Old Uncle Toe
Well-Known Member
Love that. What a beautiful sound.
Holiday Music Thread
- Thread starter Zeeba Neighba
- Start date
Worm
Staff member
Hypnotically beautiful!
Zeeba Neighba
Staff member
Zeeba Neighba
Staff member
Yesterday and today been doing my annual listen of my old WCBS-FM Collectible Records CDs - 6 volumes of 25 songs/each of Christmas songs. Prior to streaming music, these were essential collections of Christmas songs that didn't appear on albums by the big artists like Bing, Frank, Ella, Perry, etc. Where else was a guy gonna break out Jose Feliciano's "Feliz Navidad" or Paul's "Wonderful Christmastime", Lou Monte's "Dominic the Donkey", or Chuck Berry's "Run Run Rudolph" without a good compilation.
More than anything it brings me back to memories of my enjoyment of WCBS-FM in New York when it was the station to check out the radio hits of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Now DJs like Cousin Brucie can be found on Sirius XM, but would love hearing DJs like Norm N. Nite and Harry Harrison. Loved the countdown of the top 500 oldies every year and would long each year to hear Harry Harrison's overly sentimental "May You Always" New Years wishes monologue each year (delightfully included on the last volume released of this annual collection). And of course, WCBS-FM was the station that would play Christmas music each year interspersed with the oldies before syndicated round-the-clock Christmas music started beating you over the head with it now from mid-November onward.
My guess is most hear have their favorite FM radio stations from our past that now have changed formats and would probably have been supplanted by our streaming format of choice anyway. Still CDs like this one bring me back to a bygone musical era.
More than anything it brings me back to memories of my enjoyment of WCBS-FM in New York when it was the station to check out the radio hits of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Now DJs like Cousin Brucie can be found on Sirius XM, but would love hearing DJs like Norm N. Nite and Harry Harrison. Loved the countdown of the top 500 oldies every year and would long each year to hear Harry Harrison's overly sentimental "May You Always" New Years wishes monologue each year (delightfully included on the last volume released of this annual collection). And of course, WCBS-FM was the station that would play Christmas music each year interspersed with the oldies before syndicated round-the-clock Christmas music started beating you over the head with it now from mid-November onward.
My guess is most hear have their favorite FM radio stations from our past that now have changed formats and would probably have been supplanted by our streaming format of choice anyway. Still CDs like this one bring me back to a bygone musical era.
Zeeba Neighba
Staff member
London Choral Sinfonia, cond. Michael Waldron - O Holy Night (2019)
Always looking for great Christmas chorale music, and this popped up on a "Best Classical Holiday Music" list. Pretty traditional re: arrangements but good stuff
Always looking for great Christmas chorale music, and this popped up on a "Best Classical Holiday Music" list. Pretty traditional re: arrangements but good stuff
Zeeba Neighba
Staff member
Merry Christmas Baby: Romance & Reindeer
Nipper's Greatest Christmas Hits
Two compilations of old Capitol Records and RCA Christmas songs respectively
Nipper's Greatest Christmas Hits
Two compilations of old Capitol Records and RCA Christmas songs respectively
Zeeba Neighba
Staff member
Old 97's - Love the Holidays (2018)
Zeeba Neighba
Staff member
Kacey Musgraves - A Very Kacey Christmas (2016)
Got some good reviews as far as modern Christmas releases - and I like her whimsy (a cover of "I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas"). But it's all kind of light - Kacey doesn't really belt anything out and get emotional with the songs. Kind of like a countrified detached Zooey Deschanel. Need a little more bounce for the holiday.
Got some good reviews as far as modern Christmas releases - and I like her whimsy (a cover of "I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas"). But it's all kind of light - Kacey doesn't really belt anything out and get emotional with the songs. Kind of like a countrified detached Zooey Deschanel. Need a little more bounce for the holiday.
Unsomnambulist
Staff member
Ten Truly Strange Christmas Albums
From “Disco Noël” to “This Ain’t No White Christmas,” here are ten wonderfully weird albums to get you in the holiday spirit.
floodmagazine.com
@Zeeba Neighba here's some more listening ideas.
Ojai Sam
Staff member
Powerline blog shared this back story that was new to me:
Mel Torme and Bob Wells wrote “The Christmas Song” in 1945 on a sultry day in southern California. Wells had written the first verse. Torme found it on the piano after he let himself in to Wells’s San Fernando Valley home for a songwriting session. When Wells turned up in tennis shorts and shirt (still looking hot, as Torme tells it), Torme asked him about “the little poem.” Wells told him, “It was so damn hot today, I thought I’d write something to cool myself off. All I could think of was Christmas and cold weather.” Forty-five minutes later they had produced the classic Christmas song. They promptly offered it to Nat “King” Cole; Cole fell in love with it on first listen. Because of his busy schedule, however, Cole didn’t get around to recording it until 1946.
That’s the story as we have all heard it. Telling this story in his memoir It Wasn’t All Velvet, however, Torme adds “a humorous footnote.” Cole had recorded the last line of the bridge as “To see if reindeers really know how to fly.” After the first pressings of Cole’s recording had turned the song into a hit, Torme and Wells pointed out Cole’s error to him: “Nat, a true gentleman and a dogged perfectionist, stewed over this mistake, and at the end of another recording session of his, with the same-size orchestra at hand, he rerecorded our song, properly singing ‘reindeer'” (in the version we all know).
Mel Torme and Bob Wells wrote “The Christmas Song” in 1945 on a sultry day in southern California. Wells had written the first verse. Torme found it on the piano after he let himself in to Wells’s San Fernando Valley home for a songwriting session. When Wells turned up in tennis shorts and shirt (still looking hot, as Torme tells it), Torme asked him about “the little poem.” Wells told him, “It was so damn hot today, I thought I’d write something to cool myself off. All I could think of was Christmas and cold weather.” Forty-five minutes later they had produced the classic Christmas song. They promptly offered it to Nat “King” Cole; Cole fell in love with it on first listen. Because of his busy schedule, however, Cole didn’t get around to recording it until 1946.
That’s the story as we have all heard it. Telling this story in his memoir It Wasn’t All Velvet, however, Torme adds “a humorous footnote.” Cole had recorded the last line of the bridge as “To see if reindeers really know how to fly.” After the first pressings of Cole’s recording had turned the song into a hit, Torme and Wells pointed out Cole’s error to him: “Nat, a true gentleman and a dogged perfectionist, stewed over this mistake, and at the end of another recording session of his, with the same-size orchestra at hand, he rerecorded our song, properly singing ‘reindeer'” (in the version we all know).
Zeeba Neighba
Staff member
All the old standards today - albums by Bing, Frankie, Johnny Mathis, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, Ella, and, of course, A Christmas Gift for Your from Philles Records.
My folks had the same 6-7 Christmas albums that we played every year (and are still, I'm sure, buried in the old non-functioning stereo console now uses as a sidetable at my mom's house).
Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra
Perry Como's first Christmas album
Merry Christmas from Johnny Mathis
Merry Christmas by Bing Crosby
We had a couple of comps and a few that never got played Fred Waring Christmas and an old Radio City Music Hall Christmas albums (with tantalizing pictures of the Rockettes on the cover)
One day in the 1970s my mom came home with the SalSoul Orchestra Christmas album - ?Christmas party gift
These were the music of Christmas of my youth - rest was on radio. Now years later, I have a ton of Christmas albums (of course, I suppose we all due thanks to streaming) but the old faithful still get a lot of play (I've added in Ella, Lou Rawls, and Phil Spector)
I know I listen to Christmas music more than most here - unapologetic about it. I'm gonna miss in come the end of the season
But hey, I can get back to my series then - 1955!
My folks had the same 6-7 Christmas albums that we played every year (and are still, I'm sure, buried in the old non-functioning stereo console now uses as a sidetable at my mom's house).
Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra
Perry Como's first Christmas album
Merry Christmas from Johnny Mathis
Merry Christmas by Bing Crosby
We had a couple of comps and a few that never got played Fred Waring Christmas and an old Radio City Music Hall Christmas albums (with tantalizing pictures of the Rockettes on the cover)
One day in the 1970s my mom came home with the SalSoul Orchestra Christmas album - ?Christmas party gift
These were the music of Christmas of my youth - rest was on radio. Now years later, I have a ton of Christmas albums (of course, I suppose we all due thanks to streaming) but the old faithful still get a lot of play (I've added in Ella, Lou Rawls, and Phil Spector)
I know I listen to Christmas music more than most here - unapologetic about it. I'm gonna miss in come the end of the season
But hey, I can get back to my series then - 1955!
Worm
Staff member
I am such a sucker for these flash mob things:
https://www.dvidshub.net/video/3110...-air-force-band-national-air-and-space-museum
Watch full screen!
https://www.dvidshub.net/video/3110...-air-force-band-national-air-and-space-museum
Watch full screen!
Unsomnambulist
Staff member
Zeeba Neighba
Staff member
Hmmm, should this go in the Classical or Holiday Music thread? Good to have choices:
2020's Eight Best Christmas Classical Albums
www.wfmt.com
Every year I look for newer classical Christmas albums but not too many cool offerings in the last few years. But excited about some of the albums on this list - in fact gonna listen to the first one now
2020's Eight Best Christmas Classical Albums
2020's 8 Best Classical Christmas Albums | WFMT
Every year, the holiday season brings a new assortment of fabulous and festive Christmas albums.
www.wfmt.com
Every year I look for newer classical Christmas albums but not too many cool offerings in the last few years. But excited about some of the albums on this list - in fact gonna listen to the first one now
