here a couple of days in advance hoping to take this in and see what the fuss is all about. I have it ready for Christmas Eve. This recording was...

I was searching for albums that I'd not heard of, and I found Christmas Time . The cover was wonderfully kitschy and the songs ranged from "Silent Night" to "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" which appealed to me. The back cover photo of Roger Williams looked sufficiently geeky to catch my interest. This was either going awesome or a train wreck. The original version of the album came out in 1959, and this re-issue is undated, likely from the early '60s. It was manufactured by MCA in Canada. Man I don't know why it was such a problem to put a date on things. I suppose there was a feeling this was timeless and as such didn't need a date. Perhaps in a way it is. I really didn't know what to expect, not knowing anything about Roger Williams, I didn't know if this was a vocal or instrumental collection of songs. Turns out Mr. Williams, was a pianist, and a really good one. There is certainly a nostalgic charm in hearing these old carols played ...

Another of the Pickwick releases I seem to keep finding. There is no date, which is pretty standard, but it's a pretty safe bet this collection of songs goes back to the '50s and probably early '60s. Pickwick seemed to delight in packaging budget collections and here on The 12 Days of Christmas it's a pretty standard collection of the the big classics. As I've come to expect with these records, they are short. Woefully short. The majority of the songs clock in at just over two minutes, and a couple are under the two minute mark. Although the Jimmie Rodgers version of "The 12 Days of Christmas" is a second shy of the three minute mark - at least according to the back of the jacket. Bonnie Guitar pulls of the longest song with her arrangement of "O Holy Night" that was really nice. I actually thought it was going to be a guitar piece played by a Scotsman - Bonnie Guitar , get it? It wasn't.  The songs run the gamut, but are all very much of an...

Jesse Crawford and his Organ & Chimes for Christmas fall squarely into a generation divide that pretty much generates one of two responses: "What the hell is this?" or, "Oooh, this sounds like what church sounded like at Christmas." For those who opt for the first, you may as well stop as this will not get any better. As to the second option, let's be honest those who think this sounds like church likely only ever saw the inside of a church through old movies. For me, I'm sort of caught in a weird place where I can't listen to this and not conjure up images of the nude organ player from Monty Python or insert a terribly inappropriate voice over to the music that in my head sounds like a southern baptist preacher with a lisp who sounds a bit like Peter Lorre mixed with Ernest P. Worrell.  However, then there are times I'll feel warmly nostalgic and remember the midnight Christmas Eve services from my childhood where before the service the organis...

Ah, a good old fashioned sing-a-long album full of medleys of all your favourite Christmas carols. Over the course of eight songs, Max accompanied by a full orchestra conducted by Frank Barber, would tackle and wrestle to the ground twenty eights songs, and one reprise. Max was a British comedian, singer, and impressionist whose career started in the mid '40s and he kept going for over sixty years. He passed away at the age of 89 in 2012. It was his singalong series that apparently sold in the millions on Pye Records, and he wasn't targeting the youth market - he was aiming for an older demographic and was hearkening to a bygone era. The bottom right corner on this one has Vol. 8 which at first confused me, were there seven more in this series? Well, yes ... and no. There weren't seven Christmas albums, but this was his eighth. I have to admit that I had prejudged the album based solely on the cover. It looked like a children's record and I figured the singalong songs w...

I will address the elephant in the room straight off. Gospel music really is not in my wheelhouse, nor was it music I grew up with as a kid. Oh, I grew up with an abundance of good old fashioned church music, and a lot of the old hymns still get me in the feels. I am not really into gospel, but when it comes to Christmas music, I'd rather sit and listen to this than have to suffer through the caterwauling that passes for a lot of the "modern" takes on Christmas classics. Released in 1962, Silent Night captures the reverence and sacred essence of the holidays. The music is sparse, predominantly organ with some orchestra and backing chorus that was conducted by Johnny Williams. Johnny Williams ... this was 1962, I wonder if this is the guy we now know as John Williams. You know, that John Williams - you likely just hummed one of two songs in your head right now, the theme from Star Wars, or at least the "da da, da na na na na, da na na na na, nah nah na naaaah" o...

As a kid Liona Boyd was indeed "the First Lady of the Guitar" she was a players player, and was considered a great beauty. I remember seeing her on Johnny Carson, and at the time I just thought was kind of cool, not realizing at the time that few classical guitarists ever performed on his show, let alone a Canadian classical guitar player. Liona was also very active in musical education. I grew up in a small town in Northern British Columbia and one day Liona Boyd shows up at our school and she didn't speak to us in the big gymnasium, she spoke to individual classes in our small auditorium. I honestly don't remember much about her talk, other than she was there, and she was accessible and gracious, despite a few unruly kids who wouldn't shut up while she played (she did call them out, and I thought that was cool). While she was in town she also played a concert at the our local theatre, which was a great venue that seated just over 700 people, but felt huge when f...