Christmas In July 2009-Day The Third

Hooray, it's day 3 of my little Christmas in July celebration. Five more good Christmas tunes for you today, consisting of three variations on Jingle Bells, and a couple of folkies about the Virgin Mary.

Let's start with the Jingle Bells variations. The first version is just a straight recording, but it happens to be by Mr. Jack Daniel's Original Silver Coronet Band! Yep, this comes all the way from Lynchburg, Tennessee, to you from the album Hometown Almanac (Spring Branch Productions SB-2, 1977). This is a pretty good album, and I'll have another track from it for you later in the month. Version two is a polka, creatively entitled Jingle Bells-Polka, From Johnny Dyno and his LP Go Dyno Go-Johnny Dyno And His New Dynamic Sound (Jody Records LP 1801). If you like polka music, then you'll like this. If not, then maybe you should skip on ahead to the next song. And the next song is a bit of a ringer. It's Swingin' Them Jingle Bells by Fats Waller And His Rhythm from the compilation LP A Treasury Of Immortal Performances-"Fats" Waller Plays And Sings (RCA Victor LPT 1001, originally recorded November 29, 1936). I know this one is available plenty of places, but you won't mistake my scratchy copy for a CD version.

What are the two folk songs? The first is The Virgin Mary Had A Baby Boy, from the album Where Have All The Flowers Gone (Liberty LST-7316, 1963). The artist is The George Mitchell Choir, but it should come as no surprise to you that they are conducted by Robert DeCormier. DeCormier made a sort of cottage industry around this song, recording it quite a few times. It's still a good song, though, don't get me wrong. The other track is Mary Had A Baby from the various artists LP The Original Hootenanny-Volume 2 (Crestview (Elektra) CRV-807) as performed by Glenn Yarbrough & Marilyn Child. I know Glenn Yarbrough from The Limelighters, but I don't know who Marilyn Child is.

There you have it, five songs for day three, bringing the total so far to 34 tracks. That's a whole CDs worth already! Here's the download link, please be my guest.