Max Bygraves - SingalongamaXmas

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 would be a sort of generic gang vocal chorus of kids and Max cranking out Christmas classics.

From the first track with the first medley that started with "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" where Max sings "We wish you a lot of presents..." before the song segues into "O' Come All Ye Faithful" and the song takes on a more reverent tone. Max may have been a comedian but he was also a hell of singer, and his ability to casually move between songs with his rich voice is actually a lot of fun.

The medleys themselves aren't a hodgepodge of songs mixed in a blender, the sequencing and order has been carefully structured and there's a reason things are braided together. When he sings "Away in a Manager" he weaves it together with "Silent Night" and interestingly "The 23rd Psalm" which I thought was really cool.

Max slips in and out of the sacred with ease, and probably my favourite is the medley that opens side two that starts out with "Come Landlord Fill the Flowing Bowl" and from there goes on a bender adding in "Little Brown Jug" "Just a Wee Doch An' Doris" "Here's to the Good Old Beer to Wash it Down" "Let's Have Another One" and "Rolling Home" it is literally a medley filled with good cheer. As Max sings "Tomorrow we'll be sober."

I was caught of guard when he launched into Slade's 1973 classic "Merry Christmas Everybody" as it was actually pretty good - oh, it pales to the original, but he makes it own and he pairs it with "I Wish it could be Christmas Everyday" another 1973 classic, this time by Wizzard (Roy Wood, baby) and to be honest, it isn't a medley as he does both songs pretty much in their entirety. Gotta hand it to Max, he may have been aiming at the old folks but he was stuck in the past.

By the time we get to the closing medley Max has gone through the season and closes out with what reads like an odd pairing of "Silver Bells" "Mary's Boy Child" and ends with "Auld Lang Syne."

I gotta hand it to Max, this was far more enjoyable than I had expected, and considering how much Christmas music I have it's always fun, really fun to discover new stuff I've not heard before.

Ho Ho Ho.

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Old Enough to Forget

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