Time of the Season
This year's holiday CDs alternately inspire joy, nausea and terror. Which would you prefer?
Legacy, the reissue arm of Columbia Records, checks in with a trio of considerably more traditional bestowals. Julie Andrews's imaginatively titled Christmas With Julie Andrews isn't from the singer's early years, when her stage-honed approach had its nimble moments; instead, it dates from 1982 and was clearly intended for middle-aged moms and dads, not their progeny. The orchestration is mighty thick on "In the Bleak Midwinter," "The Holy Boy," "Silent Night, Holy Night" and the obscure "Patapan," and Andrews sounds especially stiff and brittle throughout. Bring your shovel, because you'll have to dig out after this one. Nostalgia is more effectively served by 1959's Holiday Sing Along, credited to Mitch Miller and the Gang. Baby boomers will respond instantly to accordion-heavy tromps through "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town," "Must Be Santa" and "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" as delivered by a frighteningly boisterous male chorus. Sure, it's ridiculous, but in a good way -- and so is First Christmas Record for Children, an early-Sixties compilation highlighted by Jimmy Boyd's lisping "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," Gene Autrey's "He'll Be Coming Down the Chimney" and "The Littlest Snowman" as intoned by Captain Kangaroo -- the original, not the current clone. It's one for the time capsule.
Weirdest of all is the Sixties-vintage The Sinatra Family Wish You a Merry Christmas, on DCC Compact Classics. By any practical definition, most of this is dreadful, with the Tina and Nancy Sinatra duet "O Bambino (One Cold and Blessed Winter)," Frank Jr.'s "Some Children See Him" and "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town," in which Tina's singing calls to mind the Great Salt Flats, most deserving of abuse. Hell, even Frank Sr.'s showcases are pretty weak. But there's something about the album's unrelenting awfulness that's endearing. Badness has seldom sounded so hilarious.
Cool Yule
Jingle Bell Swing
KID STUFF
Growing up is hard enough as it is, parents, so please don't add to your children's burden with Cool Yule, by Mary-Kateand Ashley Olsen, who refuse to go away even though Growing Pains, the sitcom that initially foisted these blond twins upon us, was canceled years ago. Neither Mary-Kate nor Ashley can sing worth a lick, so the producers who contributed to this abomination at the behest of Dual Star Records and Kid Rhino continually come up with strategies to protect them; examples include a mostly spoken "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" and "White Christmas," during which one of the girls says to actual crooner Danny Donnelly, "Hey, Danny, why don't you sing one?" But the Olsens are still in the vicinity of microphones far too often, and on "The Twelve Days of Christmas," they make the Shaggs seem like Maria Callas by comparison. Thank goodness, then, for the TCM Music/Rhino release Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! & Horton Hears a Who!, which both grownups and tots should be able to enjoy. Horton isn't a Christmas tale, but it's an entertaining one that, like Grinch, is presented here in an expanded format, with plenty of dialogue plus separate music tracks. As an added bonus, the liner includes a Q&A with cartoon auteur Chuck Jones, who helped assemble both of the programs that spawned this package. It's one worth opening.
THEY CALL THIS JAZZ?
On occasion, musicians who play something approaching actual jazz get into the yule disc sweepstakes. But this year, the principal entrants, Warner Bros. signees Boney James (the man behind Boney's Funky Christmas) and Fourplay (the perpetrator of Snowbound), specialize in smooth jazz -- which is another way of saying they're closer to being pop instrumentalists than challenging improvisers. Boney's disc offers up a couple of faux-soul vocal tracks ("This Christmas," with Dee Harvey, and "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve," featuring Bobby Caldwell) and a stinking pile of musical sins, the most egregious of which is the sappifying of the Vince Guaraldi/Lee Mendelson favorite "Christmas Time Is Here." All of it is bad to the Boney. On Snowbound, Fourplay, led by veteran shlockmeister Bob James, doesn't do much better, all but destroying the Walter Becker/Donald Fagen song that gives the album its name, polluting Joni Mitchell's "River" and snoozing through "Away in a Manger." Turn instead to Jingle Bell Swing, a Legacy Records compilation that pits jazz artists who exhibit genuine artistry, such as Duke Ellington ("Jingle Bells," "Sugar Rum Cherry [Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy]") and Miles Davis ("Blue Xmas [To Whom It May Concern]"), against a potpourri of others from compatible genres, most notably Glenn Miller ("Snowfall"), Benny Goodman ("Winter Weather," with Peggy Lee), Tony Bennett ("Winter Wonderland") and Louis Prima ("What Will Santa Claus Say When He Finds Everybody Swinging?" and "Shake Hands With Santa Claus"). Smooth, it's not -- and that's good news.
FOR CHRIST'S SAKE
At no other time of the year do contemporary Christian performers have a simpler time slipping messages of faith into the secular world. Usually, though, these folks tend to forget that the Christmas season can be fun as well as holy -- so this year, be grateful that several of them saw fit to include the occasional dash of merriment. Michael W. Smith's Christmastime, on Reunion, is mainly a patience-tester dominated by painful gunk such as "Welcome to Our World," "Hope of Israel" and a "We Three Kings" in which the crowned ones most definitely aren't smoking on a rubber cigar. But at least he throws in "Kay Thompson's Jingle Bells"; although he sings it stiffly, the gesture is appreciated. There's a bit more balance on Point of Grace's A Christmas Story (Word/ Epic), with "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town" and "Jingle Bell Rock" partially offsetting icky run-throughs of "O Holy Night" and "Emmanuel, God With Us." However, the four Graces are such lousy harmonizers that they manage to make even "Sleigh Ride" a jaunt to be avoided. As for Amy Grant's A Christmas to Remember (Myrrh), it finds gospel's first crossover queen mating a bouncy "Christmas Can't Be Very Far Away," a fairly unfussy "Jingle Bell Rock" and "Mister Santa," a goofy reworking of the 1954 Chordettes hit "Mr. Sandman," with dreck such as "Christmas Lullabye" and the endless "Agnus Dei." I prefer Agnus Young. Or is that Angus?
