Christmas And A Half 2012-Part 2

First off, a big Thank You to all the nice folks who've already downloaded part 1 of my little Christmas And A Half treat, and a double big thank you to those who have commented.  It's always nice to hear from the people I'm doing this for, especially since I've been posting so infrequently since Christmas.  Good to know that somebody out there is still paying attention.  So, what have I got for you today?  Hopefully, more of the same great stuff you got yesterday.  Let's take a peek...

21. Ave Maria (Schubert, Op. 52, No. 6) (Text From "Lady Of The Lake")-Charles Kullman (Tenor) With Orchestra.  This may not be the best track in this collection, but I gotta share it anyway.  The more, the merrier, right?  No date on this one, I'm afraid.

22. Good King Wenceslas-Nelson Eddy With Orchestra Conducted By Robert Armbruster.  I don't find too many versions of this story of the good King Wenceslas, so this one is a treat.  I couldn't find a date for this one, but I must not have been looking in the right place.  Columbia Masterworks is too mainstream of a label not to have an extensive discography out there somewhere.

23. Ave Maria-Elizabeth Wheeler.  Sure enough, I've put the same song in here twice.  Only took me two days to screw that up.  Don't worry, I'll do it again soon enough, I'm sure.  There are only so many Christmas songs out there, so repeating them isn't hard to do.

24. Parade Of The Wooden Soldiers-Majestic Dance Orchestra.  I think this is one of those early orchestras that existed just for the purpose of recording product.  Not that it's not a good recording, but I can't imagine them going on nationwide tours or anything.  And when I say early, I mean 1922, that's early!

25. Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town-American Novelty Orchestra.  Same deal with this one, probably strictly a recording outfit.  I wish I knew more about the early days of recording, can anyone recommend a good book?  I know a little bit about acoustic versus electric, and how they used to record into multiple horns, making a dozen records at a time, playing the same music over and over to make large quantities of records, that's just crazy!  Oh, 1934 on this one, we're getting a little later...

26. Adeste Fideles (O, Come, All Ye Faithful)-Frances Langford With Eddie Dunstedter At The Organ.  Yep, that's right, blog favorite Eddie Dunstedter on the organ, years and years before his three great Christmas records.  I think this one hails from 1938.

27. Silent Night, Holy Night-Kate Smith, Orchestra Under Direction Of Jack Miller.  Yes, Kate smith had some Christmas music back in here early days.  She later recorded full Christmas albums for Tops and RCA, but this is from 1940, well before any of that.

28. When Winter Comes (Cuando Llega el Invierno)-Swing And Sway With Sammy Kaye-Vocal Refrain By Tommy Ryan.  I love finding songs I've never heard before, and I've discovered plenty of them from these old 78s.  This one wasn't something I was familiar with prior to putting the needle on the record.  Sammy Kaye recorded this way back in '41, and he kept making records up the early 70s, I believe.  Now that's a career anyone could be proud of.

29. White Christmas-Freddy Martin And His Orchestra-Vocal Refrain By Clyde Rogers.  One of the most popular of all Christmas songs, I think I've got more versions of this on 78 than any other song.  This came out just as America was marking it's first full year in WWII in 1942.  I can't imagine it was easy to get into the spirit of the season in those days...

30. When You Trim Your Christmas Tree-Les Brown And His Orchestra, Vocal Chorus By Jack Haskell.  Another great track that I was previously unfamiliar with, this time from post-war 1946.

31. Jingle Bells-Slam Stewart Quintet.  Of all the tracks I'm sharing this one had me the most excited and it was the hardest to get some music out of.  The first few times I tried it, all I got was noise.  I don't recall exactly what I finally did different to get some music out of that background noise, but hopefully you can make out something like early (1946) jazz in there now.

32. What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?-Kay Kyser And His Orchestra-Vocal Chorus By Harry Babbitt And The Campus Kids.  Ah, Kay Kyser.  I used to think that Harry Babbitt and Ish Kabibble were names I'd learned from an old cartoon or something.  I later found out that I'd had a copy of Three Little Fishies as a young child, and listened to it a lot.  So I have a soft spot for Kay Kyser and his merry band of misfits.  This is from 1947, a couple years before the beginning of the vinyl era.

33. The Skaters Waltz-Continental Musette Orchestra.  No idea who these guys were, and if it weren't from 1948, I'd assume it was another effort by those recording-only bands of the early years.  Perhaps it's an early budget label recording that's since been endlessly recycled?

34. Baby, It's Cold Outside-Dinah Shore And Buddy Clark, Orchestra Under The Direction Of Ted Dale.  I'm pretty sure I've shared this out before during Christmas in July, both in it's full version and an edited version that removes the sound effects intro.  But here it is from it's original 78 recording from 1949.  I recently picked up a CD of some of Buddy Clark's big hits and really enjoyed it.   I guess I should have paid more attention when Buster tried to tell me what a good singer he was.

35. Christmas In Heaven-Bill Cook.  Oh why oh why does Firefox keep locking up on me?  I must be doing too many things at once...  Let's see, Bill Cook.  No idea who he was.  This record dates to 1950, that's about all I know about it.  Hmmm, every time I try to get to Google, the browser locks up.  So I can't look anything up...

36. Jingle Bells Boogie-Johnny Bond.  Oh, yeah, now we're talking!  A little bit hillbilly, but it rocks.  Does that make it rockabilly?  Not quite, but it's good stuff.  I could live on this stuff come Christmastime, no problem.  This is from 1950, so I wonder if it exists on nice-sounding vinyl somewhere, or perhaps a nice master tape in a vault?  Hmmmm...

37. The Sleigh-Mitch Miller And His Orchestra & Chorus.  Good ol' Mitch.  He's much maligned today, but he was a visionary in his day.  This track is also from 1950, and I don't think it showed up on any of his Christmas releases.  I like it, and it's something I've never heard before.

38. The Merry Christmas Polka-Frankie Yankovic And His Yanks.  Another Christmas polka!  Yeah!  How can you go wrong?  This one is from 1951, so it's firmly in the vinyl era, but I've got it on shellac and you're getting it from said shellac!

39. Christmas In America-Hal Hopper And The Voices Of The Valley.  From 1952, that's about all I can tell you about this one.  Anybody got any info?

40. Santa's Coming-Carmel Quinn With Jimmy Carroll's Orchestra And Children's Chorus.  Carmel Quinn is from the stable of artists that made Arthur Godfrey such a hit back in his day.  And there are a few more Christmas records from that stable somewhere around here.  I'll have to look and see what I can share.  This one is from 1954.

Look at me, I'm getting smarter.  I exported the playlist out of iTunes so I didn't have to retype everything.  Now if I can streamline the process so I don't have to do all sorts of extraneous formatting...  Of course, that just means I type more and longer pithy comments for you to ignore as you download the free music.  Live and learn.  Oh, you're probably looking for the download link.  Here ya go, enjoy!

MediaFire

(If you missed part one somehow, try here. )