Musical highlight: the Staple Singers' fervent "Who Took the Merry Out of Christmas." DR. For those who have the blues or wish to give them this holiday season, this runs the gamut from the Everly Brothers' "Christmas Eve Can Kill You" and the Sonics' rude "Don't Believe In Christmas" to Clyde Lasley's "Santa Came Home Drunk" and Sherwin Linton's "Santa Got a DWI" (little wonder the set also includes "Christmas In Jail" and "Christmas in Prison"). Vocal jazz and R&B classics, mostly from the '40s and '50s, with Kitt's "Santa Baby" and Pearl Bailey's "Five Pound Box of Money" exposing them as the original Material Girls three Louis Armstrong gems, including the funny "Zat You, Santa Claus" and a sweet "Christmas Night in Harlem" Babs Gonzales' jive-talkin', slang-laden "BeBop Santa Claus" and the ultra-cynical Miles Davis/Bob Dorough collaboration, "Blue Xmas (To Whom It May Concern)" Oscar McLollie's jump swing "Dig That Crazy Santa Claus" and two dizzy scat/vocalese expeditions - Leo Watson's "Jingle Bells" and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross's "Deck Us All With Boston Charlie" (lyrics via Walt Kelly's "Pogo"). Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," "The Chipmunk Song," Charles Brown's "Please Come Home for Christmas" and seven others, mostly from the '50s and early '60s. Ten ubiquitous classics, including Bing Crosby's "White Christmas," Gene Autry's "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," Nat King Cole's "Christmas Song," Spike Jones's "All I Want for Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)" and Eartha Kitt's sly and sinuous "Santa Baby." BILLBOARD'S GREATEST CHRISTMAS HITS (1955-Present) - (Rhino). OLDIES BILLBOARD'S GREATEST CHRISTMAS HITS (1935-1954) - (Rhino). The singing is virile, hearty, somewhere between the churchyard and the pub, but respectful of the season and the spirit. This volume, the fourth in a series, draws tunes from mummers' plays, wrenning songs and Latin carols from England and Ireland, as well as Texas fiddle tunes, Appalachian ballads and French-Canadian reels. John Roberts, Tony Barrand, Fred Breunig and Andy Davis continue to uncover wonderful midwinter carols from folk traditions on both sides of the Atlantic. The playing is, of course, superb throughout, both inwardly inspired and for a worthwhile cause. The guitarists come from every stylistic corner: jazz (Larry Coryell, Emily Remler, John Scofield) folk (John Renbourn, Taj Mahal, Gerald Trimble) rock (Heart's Nancy Wilson, NRBQ's Al Anderson, Adrian Belew) other performers include Yomo Toro, Michelle Shocked, Terry Garthwaite and Scott Johnson. Spectacular pickers abound on this special benefit record for the National Coalition for the Homeless. Oboes, cornets, button accordions and saxophones weave in and out of 33 string-based tapestries. Some tunes have the jubilant feel of contradance music others the elegiac quietude of pavannes.
Roxy Music vets Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay offer up folk chamber music with street buskers' energy, neo-baroque grace and Celtic spirit. interwoven with everyday behavior and belief." The acoustic folk settings are both rich and spare, the songs are marvelous and this whole project is a delight. The emphasis is on folk tradition, the songs drawn from isolated communities and generally rural sources the message is both spiritual and practical (but never commercial), what they call "the morals and legends of Christmas. This 53-song, double CD will become a classic and definitive anthology in much the way the Seegers' "American Folk Songs for Children" did 15 years ago: both are based on pioneering collections published in the '50s by Ruth Crawford Seeger, the composer, musicologist and mother of the performers. FOUR SPECIAL COLLECTIONS MIKE, PEGGY AND PENNY SEEGER - "American Folk Songs for Christmas" (Rounder). So here it is, prime time - when yuletide songs are dusted off and recorded, remixed or repackaged, where spiritual and material worlds collide, and where the jingle is not of bells, but of cash registers ringing up sales. And while we're lucky that few people have felt compelled to offer cover versions of "Turkey in the Microwave" or "Auld Lang Syne," it sometimes feels like just about everybody with access to a recording studio - or even a tape deck, actually - has made a Christmas record. LIKE THE TOY shopping season, the Christmas music madness begins right after Thanksgiving and ends a little before New Year's Eve.
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