For our December issue, the Songbirds staff set out to review holiday albums available on CD by a variety of singers – male and female – whom we particularly admire. There were far too many to choose from, so expect an equally lengthy follow-up in December, 2000.

The Andrews Sisters Christmas (MCA Special Products, 20415)
Reviewed by David Torresen (Washington, DC)

"There is something uniquely potent about the many Christmas classics that Bing and the Andrews Sisters recorded together," wrote annotator Joseph F. Laredo in 1996. "The performances are simultaneously timeless and richly nostalgic, as welcome when they resurface as the return of an old friend, and as invariably comforting as the warming glow of a Yule log."

Welcome, friendly, and comforting are certainly apt adjectives to describe The Andrew Sisters Christmas, which compiles ten of the 16 Christmas tunes the hugely popular sister act recorded for Decca, with and without Bing Crosby, between 1943 and 1950. The word "exuberant" should also be added to the mix, since these fast-paced, good-humored, cleverly-arranged recordings, most conducted by Vic Schoen, brim with a startling energy.

The ever-affable Crosby joins Patty, Maxene and LaVerne on five tracks: Here Comes Santa Claus, The Twelve Days of Christmas, Jingle Bells, The Toys Gave a Party for Poppa Santa Claus, and Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. Danny Kaye joins in on a frenetic version of A Merry Christmas at Grandmother’s House (better known as "Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go…"), and on an infectious duet with Patty, All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth. The duo’s impeccable comic skill turns this tiresome novelty tune into something worth replaying several times.

The three Andrews-only tracks are equally enjoyable. Winter Wonderland, with its whistling intro, is everything this song should be – joyous and playful. I’d Like to Hitch a Ride with Santa Claus is a sweet Burke-Van Heusen tune in which the Sisters collectively portray a boy yearning to assist St. Nick on his annual voyage. Finally, there’s Angie, The Christmas Tree Angel, a justifiably obscure song by M. K. Jerome and Jack Scholl which, in spite of its kitschy lyric, somehow manages to warm the heart.

Each December, many grown-ups strive, usually in vain, to recapture the sense of innocence, glee, and infinite possibility that they associate with Christmas decades ago, pre-Nintendo, back when wrapping paper was still affordable, electric train-sets still spiraled around the tree, and the American Dream still seemed like a credible concept. It was the era of fruitcakes, caroling, handmade dollhouses, spectacular light displays in the front yard, glittery Advent calendars, It’s a Wonderful Life reruns, and television specials from Crosby and Como. This reviewer’s recipe for recapturing that seemingly golden time: Spend Christmas morning with some well-behaved tots who still believe in Santa Claus, and be sure to have The Andrews Sisters Christmas in the CD player.

Snowfall: The Tony Bennett Christmas Album (Columbia, 66459)
Reviewed by Ted Nesi (Attleboro, Massachusetts)

This delightful addition to Tony Bennett’s discography also makes a festive addition to any pop Christmas collection. Originally released in 1968, it alternates between lush ballads and bouncy swingers to good effect. The beautiful title song is given a dreamy arrangement and Bennett's vocal perfectly conjures up a snowy December day. Another highlight is the big band arrangement of My Favorite Things, a song not often given such treatment. Bennett's is one of many mid-1960s albums to embrace the Sound of Music tune as a Christmas carol. A lengthy medley later on also contains a haunting version of Where Is Love? from another stage hit, Oliver.

The orchestrations were crafted by British arranger-conductor Robert Farnon, who had previously worked with such luminaries as Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan. Farnon also penned the obscure but pleasant track Christmasland, which is greatly enhanced by Bennett's vocal. Bennett also shines in a jaunty swing arrangement of I Love the Winter Weather / I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm – one of four tracks recorded in London. The crooner fares less well, however, on his merely routine interpretations of two classics associated with other artists, Bing Crosby's White Christmas and Judy Garland's Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Columbia's 1994 CD reissue of the album includes a bonus track, I'll Be Home for Christmas, from a live performance on MTV's The Jon Stewart Show. It is a testament to his amazingly preserved chops that the vocal quality on this recording fits perfectly with the rest of the album. A must-have.

A Christmas Collection (A&M, 31454 0603 2)
Reviewed by Ted Naron (Chicago)

Karen Carpenter was the Great American Songbook singer who wasn’t. On most Carpenters albums, her material, with some exceptions – I Can Dream, Can’t I?; When I Fall in Love; Little Girl Blue – was, while superior, of the 1970s and not the Golden Age. There is, however, a treasury of Karen Carpenter assaying the Great American Songbook, and it is to be found on the Christmas LP the Carpenters released in 1978, Christmas Portrait.

That record, along with the follow-up An Old Fashioned Christmas issued a year after Carpenter’s 1983 death just short of her 33rd birthday, are contained on this 2-CD set. They prove her death was more than privately tragic. She had the talent, the affinity for the material, and the wide contemporary appeal to have kept the Great American Songbook flame burning into our present time and beyond. But we do have this.

Richard Carpenter here surrounds his sister with orchestral and choral-group arrangements comparable to the glory days of MGM musicals, when Conrad Salinger and Hugh Martin worked in that studio’s music department. (Fascinating footnote: Some of the writing is adapted from the work of Spike Jones and Jud Conlon on Jones’ mostly-straight 1956 Xmas Spectacular on Verve.) The material demonstrates how Christmas brought out the best in our songwriters. Fourteen songs on this set are Great American Songbook entries, several of them uncommon (e.g. The First Snowfall, Sleep Well Little Children, Little Altar Boy), along with some contemporary songs (the Carpenters’ hit Merry Christmas Darling) and others of a traditional nature. Various instrumental medleys feature Richard at the piano. As for the vocals, the spotlight is Karen’s. With her dark, melancholy alto, the way she subtly scoops up to her notes, the texture in her voice as it ever-so-softly cracks, and her empathic understanding of lyrics, she fashions a style that feels less like a style than the sound of a human heart breaking.

Take I’ll Be Home for Christmas. The song is a story with a killer twist of a last line, one that reveals the singer’s promises of returning home for Christmas are lies, mere fantasy – that the only way the singer is going anywhere, alas, is in her dreams. The pain in that line is nowhere to be found in most renditions. When Karen sings "if only in my dreams," the pain is more than palpable, it’s exquisite.

If it’s a truism that only one who knows despair can know joy, Carpenter proves it on the happier material. You can feel the winter air on her Sleigh Ride, you can smell the "chestnuts roasting on an open fire." She takes songs you thought you never needed to hear again and makes you hear the greatness in them.

An example of the care lavished on this work is that Carpenter sings the little known verses to the songs. Let me spit it out: This is the best Christmas album ever made. For those who have it, it wouldn’t be Christmas without it.

White Christmas (Concord, CCD-4719)
Songs from "White Christmas" and Other Yuletide Favorites (Columbia-Legacy, CK-65278)
Reviewed by Scott Fifield (Manchester, New Hampshire)

To assign Norman Rockwell's paintings a voice, one would be tempted to use Rosemary Clooney's – an original voice filled with wholesomeness, tradition, and class – a true slice of Americana. Rarely has Clooney sounded so filled with joy than on her Concord Jazz release, White Christmas. On more than one track, her smile is audible. It's as though the listener is welcomed into her Kentucky home for "hearth fires, home folks, and carols," as she sings in The Spirit Of Christmas.

Warmth. An hour spent listening to this CD will find a way to warm the coldest of hearts. Warmth is what exudes throughout each selection, as the listener is taken on a journey that begins and ends with love - love of family (Christmas Mem'ries), romantic love (Christmas Love Song), and love of life (Count Your Blessings).

This album features an orchestra conducted by Peter Matz with many arrangements by Clooney's longtime pianist-arranger John Oddo. The set opens with the Bob Wells-Mel Tormé perennial, The Christmas Song, which serves nicely as a welcome. Following this is a delightful version of Let It Snow, which includes special lyrics that serve as a nod to the singer's signature song, Come-on-a-My House.

The album's most personal reading would have to be her tender, sincere version of Count Your Blessings, a song that Clooney had success with earlier in her career. Irving Berlin's song serves as a gentle reminder to be thankful for life's blessings without ever sounding preachy. As a vocalist, she has come a long way from the days of her earliest successes. The album also features some rousing moments, namely Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, which finds Clooney dueting with Michael Feinstein.

Interspersed throughout this collection are short guest vocal spots by the Earl Brown Singers. This well-crafted mix of solo artist with small choral group only adds to the festive tone that is set from the first note and doesn't conclude until Don't Wait Till the Night Before Christmas, in which Clooney shares a candid moment with her brother, the author and former American Movie Classics spokesman Nick Clooney. It's the perfect close to this set, which above all else, is one filled with hope, peace, and love – in other words, all the best that the Christmas season has to offer.

Unlike White Christmas, which really does work as a "theme" album with graceful sequencing, Songs From "White Christmas" and Other Yuletide Favorites succeeds as an interesting mix of Christmas classics and lesser-known songs, some of which border on "novelty." But it’s not without it's enjoyable moments and features some pristine, youthful, and precise vocals. The album doesn't flow with the ease a good holiday album should. This is no doubt due to the fact that these songs were not intended as a "Rosemary Clooney Christmas Album," and are more a mishmash of sessions recorded over the course of Clooney's pop heyday at Columbia in the 1950s.

Found within this set are rarities, including two duets with Gene Autry of The Night Before Christmas Song and Look Out The Window, and a duet with her half-sister Gail on He'll Be Coming Down The Chimney sung to the tune of the folk song She'll Be Coming ‘Round The
Mountain. Most enjoyable are the two Irving Berlin songs, Snow and White Christmas, from the Paramount film of the same name, recorded with Percy Faith’s orchestra.

Clooney’s is a voice that lends itself readily to Christmas and the music of the season. Sentimental in the best sense of the word, she opens her home and her heart in both of these Christmas releases.

The Christmas Song (Capitol, 72435-21251-2-8)
Reviewed by Marcia Baggott (Washington, DC)

Mel Tormé tells us that on a sweltering summer day, "I saw a spiral pad on his [lyricist Bob Wells’] piano with four lines written in pencil. They started, ‘Chestnuts roasting... Jack Frost nipping... Yuletide carols... Folks dressed up like Eskimos.’ Bob didn’t think he was writing a song lyric. He said he thought if he could immerse himself in winter he could cool off. Forty minutes later that song was written. I wrote all the music and some of the lyrics, but it was Nat King Cole who made the song a classic."

One night in May of 1946, after Cole’s trio played its last set at the Trocadero in Hollywood, Tormé came up to the bandstand and told Cole that he had a new song that he wanted him to hear. Cole immediately fell in love with The Christmas Song, but felt it should be recorded with strings, which Capitol, at first, wouldn’t permit. Dick LaPalm, whose liner notes alone are worth the price of this essential Christmas album, suggests that Capitol might have been afraid that strings would be construed as too white by the rhythm and blues stations on which Cole received enormous airplay.

Cole did record the song with his trio (guitarist Oscar Moore and bassist Johnny Miller) on June 14, 1946, but after hearing it, he was further convinced that it needed strings, and was ultimately able to convince Capitol to let him re-record it, with four string players, a harpist and a drummer, later that same year. He recorded the song again in 1953, this time with Nelson Riddle conducting. The stereo version was recorded in 1961, four years before his untimely death, with conductor Ralph Carmichael. This is the rendition that Capitol regularly reissues.

For years, Cole resisted Capitol's efforts to persuade him to produce an entire album of Christmas songs, songs already covered by contemporaries such as Perry Como and Johnny Mathis. Finally, in 1960, he agreed to record the other 16 songs on this album, again with Carmichael conducting. They included such merry tunes as Deck the Halls and Caroling, Caroling alongside the sublime Silent Night, O Holy Night and Joy to the World, all sung with the elegant simplicity and sincerity that only Cole could bring to them. They have sustained us for almost 40 Christmases now – with the exception of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and Oh Come, All Ye Faithful, which had never been previously reissued.

The Christmas Song appears three times on the album. The second version, following Cole’s introduction crediting Tormé and Wells, is a duet with daughter Natalie’s voice seamlessly woven in with her father’s, which she recorded in 1998 with the London Symphony Orchestra. An unlisted bonus track at the end contains a third version of this Christmas classic.

The Voice of Christmas – The Complete Decca Christmas Songbook (MCA, MCAD2-11840)
Reviewed by David Weiner (San Francisco)

For once, a hyperbolic album title speaks the truth! Bing Crosby was the voice of Christmas for several generations and the creator of the greatest record of the greatest Christmas song of them all, Irving Berlin's White Christmas. Crosby's same-named Decca album has remained in print for over 50 years, first as a book of 78s, then an LP and currently a budget-priced CD (MCAD-31143). Originally just another song from Berlin's score for Crosby's Holiday Inn film (and not even the "plug song" – that was Be Careful, It's My Heart), the Christmas opus became a monster wartime hit and the biggest-selling record of Crosby’s career.

A valuable collection, this – gathering in one place 44 Yuletide-related recordings that Crosby made for the Decca label (all in monaural sound), from several 1935 Christmas hymns through a 1956 rendition of I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. There are four versions apiece of White Christmas and Silent Night, along with a varied selection of hymns and holiday pop tunes, both familiar and forgotten. Songs from the films Holiday Inn and White Christmas, plus occasional duets with the Andrews Sisters, Peggy Lee, Carole Richards and the Crosby Sons add diversity to the mostly-chronological presentation.

Some highlights: the mournful wartime song I'll Be Home for Christmas; a jaunty It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas; Little Jack Frost, Get Lost, smoothly duetted with Peggy Lee; Silver Bells, another duet, this one with Carol Richards; and all the jivey pairings with the Andrews Sisters, especially Mele Kalikimaka, one of the few Hawaiian Christmas songs around!

Though some selections are new to CD, many of these recordings have been shuffled around and resequenced on a succession of Decca-MCA LPs and CDs through the years. Now you can throw 'em all out! This set is nicely remastered, for the most part. The 16 earliest tracks are transferred from disc sources, some in varying degrees of decay. Once we hit 1949 and the tape era, the sound is bright and clear for the remaining 28 selections. Later holiday collections by Crosby on Warner Brothers, Capitol and Reprise may boast better sound and stereo, but add nothing new for the casual Bingophile.

A couple of trivia bits – one Decca-owned recording is missing from this set: a ragged 1940 rendition of Jingle Bells by Crosby, Connee Boswell and Bob Crosby that was intended as a gift for Decca employees. It's available on CD – Bing Crosby Sings Christmas Songs (MCA MCAD-5765). Also unfortunately missing is a delightful breakdown take of Jingle Bells with the Andrews Sisters – Crosby screws up the lyrics repeatedly as the Andrews gals crack up laughing. His first Yuletide record predates these Decca sides; he sang on a Christmas Melodies disc with Paul Whiteman's Orchestra back in 1928. And his last? A 1977 Little Drummer Boy duet with David Bowie, recorded a month before "The Groaner's" death.

Personal Christmas Collection (Sony-Legacy, CK-64153)
Reviewed by Ben Glenn II (Washington, DC)

When I was growing up, my father ran the family business, a Buick car dealership. Needless to say, I couldn’t have been less interested in the newest automotive inventions of the day – Naugahyde seats, catalytic converters, and power windows. After all, I was too busy listening to my parents’ record collection. The best part about being a Buick dealer family was the annual premium from Firestone Tires: a free Christmas album featuring Columbia Records’ top recording artists. These great albums were like mini television variety shows, with the likes of Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis, the New Christy Minstrels, Robert Goulet, and the Percy Faith Orchestra careening through the many moods of Christmas.

There was always a track featuring Doris Day, and invariably hers was my favorite. Years later, I discovered that these songs were taken from The Doris Day Christmas Album (1964), arguably the star atop the tree of Columbia Records’ holiday recordings. Just as, by 1964, Day found herself making opulently-produced Ross Hunter films for Universal (Pillow Talk, The Thrill of It All!, Midnight Lace) with lavish sets, gowns by Jean Louis and jewels courtesy of Laykin et Cie, The Doris Day Christmas Album finds the beloved star ensconced in lush arrangements as soft and warm as a mink coat from Bergdorf Goodman.

Contrary to the image that many people have of Day, The Doris Day Christmas Album resists being overly sentimental. Instead, the mood is deeply intimate, and the album is at once comforting and romantic. This makes sense, given that Day has the uncanny dual ability to sound like your mother or your girlfriend, depending on your mood. Perhaps the best example is Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!, in which she nearly whispers the title in your ear, as a mother would to a young child; however, a drowsy cocktail-lounge piano trill shifts the scene to that of two snowbound lovers cuddling fireside. Similarly, the lullaby that is Toyland also doubles as a dewy love sonnet sung by the glow of candlelight and tinsel.

For me, rediscovering this album each year at Christmas is akin to pulling that favorite old ornament out of the attic trunks at decorating time. With its glistening arrangements and Day’s velvety voice snug and assuring, listening to The Doris Day Christmas Album is the next best thing to falling asleep in your footy pajamas beneath the tree on Christmas Eve.

The complete 1964 album, as well as five tracks recorded much earlier in Day’s Columbia career (1946-1950), can be found on Legacy’s Doris Day: Personal Christmas Collection.

Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas (Verve, 827150-2)
Ella Fitzgerald’s Christmas (Capitol, CDP-7-94452-2)
Have Yourself a Jazzy Little Christmas (Verve, 840501-2)
Reviewed by Kevin Ganster (Alexandria, Virginia)

If joy could make a sound, it would be Ella Fitzgerald’s voice. The happiness she found in singing was apparent and infectious. Her vocal instrument, personality, and sunny disposition were especially well-suited to the joyous carols of Christmas.

It’s fortunate, then, that Fitzgerald recorded two yuletide albums, a collection of secular Christmas favorites for Verve in 1960 and a set of traditional religious songs for Capitol in 1967. Both are recommended, the former wholeheartedly and without reservation, the latter less so.

You just know you’re in for a treat when a Fitzgerald album has "swinging" in its title, as Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas proves convincingly. While she never scats, she injects a welcome dose of mild improvisation into the old classics. On Jingle Bells, Fitzgerald frequently doubles up on "jingle," sounding remarkably like a bell herself. She caps off the rollicking rendition with "I’m just crazy about horses!" Santa Claus Is Coming To Town is laced with clever and humorous asides, including "look at that crazy red suit," "ride, Red, ride," and the coda "it’s in the bag," meaning both that the gifts are in Santa’s bag and the song is over. Other outright winners include Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, and the raucous, swinging, outrageous Good Morning Blues – Ella at her sassiest.

Fitzgerald also does exceedingly well on the platter’s only ballad, What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve? She is perfectly convincing as a forlorn, lonely wallflower without a date on New Year’s Eve. (Catch a double dollop of the patented Fitzgerald "yodel" at the end on the words "new" and "year’s"). The other numbers are enjoyable if not spectacular. The arrangements by Frank Devol are inventive, swinging, and pleasant. This album is a must buy for Fitzgerald fans, or any lovers of Christmas music.

Capitol’s cleverly-titled Ella Fitzgerald’s Christmas is a mixed bag. All too often, the First Lady of Song is anything but, relegated to just another voice in Ralph Carmichael’s overactive, overwrought choir. When Fitzgerald is left alone to caress the reverent tunes with minimal accompaniment – as she is on the lullaby Sleep, My Little Jesus and It Came Upon a Midnight Clear – she is sublime. On other numbers, such as Hark, the Herald Angel Sings and Joy To the World, she can barely be heard. The remaining songs fall somewhere in between, knocking on the door of excellence, but never crossing the threshold.

Finally, I must mention the single The Secret of Christmas on the compilation album Have Yourself a Jazzy Little Christmas. This is, perhaps, Fitzgerald at her most tender, intimate, and emotional. Her moving reading of a simple song about what really counts at Christmas starts with minimal accompaniment. In fact, one can hear the brush of Fitzgerald’s tongue in her mouth, and the sound of her lips meeting one another as she caresses each word. She begins by listing what the holidays are not about – presents, cards, parties, etc. The accompaniment slowly builds in strength up to the climax where she finally reveals "the secret of Christmas" (it’s the "Christmas" things we do every day). Throughout, we feel that she is just now learning this terribly painful lesson, and it’s somewhat heart-wrenching.

On the whole, Fitzgerald offers something for everyone on Christmas – traditionalists, jazz fiends, and ballad lovers alike. Her voice is the greatest gift of all. So have an Ella Fitzgerald Christmas – it’s sure to be a swinging one!

Merry from Lena (Razor and Tie, RE-2087-2)
Reviewed by David Weiner (San Francisco)

On first hearing this album a few years ago, I thought it might better have been titled, "Pissed-Off From Lena." Replayings have softened that impression a bit. Until recent years, the majestic Lena Horne has not been a deeply emotional singer. She often radiated a stylized, distant, hands-off attitude, which would seem out of place in a collection of sentimental holiday songs. Icy and chilly may be suitable winter descriptives, but not as applied to the Christmas songbook. Maybe that's why this short, 11-track album made for United Artists in 1966 has been Horne’s sole excursion into the Yuletide tune basket.

After a jaunty, rather brittle opener, Jingle Bells, The Christmas Song catches Lena at her ballady best. She is almost kittenish in Winter Wonderland, for example. The album is programmed rather unimaginatively, with the expected songs there (though they're all good ones): Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, White Christmas, The Little Drummer Boy, Let It Snow!, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, etc. Jack Parnell's orchestral backings are serviceable, if not particularly distinctive.

Silent Night is one of the few tracks where Horne seems to lower her guard and sing with deeper feeling. More often, she brings her best coolly detached manner to the fore, as on What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?, where she gives off the attitude that she's got plenty of other options to choose from, buddy.

All in all, a worthwhile addition to the Songbird holiday CD collection, with a bit of warning, as Horne does occasionally sound as if she'd like to bite her initials onto Santa's neck.

Christmas at the Stables (Audio-B, ABCD5011)
Reviewed by Gordon Sapsed (Southampton, England)

The Dankworths – Dame Cleo Laine and husband John Dankworth – have, for more than ten years, presented Christmas shows in the Stables, a 150-seat performance venue at their English home in Milton Keynes.

Christmas 1999 will see the last such event there as a new, multimillion-pound auditorium is under construction, funded by a Lottery Grant and charitable donations. This CD is not a "live" album, but was compiled from studio sessions during 1998 and 1999, with no audience present. It is a high-quality production, featuring Laine’s usual U.K. accompanying group and guest musicians. The four different arrangers creatively use the available flute, vibraphone and a single violin as well as Dankworth’s woodwinds and the rhythm section with added percussion.

There is a lavish 16-page insert booklet, including the words of every song. It might seem that lyric-listing would be unnecessary for "Christmas" material, and Laine’s as-ever faultless diction. However, this is not a cynical "Let’s knock off an album for Christmas" project. It is likely to be an enduring collection, appealing to a wide audience. The word "jazz" does not appear anywhere, although there are some excellent jazz solos, especially from pianist John Horler. Some selections are a long way from jazz.

The content does have those chestnuts roasting, those sleigh-bells ring, and Irving Berlin and Jule Styne are there, but much of this material is either new or unlikely to be on other Christmas albums. The Thad Jones-Alec Wilder "A Child is Born" is beautifully reworked, as is William Shakespeare’s "Winter." There are also lesser-known or new songs by Carroll Coates, Caryl Brahms and Duncan Lamont, among others.

Altogether a refreshing Christmas album, immaculately put together. Released only on November 14^th, this album may be hard to find outside the UK this year, although the record label’s website (www.audio-b.demon.co.uk) can help.

Just in Time for Christmas (Midder Music, MMCD004)
Reviewed by Stefano Nuzzo (Florence, Italy)

The late Nancy LaMott, one of the most gifted treasures of American cabaret, has left a small amount of albums that prove the range of her interpretive gifts. Just in Time for Christmas is no exception. There are traditional songs like the ones contained in the medley I Saw Three Ships / Bring a Torch, Jeannette Isabella, with its madrigal-like flavor, or in What Child Is This? / I Wonder as I Wander, sung with a hushed concentration that is almost a prelude to the following song, the beautiful A Child Is Born. Then there are numbers like Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, sung a cappella with a quintet of male voices backing LaMott who perfectly conveys the enthusiasm and childish joy that come from anticipating all the gifts one is going to receive for Christmas. Just notice the song’s finale, where LaMott cannot hide the smile – almost a laugh – in her voice when she proceeds to belt her final "..Santa Claus is coming to town!"

LaMott has chosen several contemporary songs which, in her hands, really seem destined to become future Christms carols, such as Earth and Sky and All Those Christmas Cliches. I’ll Be Home for Christmas is given a near definitive version: the simple, unadorned performance by Lamott, with Chris Marlowe’s piano, is going to move many listeners with its melancholic mood of longing for a distant home. Her warm and empathic soul is mirrored by that wonderful voice of hers, which is just like a candle on the top of a Christmas tree. It’s bright and glittering, capable of bright flashes of virtuosity, with its purity on the high notes, the variety of colors and remarkable reserve of power. Yet there’s also an apparent vulnerability in that great instrument; just like the candle’s flame, sometimes the vibrato flickers and the purity of the tone becomes misty...all that, coupled with her sensitive reading of any song’s lyrics, makes each interpretation an event of great emotional value. After listening to her Christmas CD one is left with the bittersweet longing for that voice’s flame, which was blown out much too soon.

Peggy Lee

Christmas Carousel (Capitol, CDP 7 94450 2); also available as Christmas (Disky, CH 877292, Holland) and The Christmas Album (EMI, 97537, England)
Reviewed by Ivan Santiago (New York City)

The walks in a winter wonderland, the snowman, the frosty little noses, the Yuletide carols, even the bit of cheese for the mouse: They all come into play on Peggy Lee's alternately cozy and buoyant, ultimately heartwarming Christmas Carousel. Gorgeously sung and orchestrated, the album glows with holiday fervor and enthusiasm.

The ever-quirky singer traces the gestation of this essential holiday album back to the various bouts of fever that she suffered in the mid-1950s. During one, composer Victor Young brought a bedridden Lee themes by Haydn and Schumann, and suggested that she compose Christmas lyrics for them. So did she, turning Haydn's theme into The Christmas List, Schumann's into The Tree, both included on her 1960 Carousel album.

Ably abetted by Billy May's playful arrangements and by a game children's choir, Lee toys with the roles of sweet mother, big sister, and loving teacher as she admonishes to be nice (not naughty), proclaims that "Big Fat Santa’s on his way" (on Santa Claus Is Coming to Town) or goes out with the boys and girls for a sleigh ride (on an adaptation of Jingle Bells called I Like a Sleigh Ride").

Complementing such effervescent readings are Lee's interpretations of holiday staples such as Berlin's White Christmas and Tormé's The Christmas Song. She sings them in a suitably dreamy and misty-eyed mode, thereby evoking visions of quiet evenings by the hearth, in contemplation of the snow falling through window panes. Also in for solemn, gentle readings are compositions favored by the singer, such as The Christmas Waltz, by Styne and Cahn, and The Star Carol, by Alfred Burt, a prolific writer of contemporary carols.

Peggy Lee's supreme mastery of shade and characterization becomes particularly noticeable on her The Christmas List, which includes an extended question-and-answer dialogue with the choir's children. She delivers each one of her answers in a different, yet always sublimely tender tone. This and all other renditions on her Christmas Carousel are filled with the holiday spirit of a most cordial, sensual and humorous artist. Peggy Lee's is indeed the warmest of Christmas Fevers.

The three CD versions of Christmas Carousel incorporate all other holiday items from Lee's Capitol song catalog but one: three very upbeat songs originally added to a 1965 LP reissue; a bewitchingly bluesy 1949 single conducted by her then husband Dave Barbour (Willard Robison's beautiful The Christmas Spell); and a goofy 1960 public service spot done with the Chipmunks for the Marine Reserve’s "Toy for Tots" campaign. Omitted is the reverse of the 1949 side, Song at Midnight, a blue New Year’s Eve lament available on the 1992 CD compilation Let It Snow: Cuddly Christmas Classics from Capitol.

A Winter Romance (Capitol, CDP 593115); also available from England (EMI, 7243 4968 28 2)
Reviewed by Ivan Santiago (New York City)

In the beginning, there was Bing Crosby. And He said: "I relax, therefore I am." Many a crooner in His own relaxed mold did he beget. But it wasn't long before the Patriarch's old dictum was perverted by his offspring. Said the ruddiest of the rebels: "I am lax, therefore I am Dean Martin. Let the revelry begin."

Dean Martin's off-color persona colored most everything he sang, including his 1959 holiday release A Winter Romance. Often nicknamed Dino, Martin presented himself as a carefree crooner who, in the lingo favored onstage by him and his singing buddies, cared only for "booze and broads." Accordingly, this album's now classic cover features Dino ogling and being ogled by a blonde beauty, as he snuggles another one. (It is not the only one of his covers with an ogling motif.) Superior readings of I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm and It Won't Cool Off also smack of unquenchable sexual appetites.

Martin's sometimes slurred phrasing gives songs such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer mischievous connotations. As Dino and a male chorus sing about this "poor Rudy," of the conspicuously shiny-red nose, a humorous thought may cross the listener's mind: Rudy must actually be one of Dino's bottle buddies. On a goofy Baby, It's Cold Outside, he exchanges lines with two women singing in unison; could he be trying to seduce twins?

Less notably, the album also features romantic and solemn readings. In songs such as White Christmas and Canadian Sunset, Martin is ostensibly at his most well-behaved, Crosbian crooner mood. This blend of chaste balladry with lewd swinging suggests a battle between the carnal and the spiritual. The battle finishes differently in the albums' various issues. The CD version ends with a bonus track recorded in 1953, the melancholy Blue Christmas, in which an unlucky Martin sees no use in stopping to do Christmas shopping, for there's no one on his Christmas list. On the original LP version, Dino ends up an eternally lucky fellow instead, for he aptly closes by singing It Won't Cool Off ("The flame that we kindled / Hasn't dwindled at all / And keeps yearning and yearning"...). As a homogenous musical experience, this listener prefers the earlier and happier ending of A Winter Romance, and suspect that other fans of Dino's Rat Pack persona will, too, particularly the male fans.

Man, play Dino's album as soon as you and your honey-bunch return from the weather outside (frightful) to the fire inside (delightful). Get yourselves some corn for popping. Turn the lights down low. Off with the overcoat, off with the gloves. Off with all clothes, and on to some naughty frolic. Exhausted and excited from chasing one another around the house? Weather the rest of the storm with more of Martin’s crooning, the perfect pretext for some munching and hugging and grabbing.

Christmas Song Book (JVC, JMID-2002-2)
Reviewed by Donald M. Martin (Ann Arbor, Michigan)

Helen Merrill's Christmas Song Book is an adult Christmas recording in the true sense of the word. In this survey of holiday cheer, Merrill presents a holiday filled with reflection and wisdom; there is no childlike glee here, but instead a very celebratory manner of cool, calm, collected – relaxing by the fireplace with a snifter of a fine cognac, looking back on holidays past with satisfaction and just a tinge of longing. Merrill is a very internal, subdued interpreter of song and her style is an unusual treat when applied to holiday cheer. There is a mature wisdom at play in this repertoire, and the fleeting glimpses of mischief and humor create perfect hues to the moods and colors of this album. There are many familiar holiday favorites chosen here, running the gamut from Oh Christmas Tree (which features snippets of the original German O Tannenbaum) to the English traditional Coventry Carol to the Irving Berlin perennial White Christmas to the unusual selections of Eden Ahbez' Nature Boy to Frank Loesser's If I Were a Bell which is surprisingly right-on-the-money for a Christmas songbook.

Merrill honors the spiritual side of the holiday season with many typical choices – Silent Night, Away in a Manger – as well as celebrating the nativity side with A Child Is Born and going on to celebrate the wintery side of the holiday with Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! And Snowfall. There is also the perennial Christmas Song ("Chestnuts roasting…") featuring a cameo vocal from the composer himself, Mel Tormé. One new addition to the holiday music canon is Christmas Lullaby penned by Merrill's husband Torrie Zito and her son Alan Merrill. Merrill is simultaneously matronly, voluptuous, and festive in her unusual, subdued approach to celebrating the Christmas season.

Christmas Serenade in the Glenn Miller Style: Featuring the Original Glenn Miller Singers – Tex Beneke, Ray Eberle and The Modernaires with Paula Kelly (Sony Music Special Products, A-24076)
Reviewed by David Weiner (San Francisco)

Though saddled with an unwieldy title, this lovely album, first released in 1965, is a sentimental favorite, combining the familiar Glenn Miller sound (in stereo!) with the distinctive singing voices of the original band. Balladeer Ray Eberle and singer-saxophonist Tex Beneke were with the Miller band from beginning to end (1938 to 1942). The creamy-smooth Modernaires vocal group joined in early 1941 and also remained to the band's dissolution.

Paula Kelly, married even then to head Modernaire Hal Dickenson, was a five-month replacement in 1941 for regular gal singer Marion Hutton, out on pregnancy leave. Despite her short tenure, Paula has remained in the Miller pantheon, as she was lucky enough to sing on the band's biggest hit record, Chattanooga Choo-Choo, both on wax and in the band's first film, Sun Valley Serenade. She joined the Mods as their permanent full-time female voice around 1945.

Beneke, Kelly and the Mods sound hardly different here than they did in the 1940s. Ray Eberle has a few wobbly vocal moments (worsened by what sound like loose dentures), but the Modernaires cushion him well on the gorgeous ballad arrangements of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and White Christmas.

A few tracks are slightly updated versions of original Miller charts (Jingle Bells and It Happened in Sun Valley, also from Sun Valley Serenade). The rest are holiday faves arranged by Alan Copeland (one of the Mods) a la Miller, plus a few newer, more unfamiliar items: Merry Christmas, Baby, And the Bells Rang and We Wish You the Merriest."

For those who would like to try the original band in a Yuletide mood, there are Christmas 1941 Miller broadcasts available on Jazz Hour CDs along with a 1943 Christmas program by the Glenn Miller Army Force Band. The latter includes a beautiful holiday medley sung by young Johnny Desmond. Additional stereo "Miller" Christmas CDs are out there (on Laserlight), but these are the real goods.

Christmas with Patti Page (Polygram-Mercury, 314-528-373-2)
Christmas with Patti Page (Sony Special Products, A-14080)
Reviewed by Donald M. Martin (Ann Arbor, Michigan)

Patti Page brings the children along on her Christmas recordings, and she shares their festive spirit on every track. Page's Christmas recordings for Mercury were originally issued as four singles back in 1951 and also a 10-inch LP about the same time, then expanded for a 12-inch LP issue a few years later; the CD version adds one further track yet to comprise what appears to be her complete Mercury Christmas output. These sides capture a jovial, mischievous Patti Page full of verve and wit and teeming with enthusiasm; not one track here borders on the somber and its a perfect disc for bopping around the house to while preparing a holiday dinner or wrapping presents.

Interestingly, Page being so known for multi-tracking her vocals to sing harmony with herself is used sparingly and to dynamic effect over these recordings; instead of doubling her lead vocals as she so often did on her hits, here she is her own accompanying quartet and harmony vocalist – it lends a simplicity to the arrangements that can be deceiving as these songs stick with you well after the disc has finished. Her Columbia effort from approximately 15 years later is also excellent and showcases a much mellowed, relaxed "Aunt Patti." The tracks here are brief and allow more room for the accompanying children to display their own vocal charms, but Page comes through the entire proceedings as someone who loves the holidays, loves children, and is thoroughly charming and engrossing as she guides us through the festivities.

Christmas Songs by Sinatra (Columbia Legacy, CK66413)
A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra, (Capitol, 72435-21381-2-8)
The Sinatra Christmas Album, (Reprise, 9 45743-2)
Reviewed by Ted Naron (Chicago)

All Frank Sinatra fans, while striving for ecumenism, have one Sinatra they favor over the others. Either it’s the skinny bow-tied kid who smoothly crooned the sox off the bobby soxers of the 1940s; or the Sinatra of the 1950s, who brought the American popular song to new heights of expressiveness; or the Sinatra of the ring-a-ding 1960s, the self-described "18-carat manic depressive" who took both the swaggering and the melancholy in his persona to Technicolor extremes.

Well, God must love Sinatra fans, because He’s given us Christmas albums from all three eras. No matter which FS you love the most, there’s a Christmas album with not just Sinatra’s but your name on it.

From the 1940s, his Columbia years, we have Christmas Songs by Sinatra. Sony-Legacy has put together a nice package, combining music from 78s, alternate takes, radio broadcasts, and V-disc recordings (pressed for distribution to the Armed Services during World War II.) The sound restoration is mostly very good – Sinatra sounds warm, clear and present on most tracks. The material is familiar, leaning a little more to the traditional/religious and less to the secular, but that might be just your cup of nog. Only Christmas Dreaming, a song by Irving (Unforgettable) Gordon, is uncommon, and not bad if not exactly unforgettable. Archival materials in the form of rare cuts and graphics are present thanks to the participation of Sinatra collector, fan and general amanuensis Chuck Granata.

A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra hails from 1957 and the middle of the Sinatra’s great Capitol years. Working with Sinatra for the second time (the first was a few months earlier on the Where Are You album), arranger Gordon Jenkins surrounds FS with comforting strings and vocal choir. Jenkins could write too "prettily" – busily filling his charts with chromatic filigrees and faux-Tschaikovsky colors – but here, he’s quite restrained. Sinatra is at his peak. The voice has the control it had when young, with the added texture of a life more lived and the acting chops to turn his experience into emotional journeys for the listener. The ordering of the songs is a product of the LP era. The first six are secular pop (all but Jingle Bells would qualify as Great American Songbook), the second six religious – obviously a division between "side one" and "side two" on the vinyl. The conviction-without-piousness that Sinatra and Jenkins bring to the religious side makes it superior even to side one, and that’s saying something.

Last we come to The Sinatra Christmas Album on Reprise – a compilation that never existed in LP form of holiday-themed tracks from the 1960s and 1970s. It’s the most controversial recommendation of the three albums, and therefore, naturally, my favorite. Because along with some excruciana like a "Twelve Days of Christmas" that Sinatra sings with his three offspring, the album contains one song that is so good it ranks with the best recordings Sinatra ever made. That would be Jimmy Webb’s Whatever Happened to Christmas. Recorded on July 24, 1968, the track, little known, stands as a landmark in Sinatra’s work. Filled with bewilderment and rage, it finds the 52-year-old Sinatra looking about him at a world that’s changed beyond his recognition. It is a song of tragedy both personal and epic – for surely the world of 1968 was a world turned upside down from the one Americans had known, and nothing put the change in more poignant relief than Christmas. Along with this standout track, Sinatra’s 1963 version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and his 1968 version of The Christmas Waltz are marvelous; his duet with Bing Crosby on We Wish You the Merriest, backed by Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, is infectiously jaunty; and there are other joys as well.

Just reissued, on Artanis (the new label owned by Nancy, Tina and Frank Sinatra Jr.), is The Sinatra Family Wish You a Merry Christmas, originally a Reprise LP and the source of some of Sinatra Christmas Album material. As the only tracks featuring Frank Sr. already appear on the Reprise compilation, it is an interesting purchase but far from an essential one.

Happy Holidays: I Love the Winter Weather (Corinthian, COR-114CD)
Reviewed by Bill Reed (Los Angeles)

Jazz tenor sax giant Lester Young once remarked that if ever formed his own big band, the "boy" singer he’d want would be Frank Sinatra, and for the "girl," he’d try and secure Frankie’s old Tommy Dorsey band-mate, Jo Stafford. In fact, Young once rather shocked an questioner with the following revelation:

Interviewer: …Jo Stafford?
Young: There you are! Yeah, I’ll go there.
Interviewer [incredulous]: Jo Stafford is your favorite singer?
Young: Yeah. And Lady Day. And I’m through.
Interviewer: But Jo Stafford doesn’t sing jazz, does she?
Young: No, but I hear her voice and the sound and the way she puts her songs on.

Small wonder, then, that even the most timeworn Christmas numbers on this newly-released collection, like Sleigh Ride and Winter Wonderland, swing like sixty. In the 1950s much of the repertoire here must’ve felt like a breath of fresh air blowing away overexposed musical fare of the day, like White Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth. Now, a number of the songs contained herein have been, 40 years after the fact, similarly "done to death." No problem, though. Paul Weston’s arrangements are uncommonly fresh and jazzy for a Christmas album from that era. And the addition of the vocal quartet, The Starlighters, lends a distinctly Pied Piper-ish air to a number of the tracks.

Contained between the overture and finale versions of the song Happy Holiday is a diverse selection of music associated with the Christmas season. There’s Silent Night, along with a couple of other more traditional Christmas selections, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, and I Wonder as I Wander. Mostly, however, it’s the secular seasonal repertoire that’s stressed on the two original Columbia albums, Ski Trails and Happy Holidays, that comprise this collection. In fact, as the title implies, Trails hasn’t to do with Feliz Navidad at all, and everything to do with icicles, singing telegraph cables, ski lifts, sleigh rides and other such snowy stuff. Happy Holidays also contains its share of snuggling by the fireside ditties, along with an equal mixture of Yule songs such as Toyland and March of the Toys. "By way of explanation," Stafford informs in the liner notes, "the small voice you hear on ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas and Silent Night is my son Tim getting into the act at the age of three. He's still ‘getting into the act;’ he grew up and produced this compilation."

Mercifully free of tubby bass and screechy highs, with just a touch of tasteful separation added to the original mono tracks, thanks to engineer Roger Nichols’ remastering wizardry, Happy Holidays: I Love the Winter Weather sounds studio fresh. Under Weston’s helm, the CD’s packaging reflects the musical artistry contained therein; fifteen rare photos, including two in color. Also, the set is meticulously annotated down to the last cellist. Both factors (plus the generous number of tracks) represent a vast improvement over previous Corinthian releases.

A Christmas Album (Sony-Columbia, CK-9557)
Reviewed by Donald M. Martin (Ann Arbor, Michigan)

Certainly Barbra Streisand is not the first renowned Jewish singer to take on Christmas music; however, Streisand's A Christmas Album is a glorious work no matter what faith it stems from or is directed to. Her careful selection of repertoire to perfectly suit her stunning voice is flawless. Over the course of this album, Streisand touches on all points of her persona while at the same time journeying through the many facets of Christmas music.

Interestingly enough, there is not one song on here directly addressing Jesus Christ; instead, songs that are usually associated with him focus instead on the purity of the setting to which his tale begins. O Little Town of Bethlehem, I Wonder as I Wander, The Best Gift on most Christmas albums call Christ immediately to mind; here, instead, they celebrate the glory of the birth of faith and renewal of spirit. Retitling Silent Night as Sleep in Heavenly Peace, Streisand redirects the focus of the lyric to focus on a "peace On earth" message. In contrast, her Jingle Bells? Is treated to a very unusual 6/8 time signature and displays Streisand's comic genius over the course of its one minute, 53 seconds. Irving Berlin's White Christmas receives a sumptuous treatment, full of longing for winters past and tradition renewed. My Favorite Things exhibits Streisand's phenomenal gift for improvisation as each new item in this laundry list of a song is visualized fully in front of her. Overall, this is an album whose repertoire showcases the beauty of Streisand's singing voice; many of her early-career excesses are reined in, and instead she luxuriates in the beauty of the songs and their sentiments. Which, of course, is what the holidays are all about, regardless of one's religious faith.

Christmas Songs (Telarc, CD-83315)
Reviewed by Ivan Santiago (New York City)

The Three Wise Men of Christmas music? Why, of course, Bing Crosby, Nat "King" Cole, and… Mel Tormé. Surprised by the third choice? Don’t be. Both the "King" and the "Bing" received seasonal advise from the Velvet-voiced one. The third Wise Man may well be the wisest.

Both the earliest extant example of Tormé's singing, (Abraham, from a 1942 radio broadcast), and his very first recording (White Christmas, Jewel Records, 1944) are Yuletide tunes which originated in one of the greatest of seasonal film classics, Holiday Inn (1942), where they were sung by Crosby. In 1945, Tormé also co-wrote and gave to Cole the song with which the "King" will be forever associated, and that has been recorded over 500 times (according to the more modest estimates): The Christmas Song.

In 1975, Tormé again wrote a seasonal song (Christmas Is Made for Children) and gave it this time to a pleased Crosby, who unfortunately passed away before he fulfilled his intention of recording it. In 1999, Tormé himself passed away, but not before presenting us with his bounteous Christmas Songs (1992). They all are here: the tune meant for Crosby, the tune immortalized by Cole, and various songs from Holiday Inn (Let's Start the New Year Right, Happy Holiday, White Christmas), along with 16 other offerings, some of them within medleys.

Even better: a delightful Glow Worm comes with a different set of lyrics by ever-charming Johnny Mercer (also additional stanzas by Tormé), White Christmas includes the seldom-heard verse, and The Christmas Waltz has material newly written by Sammy Cahn, as a present to Tormé. One minor complaint: The Christmas Song does not feature the verse, which Tormé had used on his version for Columbia (available on the CD That's All). He had premiered this verse in a 1963 TV duet with Judy Garland (available on Laserlight's The Judy Garland Christmas Album, along with a medley sung by Garland, Tormé, and others).

That Holiday Feeling (Verve, 843 956-2)
Reviewed by Ivan Santiago (New York City)

You, your beloved one, and the very mellow Joe: That Holiday Feeling is the perfect aural companion for that intimate Christmas Eve you may be planning this year. The late Joe Williams' ever suave voice and the gentlest of musical backings will conspire to have the two of you cozying up on a white night of stars, mistletoe and, yes, even rainbows.

"Hope you have a very merry Christmas" are the first words sung by the famously urbane gentleman in this, his one and only holiday offering. (There is only one additional yuletide song, a 1992 live performance of Christmas Blues, with the rhythm section of the Count Basie Orchestra, on Telarc's collection Santa's Bag.) The hope expressed on that initial line (from a heartfelt rendition of Christmas Rainbows) proves well-founded. Leave it to Williams and company to make Christmas merry and smooth.

Arranged by Norman Simmons and by Williams himself, Feeling is impeccably sung, played, and programmed. The singer barely ever raises his voice above his regular, conversational volume. The horn section (including Clark Terry and Al Grey) plays softly or, on tunes such as Winter Wonderland, at a moderate, still gentle tempo. The disc's swingers are wisely interspersed in the eleven-track collection. Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow and the other lightly swinging compositions add to a cozy atmosphere that suggests conjugal comfort and mutual contemplation of pleasant things past. Even the cute and cheery Kissing by the Mistletoe ("Kiss, kiss / Tingle, tingle") keeps its vaguely tropical vibe and its guitars at a low decibel. On three beautifully simple, no-frills vocal-and-piano renditions (Silent Night, What Are You Doing New Year's Eve? and Silver Bells), Williams is accompanied by the great pianist Ellis Larkins.

The album's penultimate selection (The Christmas Song) prominently features Bobby Watson's alto sax. His instrument plays rather lush and lusty notes which are otherwise unheard throughout That Holiday Feeling. Could these notes contain subliminal messages to the listening couples, insinuations that this is the perfect moment to make love? Judge for yourself – and in good company. A Child Is Born, sweetly sung, closes the album. The song ends as the singer chants the title line thrice, as if trying to work a procreation charm on some of the couples that might have heeded the previous, subliminal message.

The enchanting Joe Williams died earlier this year, but his charm lives on with That Holiday Feeling and many of his other albums. As the closing lines of Christmas Rainbows so simply and aptly express, "Hope you have a merry Christmas / Know you wish us all a merry Christmas too."