We've got a happy doodle today, featuring Santa and three of his helpers. This one is from the kiddy LP The Pixie Helpers and Santa Claus-Sing Along With Santa's Helpers (Tops Hi-Fi L1700, 1959). I'm afraid I can't tell you anything at all about this LP or the doodle, but you can read a little bit about the label here. You'll just have to enjoy it for it's own sake.
Only two days left here for Christmas in July, so I've got to cram a pile of stuff into this remaining weekend. I found this rather squinty Santa Claus on the cover of Christmas In America Sing-Along (Richmond S 30104). He reminded me a lot of Mr. Magoo, but I don't know if there's any connection, really. The cover designer is listed as Burt Portnoy, but I don't think that necessarily means he was the artist. The record is one of those budget release things that lists no artist (other than Orchestra And Chorus) and has nothing on the backside but ads for other records. The music is just a chorus singing the same old Christmas songs with the same old arrangements you've heard time and time again. At least it has a great Santa Claus on the cover.
This may be the newest doodle I've posted to date. And it's a disco doodle! Can you believe it? This music is so generic, it doesn't even need to list an artist, it just says Christmas Disco Party on the front. I'm going to say the artist is Max Fagen, since he sings on all the vocal tracks, wrote or arranged all the songs and plays rhythm. The label is Classic Christmas, catalog number is CCR 1941, from 1979, just about time for the big disco backlash. And the music? You really don't want to know...
I meant to post some Classic Ernie pictures today, to give everyone a small break from the Christmas doodles, but I didn't get to it. So instead I present the tie I found today. Everybody remembers the Abominable Snow Monster from the animated Rudolph cartoons. Or is he from the one with the elf who wanted to be a dentist? They are all running together in my head. Which one had Yukon Cornelius? I've got to go do some research on this. In the meantime, enjoy the tie. I'll be back soon with our Christmas doodle of the day, and believe me, it's a real dilly of a pickle!
Today's rather elegant doodle belongs to Ella Fitzgerald's Christmas (Capitol ST 2805, 1967). I believe this was Ella's second christmas album, the first one was for Verve. She was a little bit older on this one, and perhaps she didn't swing quite as much as on the earlier one, but she's still the first lady of song, so you know it's gonna be good. At first I thought maybe this doodle was all one single line, but it's actually five or six single lines. Still, it's got a quiet elegance that's not found in most of the doodles I've posted. Hope you enjoy it!
As the month slowly begins to wind down, I'm worrying about finding enough good doodles to share with my audience. But every time I get worried, I find something else that really knocks me out. This isn't the biggest doodle yet, or the fanciest, but it's pretty and nice, and it just screams 50's to me. So here you go! This is from The Jimmy Joyce Singers With Orchestra Conducted By Billy May-A Christmas To Remember (Warner Brothers W 1237, 1958). The big name for me here is Billy May. I've been a huge fan of his ever since I heard his Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer Mambo, but I've only found a couple of other Christmas tracks of his. Well, four of the tracks on this LP are instrumentals, so all you get is the Billy May. And they are pretty good tracks, too. I've got another Jimmy Joyce Christmas LP here somewhere, where all the tracks are written by Alfred S. Burt, and it's really not very exciting. So that tells me it was Billy May who made this LP worth listening to. But all you care about today are the doodles, right?
Quick! Without looking, what record label is this doodle from? How many of you guessed Command? Well, OK, most of you probably have no clue, but this is a very recognizable style in my opinion. It's a little more dense than their earlier covers but it's all still there. Anyhow, this is from Ashley Miller-Christmas Carols With Organ And Chimes (Command COM-K1 SD, 1963). I believe this was a special release for E.J. Korvette, whoever they are. It was not part of the regular series of records put out by Enoch Light over at Command. The only other Christmas related relase that I am aware of from Command is Merry Christmas From The Command Family Of Recording Stars (Command RS 920 SD, 1967), a various artists collection which appears to have come out after Enoch had sold the label to ABC.
This doodle is from the front of the LP, so there! It seems to have some initials on it, but you can't see them on the scan above. I think they are CM, but they are sort of stylized, so I'm not sure.
We've got another color doodle for you today. This one is all in green, which was easy for them to print since the whole back cover, text and all, is green instead of black. The Color Of Money, you might say. (Well, not so much any more.) This sketch is from For A Musical Merry Christmas, Volume 4 (RCA Victor PRS-253, 1967), and it could be purchased from your local B.F. Goodrich dealer way back when. These gas station, tire, grocery or hardware store compilations were all the rage at one time, but today they are thrift store staples. Very few of them feature doodles, but this one is an exception. I think these sorts of compilations are still being made, but today they show up in places like Dillard's or Pottery Barn. I guess Ace Hardware still makes them, too, but nowadays they are all on CD.
Why, he clips, of course! OK, it's a lame pun, but it's a great set of pictures. This was my view of the lunar eclipse from October of last year. I shot from the first light of the moon right up through near-totality. I guess the moon never really goes all dark due to the refraction of light through the earth's atmosphere. But you can see it does get pretty dark. The progressive decrease in reflected light means I had to take longer and longer exposures, too. So if you were watching it, the moon would be much darker to the naked eye than it appears in some of these pictures. In fact, for that last shot (the copper colored one), you'd have had a tough time seeing the moon if you weren't looking for it.
I previously posted a picture from a solar eclipse, and I see I promised to post this picture. That was back in April, and now it's July. I'm nothing if not on the ball.
It's inevitable that every year you will hear The Chipmunks sing The Chipmunk Song before the Christmas season ends. So it's probably also inevitable that you would see them turn up here for our Christmas celebration. I figured the least I could do was try to change it up a little by offering you a doodle from their second Christmas LP, which is more of the same, only without The Chipmunk Song. From the back side of Christmas With The Chipmunks, Vol. 2 (Liberty LRP-3334, 1963), this doodle actually features Alvin, Simon and Theodore, as well as David Seville (aka Ross Bagdasarian). I hope there's a hula hoop in one of those packages for Alvin. And if you're tired of the same old version of The Chipmunk Song, try the version by Canned Heat With The Chipmunks on for size!
OK, I promised some Classic Ernie pictures to break up the doodle monotony, so here's a close-up for you of a Great Blue Heron. This big fellows stand over three feet tall, and only marginally tolerate people in their territory. If you get too close they fly off with a loud squawk. Unlike the sandhill cranes I showed you earlier, these guys will fly off rather than attack. The sandhill cranes will actually come at you on occasion. This shot above is from South Lido Beach on the same day as this sunrise I previously shared. The picture below (a page from my August 2004 wall calendar) was taken at the Anna Maria City Pier. This gives you a pretty good idea of how large these guys are.
The calendar page this week is a bed of ginger plants and the brightly colored seed cones. At least I think that's what they are, I've never been sure. These have grown for years at one end of my parent's house under what used to be my bedroom window.
Way back in the dim dark recesses of time before the compact disc was the platter of choice for music, there was the Compact 33. The Compact 33 was a sort of hybrid format that combined the speed (and small hole) of the big, full-length LPs records with the smaller size and shorter playing time of the 7" 45's. RCA had invented the 45 a few years earlier in hopes that it would outsell the LP format developed elsewhere. Those discs fared pretty well with the advent of the new 'rock and roll' music. This little promo record I found tries to hype the advantages of such an odd form factor, but the public was not fooled. RCA and others released quite a few EPs in this format, and even occasionally full LPs spread out over two of these records, but they never sold in great numbers. Collectors salivate over some of the tracks released by Elvis in this format, but most everybody else has never heard of these things. If you look close at the back of the sleeve shown below, it appears to have been sent to a Citgo station! I guess in those days, even the gas station sold records.
Even old Santa needs to take a breather every once in a while, and as this doodle plainly shows, Santa chooses to spend his free moments listening to the Hi-Fi. This doodle hails from George Melachrino And Orchestra-Christmas In High Fidelity (RCA Victor LPM-1045, 1957), and according to a price tag still on the LP, the record originally cost $2.88 from The Bike Kumler Company. What a bargain!
You read it right, this is doodle number fifty! To mark this milestone, we've got the biggest, most intricate doodle yet. This one took three different scans to piece together, and you really have to click the picture above to take you to the bigger picture to be able to appreciate everything that's going on in this dilly of a doodle. This doodle took up most of the backside of Jo Stafford With Paul Weston And His Music From Hollywood, The Norman Luboff Choir And The Starlighters-Ski Trails (Columbia CL 910, 1956). It's not purely a Christmas LP, but the tracks are either Christmas songs or at least winter-themed. And the doodle is tightly tied to the title since it shows you many of the popular ski resorts in the then-current 48 states. And they even threw in some water skiers for those of us in Florida who've never seen snow, much less mountains. If you look at this doodle long enough, you'll see wonderful little details like skiers with broken legs or a couple sunbathing with their skis as lounge chairs or cars stuck in the snow or even a jokester about to cut the tow rope on the water skiers. This is certainly a picture that rewards a detailed viewing. The signature on this sketch is Donald F. Moss, who appears to have been an artist employed by Sports Illustrated for many years. (It may not be the same fellow, but there's a good chance it is.) The main recording artist is Jo Stafford, all those other people comprise the orchestra, backup singers and chorus. Jo is actually married to Paul Weston, so his presence here is no surprise.
This ring-a-ding-doodle is from the back of Lawrence Welk And His Champagne Music-Jingle Bells (Coral CRL 757186, 1957). It's a pretty nice doodle, and it's not even a Capitol or RCA Victor LP! Everybody knows about Lawrence Welk, and his infamous TV show. When I was little, I can remember leaving the room when my grandparents would watch it on TV. I was more interested in watching the Dukes of Hazzard on a different channel. It seemed like they were watching a channel that broadcast straight out of the past.
Technical note-This is the first doodle that was so large I had to scan it in two sections and paste them together in Photoshop. Not too bad of a job, if I do say so myself. The King would be proud!
Today's doodle is hardly a doodle at all, but I figured it was appropriate somehow. Everyone has heard of Christmas Seals, although I think they are less well known now than to earlier generations of Americans. The picture above is from the back of a promotional LP called For Christmas Seals (Style D-1965, 1965), and this particular volume features Peter, Paul And Mary on one side, and Lorne Greene on the other. There was a small series of these LPs, and each featured an informational program from the artist in support of Christmas seals and their fight against tuberculosis. Unfortunately, my sleeve contained a radio transcription disc which I figured might be what it should contain, but I was wrong. The record contains two non-Christmas shows from WNYE. Snooze-ville. If anybody out there has this program, or any others in the series, please let me know... (OK, I cheated here a bit, since the picture below is from the front of the LP, but if I hadn't told you that, you'd never know.)
For the curious among you, some of the other artists listed on the back of this LP as having similar LPs are Eileen Farrell, Eddy Arnold, Barbra Streisand, The Wayfarers, Eydie Gorme, Steve Lawrence, Al Hirt, Andy Williams & Mitch Miller. They also list several compilations of celebrity spot announcements. Somebody out there has got to have copies of these...
Today's Christmas doodle is an angel that looks like an old woodcut. I hope that still counts as a doodle. This visitor from the ethereal plane is found on the back of Kurt von Baum Conducting The Homburg Symphony-Handel's Messiah (Premier Albums XM/S 1). This looks to be a cheapie release on a no-name label, but you never know where the next doodle might turn up. You have to turn over every stone, or in this case, every album, looking for that pot of gold.
For the second time since I sent my camera in for repairs, I see a rainbow. Not a piece of a rainbow, not a little slice of color in the spray from a garden hose, but a full blown, horizon-spanning, afternoon thunderstorm rainbow, with a hint of a double rainbow if you look closely to the left. This was at my parent's house, so Mom offers to let me use her camera, which is my old camera. It was like going back to a Brownie after you've gotten used to your Leica. Of course the batteries were dead, so I had to get that fixed first. Then I had to remember how to turn it on. Then I had the realization that it's a fixed lens, meaning no zoom. Anyhow, what you see is what I got. No adjustments, no nothing. Enjoy! (I won't tell you how bad this picture looks on Mom's old, dark monitor. I hope it looks better for you...)
