Good Christmas/holiday albums and songs of 2004

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I always pick up one Christmas album a year, sometimes more, and I've already got the winner for this year easy:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00065GHWE.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Absolutely essential. John pulls together twelve Christmas songs from varying backgrounds ranging from the inspired (Tiny Tim's "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," Big Dee Irwin and Little Eva's "I Wish You a Merry Christmas") to the insane (the maudlin grotesque of "Little Mary Christmas" by Roger Christian, Little Cindy's horrifying "Happy Birthday Jesus (A Child's Prayer)"). Hands down winner -- AKIM and the Teddy Vann Production Company's "Santa Claus is a Black Man." Add in liner notes from the man himself and while the disc is a short one (barely half an hour) and therefore rather expensive at new cost, it's worth seeking out.

Your nominations?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 2 December 2004 05:36 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.dust-digital.com/christmas.htm

― Matos W.K. (M Matos), Thursday, 2 December 2004 05:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Matos, thanks so much for that link! I've been longing for something like this for years. Sony has a nice retrospective with some tracks from the early part of the century, but these are the old-time/blues/gospel etc 78s I always hoped existed.

― max davenport (axehead), Thursday, 2 December 2004 06:19 (twenty-one years ago)

A handful of favorites of my own. None are new this year, and they won't appeal much to those who'd rather not hear the C-mas tried & true, but I'm a sucker for the chestnuts (and evidently for weak wordplay as well):

Norman & Nancy Blake, Vassar Clements, et al - Americana Christmas
Duke Ellington - Three Suites (featuring his take on the Nutcracker)
John Fahey - The New Possibility (disavowed by John in his apparently cranky dotage, but in some ways as stark as his final album, Red Cross)
Spike Jones - Let's Sing a Song of Christmas (lunacy tempered with straight-faced Christmas carol medleys, brevity the soul of levity)
Helen Merrill - Christmas Song Book (measured, graceful, melancholy)
Geoffrey Simon, conducting 24 cellos - A Cello Christmas (saw that album title coming, huh?)
Elisabeth Von Trapp - Christmas Song (yes, of the Von Trapps, a grandaughter I think, and yes, she does "Edelweiss," and yes, I got teary while listening in the kitchen while making dinner but I was chopping onions, dammit!)

― max davenport (axehead), Thursday, 2 December 2004 06:36 (twenty-one years ago)

Those inclined to a more Amerindie bent might want to try out the Silber Xmas comp, which they have up for free here:

http://www.silbermedia.com/comps/winterwishes/

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 2 December 2004 18:18 (twenty-one years ago)

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