Welcome Christmas!

I have a problem. I'm addicted to Christmas music. All year long I haunt the thrift stores, looking for random bits of Christmas music.  But not the same old Bing Crosby Christmas album, mind you, I'm looking for the stuff that's fallen between the cracks of history, the things that no one remembers or that no one cares about any more.  Nothing thrills me more than finding some album or single or even a crusty old piece of shellac that I've never seen before, anything that has Christmas or Holiday or Snow or Santa or Reindeer in the title.  I pay the $0.99 and rush home with it to see what sort of treasure it might be.  Most of the time it's nothing special, but every once in a while, it's a piece of gold.  What I've learned over the years is that if it's a piece of gold, you can buy it from Amazon or iTunes or some other such place.  But even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while, and I find the occasional piece of tarnished silver, which I then polish up and share here at the blog during the holiday season.

Most of you have been here before (I've been doing this for years and years and years now) and you know the drill. I record all this music that I share from my own collection. I scan the images in myself, which is somewhat laborious, believe me, and then I share it with you.  During the period between Thanksgiving and New Year's, I'll share out dozens of records that most people have never heard of, things that you can't download anywhere, or buy on CD or vinyl at those rapidly disappearing places called 'Record Stores'.  These are things that for the most part time has forgotten.  There are good things and bad things, but they are all interesting in their own way.

By the time you read this, it should be just after lunch on Thanksgiving, and I'll be at my Aunt's house for the traditional Thanksgiving feast. Who knows when I'll be able to get back to a computer, so I'm queuing up a couple of posts that should give you a good introduction to what you should expect around here for the next month or so. If you see something you like, leave me a comment, tell your friends, spread the good word.  If you don't see anything you like, sorry.

The little cards you see here are from two of the later records in the Goodyear series, some things I had never seen before, and I suspect many of you have never seen them, either, which is why I'm putting them up here. They were stuck to the outside of the shrink wrap, which had never been removed, so they survived the nearly 40 year trip (1973 & 1974, I think) into the future for me to find.  Look close at one of the cards and you'll see that they mis-spelled CYCLE.  This was probably in the days where such things were hand-set on a printing press.  Poor intern working that day probably lost his job over that.  Anyhow, stay tuned, and the Christmas goodness will start popping up.  Hope you have a great Thanksgiving!