Old Enough to Forget

Hot diggity, dog ziggity, boom - I found a nice copy (with the odd pop here and there, but I pretend it's the crackling of a fire) of Home for the Holidays in "stereo orthophonic" high fidelity as part of my pre-Christmas haul. My first impressions of Perry Como came courtesy of SCTV in the early 1980s when they parodied Mr. Como as so laid back he would wear his trademarked cardigan and sing lying flat on the stage. It was so funny it stuck with me. I then went through my dad's limited but eclectic collection of strange religious albums, mixed with some Harry Belafonte, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles and Perry Como. It was a weird to juxtapose my steady diet of Styx, Prism, Larry Norman with the oldies I found in my parent's record cabinet - but it all went into the mix and helped me deepen my appreciation of music. Over the years of course I'd have literally dozens of Christmas anthologies and inevitably there would be a Perry Como song or two. This collection ...

Johnny Nash is probably best for his 1972 hit "I Can See Clearly Now" a song I once thought my uncle Lloyd had written because he sang it when I was a kid. When I finally heard Johnny Nash's version on the radio I was pretty excited. "My Uncle wrote that!" Sigh, the innocence of youth. But before his big breakthrough he recorded on his own label JAD records, which was named after himself, producer Arthur Jenkins and his manager Danny Sims. They would record in Kingston, Jamaica, which was a pretty tropical place to record a holiday record - it kind of explains why songs like "Baby It's Cold Outside," "Winter Wonderland" and "White Christmas" are absent. - but record a Christmas record he did, and in 1969 The Prince of Peace was released. I'd never heard any of these songs before, which gave me a moment's pause, but the album looks really cool with the 3D image of Johnny on the cover. As an added bonus it was still in it...

This version of Belafonte's Christmas was released in 1976 by RCA Records Canada. Many of the recordings apparently date back to 1958, and this collection is the same as the 1962 re-issue that added "Mary's Boy Child" to the song order. I did see the earlier version in the bin, but it was in really poor condition, and other than reversing the side order appeared to be the same. Besides the cover on the one I picked up looked brand new. The vinyl, while not as pristine was really nice. Listening to this now I think re-sequencing the song order to start with "Mary's Boy Child" was the right call. It's a great song, and a great way to start the album. It's too bad they didn't close the album with "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" then again, that would likely mean having to remaster the album, and it was cheaper to relabel the sides to put the hit first. Harry Belafonte is one of those singers who can captivate you with his voice. B...

There's no telling what you can find if you spend enough time riffling through the dollar bins. I originally picked this one up, and then put it back - then found another copy, so I went back and compared the two and figured it was a sign so I put it in the pile. It cleaned up nice, and I could hardly wait to see what kind of cheese I was in for. As a kid I thought Herb Alpert's trumpet playing was the coolest of the cool and "Spanish Flea" would crack me up every time I heard it, and as I got older I picked up on the subtext and thought it was funnier than ever. Their style of articulated trumpet soloing would go on to provide the thematic fodder for game show theme composers for years to come. I'm somewhat conflicted, as there are truly great heaping dollops of pure whipped cheese throughout the album, especially the trumpet parts on "Jingle Bells" but there are a couple of really nice renditions as well, which actually make this more enjoyable than I ...

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 and they packaged it up and released it in 1970. It's a compilation likely taken from some of Jackie Gleason's prior holiday releases, and from what I've read about the budget re-issues is less is more, but most of the time, 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, and I can deal with a short collection of relaxing and "happy" strings. It'...

It's a strange thing to think that his original 1957 album, considered the best selling Christmas album of all time, had at one time gone out of print. The geniuses at RCA must have figured if they ditched the hymns and added two new songs, "If Every Day Was Like Christmas" and " Mama Liked The Roses" they'd be able to replicate the success of the original release. So they put it out on their budget label Camden and released it in mono (I'm guessing the original recordings were in mono, so no harm no foul). Considering I'd never seen it before, I'm guessing the classic red album is still the preferred version. Nostalgia is a strange thing. While I never had the original on vinyl, I did get the CD thirty years ago and that's the version I'm most familiar with - hymns and all. Still, for a buck finding this was pretty cool. I have to admit there were several copies in the bin some in truly horrific shape. I kinda split the middle and swappe...

I only bought this because of the cover. Thinking this would be so horrid I'd have to replace my needle and bleach my ears after playing this I eagerly paid my dollar, and gave it a good cleaning. The first thing to note is that despite a cover Yosh and Stan Schmenge would drool over, this was played straight, and reminds me of my treasured Jim Gregrash records (if you know, you know). I can imagine The Mom and Dads killing it at a barn dance. Make no mistake, this was dance music, just not the dance music of my generation. This is fun, old timey Christmas music, and frankly considering three of the members were born before 1920, and the youngest born in the early 1930s - they were older than most artists who were starting their careers. They'd only released their debut in 1970 a couple of years earlier. Late bloomers I suppose. I honestly wasn't sure what to expect when I started looking up the band, but I wasn't expecting to see a bunch of gold and platinum CRIA certi...