A Long Time, Part 1
1. I'll Be Home For Christmas
2. The Christmas Song
3. Babes In Toyland
4. The Little Drummer Boy
5. White Christmas
6. The First Noel
7. The Twelve Days Of Christmas
8. O Holy Night
9. It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
10. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
11. Joy To The World
12. Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies
13. Good King Wenceslas
14. Away In A Manger
15. Medley-We Wish You A Merry Christmas; I Saw Three Ships; Christmas Is Coming
16. Silent Night
17. Medley-Deck The Halls With Boughs Of Holly; Jingle Bells
18. Ave Maria
19. We Three Kings Of Orient Are
20. Oh! Come All Ye Faithful
2. The Christmas Song
3. Babes In Toyland
4. The Little Drummer Boy
5. White Christmas
6. The First Noel
7. The Twelve Days Of Christmas
8. O Holy Night
9. It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
10. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
11. Joy To The World
12. Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairies
13. Good King Wenceslas
14. Away In A Manger
15. Medley-We Wish You A Merry Christmas; I Saw Three Ships; Christmas Is Coming
16. Silent Night
17. Medley-Deck The Halls With Boughs Of Holly; Jingle Bells
18. Ave Maria
19. We Three Kings Of Orient Are
20. Oh! Come All Ye Faithful
These Longines releases always have confused me because I can't tell who is playing or - as you mentioned - whether the material appears on other albums.
ReplyDeleteAre you implying there was no Longines Symphonette Orchestra? I saw those guys on tour back in '72, man, they were awesome! ;)
DeleteThere was a Longines Symphonette of sorts. At least there was a radio show for many years with that name. The records are a spinoff of that.
DeleteThis 2-LP set is a duplicate of Shell Vol. 1. (Or maybe vice versa.)
ReplyDeleteAll three of the Longines/Shell 2-LP sets supposedly reshuffled tracks from the original Longines Xmas offering, the 1964 4-LP box set called "Christmas At The Fireside" (Longines LWS 151/152/153/154).
Discogs says the Shell sets were released 1970-71-72, but other info suggests 1966-67-68. We will probably never know for sure, unless some Longines or Shell employees come forward with inside info!
I wonder if I have that 4xLP set somewhere. That would have been much easier than recording all these different records. They sure got a lot of mileage out of those recordings if all the stuff I'm sharing today is reissues.
DeleteTalk about reissues. Look no further then the 101 Strings and their various aliases.
DeleteBut, I love them reissues and all.
Sure, if you don't mind buying the same music a few times over. :(
DeleteWhat I try to do is the following.
Delete1. If I can make up my own version of one of their releases, with tracks I already have, I do so. I put the tracks all in order, add artwork, change dates, album details etc.
- I want to be as complete in the Somerset and Alshire releases as possible. This goes for their non-101 Strings and aliases too.
2. If they release an mp3 album, I check the songs on the release. I then weight the songs on a release against what songs I already have. If the cost of buying tracks I do not have is the same or more than the actural cost of buying the album, I buy the album. If higher, I usually buy just the songs.
- However, some songs have a different length, so I buy them.
It is a mixed bag.
But their catalogs are my guilty pleasure.
Buying music should be a fun thing, not an exercise in bookkeeping. :(
DeleteThanks for these, Ernie. What a great after-Christmas surprise. It's going to be a good day.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's a lot of records, but there's also a lot of overlap. Good music though, maybe you won't mind hearing some of the songs over and over and over again. :)
DeleteHi Ernie,
ReplyDeleteIf you offered me my choice of Christmas albums, and one was from the Longines group, that would be my choice. Whether it was recorded in the USA, the UK, or somewhere else, to me they rate highly compared to some of the others.
Although. the Columbia, RCA, and Time Life compilation releases of the recording stars are great too.
Did you have any of these as a young'un? I find that a lot of people love the records they had when they were growing up, irrespective of how good or bad it is to other folks. I've got a few records that I rate highly, but only because I remember having it as a child.
DeleteNo Ernie, I grew up with maybe 12 albums my parents had. One RCA and one Columbia Christmas album they bought from a store. One Christmas one featuring Perry Como from an ABC Christmas special that was bought from Radio Shack. Two soundtracks, The 7th Dawn, and a compilation that featured the Yellow Rolls-royce on it. Plus 7 Tijuana Brass albums?
DeleteWe played them on my eldest elder sister's record player she left them when she got married. It was o l d.
I only listened to music I could borrow from our Public Library.
I fell in love with the 101 Strings Orchestra about 10 years ago or so. So, any music group or organization like them, I love.
There is also probably a good chance that some or all of this material is included on the 24-CD Symphonette Society Christmas Collections that Flashback Records put out in 1997.
ReplyDeleteThat might be too much even for me...
DeleteI tried to search for these CDs. I found 2 of them. They said they were only 10 tracks per CD I think. More money for them, more money you spend, and more waste of material to release them.
DeleteJust think, They could have probably released everything in a 10 CD set instead.
A leopard can't change it's spots. Why release a handful of CDs when you can sell an armload, and with 60 year old music!
Deletehahaa...a leopard. The main company that released those 24 CDs, is Rhino.
DeleteRhino has really gone downhill over the years. They used to put out some amazing music and incredible compilations. Then a major bought them and here they are releasing stuff like this.
Delete