Holiday Hits
Here are a couple of slightly different sleeves from the Holiday Hits series by the Hit Records label that I was just praising. In addition to covering current hits with no-name musicians, they apparently put out a fair number of Christmas singles by these same musicians. And they all come out in these sleeves, proudly proclaiming their low $0.39 price. In fact, it was even worse that that. The flip side of one of these single still had a Kash & Karry price tag for only $0.34! I guess there's cheap, and then there's cheaper... (Both of these sleeves should be the same shade of old off-white. My scanner seems to have flaked out for some reason and I couldn't save it in Photoshop. Sorry about that...)
Just an observation . . . The musicians listed on that Holiday Hits webpage were far from being no-names. Those were the cream of the crop session musicians in Nashville. I count four names in the 1963 list that had major hits under their own names (Boots Randolph, Bill Justis, Bill Purcell, and Bobby Russell), and I assume you know who the Jordanaires are.
ReplyDeleteThe best session musicians played for both big and small releases, and can often be heard on budget label stuff, sometimes uncredited. Any sloppiness can usually be traced to the no doubt rushed sessions with few retakes.
One of the things that's always baffled me about the Caroleers' popularity is that Peter Pan was one of the few budget labels who seemed to have no interest in hiring decent session musicians.
Point taken. But the releases themselves didn't have names on them, or at least not real names. If I had gone to the store looking for a Christmas song by Bill Justis, I wouldn't have picked up and bought one of these.
ReplyDeleteI think the Caroleers were burned into many listeners heads at an early age, and thus they cant help but recall the music. I'm sure the ones who don't remember it fondly aren't going to seek out websites where they can talk about and download the tunes. I never had any of those records as a kiddie, and I'm not really a big fan of them.
Stay tuned this weekend for Jordanaires Christmas music!