Thursday, December 17, 2020

24-Christmas Dances

The days are starting to run together, so it must be getting really close to Christmas. I haven't looking at a calendar lately, but you can sorta just feel it.  I hope the Christmas music shared around these parts is filling you with the spirit of the season, and the music tonight will get your feet moving alongside your heart. It's a great selection of songs for Christmas dancing, from mambos to cha-chas, lots of waltzes, and a sprinkling of ballet classics.  This will get your toes tapping, and if you drink enough egg nog, your booty will be shaking, too! Consider this a second part of the Christmas polkas from a couple weeks ago, just with a little more variety. And it's all brought to you courtesy of the 78 collection over at The Internet Archive.  Enjoy! Oh, almost forgot, there are a couple of records in this share I was extra excited about, and I wanted to draw your attention to them, stuff I've never seen before and are really good. The first is a mambo version of Santa Baby with appropriately changed lyrics. That may be my favorite share all season. And coming in a close second is a version of Dance of the Flutes from The Nutcracker, here performed by the great Les Baxter. Again, something I don't think I've seen anywhere else, and I've always wished there was more Christmas music from Mr. Baxter. So it's all good, but those are my two faves in this batch!

MEGA

Update-5 Jan 2023-Added a tracklist for searchability. 

1. Les Baxter With His Chorus And Orchestra-Dance Of The Flutes-Based On Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite"
2. Xavier Cugat And His Orchestra-Danse Arabe (Arabian Dance) (Based On "The Nutcracker Suite")
3. Socarras And His Orchestra-I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm-Mambo Jazz
4. Will Bradley And His Boogie Woogie Boys-Jingle Bells Boogie Woogie
5. Pete Rugolo And His Orchestra-Jingle Bells Mambo
6. Frank Petty Trio-Mike Di Napoli, Piano-Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer--Mambo
7. Pepi Adorno And His Orchestra-Santa Baby Mambo
8. Cliffie Stone And His Orchestra-Vocal Duet By Judy And Sonny-The Christmas Waltz
9. Guy Lombardo And His Royal Canadians-Vocal Chorus By Kenny Gardner-The Merry Christmas Waltz
10. Mitch Miller And His Chorus And Orchestra-The Winter Waltz (Adapted From "The Skater's Waltz")
11. Russ Morgan And His Orchestra-Vocal Chorus By Russ Morgan And The Morganaires-The Winter Waltz
12. Lucho Gatica Con Don Roy Y Su Gran Orquesta-Vals De Navidad (Christmas Waltz)
13. The Bonnie Sisters With Orchestra-I Saw Mommy Cha Cha Cha With You Know Who?
14. Buddy Clark With The Girl Friends, Orchestra Under The Direction Of Ted Dale-Merry Christmas Waltz
15. Eddie Habat And His Polka Orchestra-Waltz Vocal By Bob And Millie Holt-Ting-A-Ling-A-Jingle - Waltz (Christmas Lullaby)
16. Bonnemere And His Piano-Winter Wonderland
17. RCA Victor Orchestra-Fred Fradkin, Conductor-Dance Of The Chinese Dolls (From "Christmas Tree Suite")


















7 comments:

  1. This is a wonderful collection with many rare items!

    By the way, I have found that ingesting eggnog and then shaking your booty induces nausea. Even if you leave out the booty-shaking part.

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  2. Is the booty shaking creating scrambled eggs in your tummy? And the non-booty shaking makes an omelette with whatever you ate previously? Now I'm getting nauseous...

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  3. A "Jingle Bells Boogie Woogie" by Will Bradley can only be described as inevitable. Can't wait to hear it! And don't you just love stickers on 78 labels?

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  4. The stickers can be annoying, but I've seen some really good ones that I actually liked. It's better if they're smaller, and applied to an otherwise empty section of the label, but so it goes... Now don't get me started on price stickers at thrift stores! I've seen them plastered on faces, titles, right in the middle of liner notes and other bad places. And they use an adhesive that won't peel off without taking some 75 year old paper with it. :(

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  5. I'm enjoying all of these 78s immensely. And I entirely understand the joys of digging in the archive.org 78s bin. So much great stuff to be found and messed around with. Your cleanups sound terrific; mine, not so much yet. What are your tools if you don't mind my asking?

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  6. Thanks for the comment, Jeff. Most of the heavy lifting is done by the fine folks at George Blood Archive and their excellent record cleaning and transfers. I take the FLAC file, run it through Click Repair to knock down the clicks and some of the shellac crackle, then a little noise reduction and editing in Audacity. Occasionally on a really old recording, I'll use a low pass filter to allow some more sound to shine through the noise, but I think that strips out too much of the actual recording, so I try not to do that too often. I use a lot of the presets in the software, and should probably spend more time tweaking each individual recording, but then I'd never get anywhere. :)

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  7. Ernie - thanks for the tips. I need to spend some quality time fiddling and fussing a little with my files to find my happy medium, but I agree with you about high pass filters, and about George Blood and associates' work! As an film/video archivist by profession that firm's high reputation for quality is well-deserved.

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