Last Update 11/21/2002
This is the story of the Very Vinyl Christmas CD. You cannot purchase this CD for any price in any store. In fact, only six of the tracks are available for purchase on CD. I did not have time to write the linear notes before giving the CD's away, so here is a "tree friendly" web page with all the information. Only a few lucky individuals received copies of the CD, but I included detailed information on each of the tracks to help others track down the recordings. First, lets look at the tracks on the CD:
All tracks are from vinyl sources except * from mono CD and ** from stereo CD.
| # | Song Title | Time | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
1 |
SANTA AND THE SATALLITE PART 1 | 01:38 | Luniverse Records 107-1 A Buch |
2 |
SANTA AND THE SATALLITE PART 2 | 01:22 | Luniverse Records 107-1 A Buch |
3 |
MOMMY, WON'T YOU BUY A BABY BROTHER (OR SISTER FOR ME) | 03:27 | RCA Victor 47-3934-A Spike Jones and his City Slickers |
4 |
RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER | 03:28 | RCA Victor 47-3934-B Spike Jones and his City Slickers |
5 |
ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS MY TWO FRONT TEETH * | 03:09 | CD: Dr. Demento Presents the Greatest Novelty CD of All Time Rhino R2 75755, track 2 Spike Jones & His City Slickers |
6 |
FROSTY THE SNOWMAN | 02:28 | Peter Pan Records PP 1038 |
7 |
GOD REST YE MERRY GENTLEMEN | 01:32 | Peter Pan Records PP 1038 |
8 |
JOY TO THE WORLD | 01:00 | Peter Pan Records PP 1038 |
9 |
JINGLE BELLS * | 01:44 | CD: Dr. Demento Presents the Greatest Novelty CD of All Time Rhino R2 75755, track 3 The Singing Dogs |
10 |
SNOOPYS CHRISTMAS | 03:09 | Laurie Records LR-3416 The Royal Guardsmen |
11 |
IT KINDA LOOKS LIKE CHRISTMAS | 02:10 | Laurie Records LR-3416 The Royal Guardsmen |
12 |
I WANT A HIPPOPOTAMUS FOR CHRISTMAS * | 02:38 | CD: Dr. Demento Presents the Greatest Novelty CD of All Time Rhino R2 75755, track 5 Gayla Peevey |
13 |
I SAW MOMMY DO THE MAMBO (WITH YOU KNOW WHO) | 02:34 | Columbia RZSP 33255 J4*225 Jimmy Boyd with Mitch Miller & his Orch. (CD: Mambo Santa Mambo) |
14 |
SANTA CLAUS BLUES | 02:34 | Columbia RZSP 33255 J4*225 Jimmy Boyd with Mitch Miller & his Orch. |
15 |
WHITE CHRISTMAS | 02:53 | Peter Pan Records 45-X 8 A The Honeydreamers, Jack Russel, Soloist |
16 |
ADESTE FIDELES | 01:55 | Peter Pan Records 45-X 8 B The Caroleers |
17 |
TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS PART 1 | 01:29 | Spear Records 111A Choral Direction by Hugh E. Perette Narration by Merril Laub |
18 |
TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS PART 2 | 01:36 | Spear Records 111B Choral Direction by Hugh E. Perette Narration by Merril Laub |
19 |
RUDOLPH THE RED NOSED REINDEER | 01:35 | Golden Records R 68A Mike Stewart, The Sandpipers, Mitchell Miller and Orchestra |
20 |
THE REINDEER'S DANCE | 01:34 | Golden Records R 68B Mitchell Miller and Orchestra |
21 |
JINGLE BELLS - JOLLY OLD ST NICHOLAS | 01:35 | Spear Records 108A Choral Direction by Hugh E. Perette |
22 |
NOEL - COME ALL YE FAITHFUL | 01:45 | Spear Records 108B Choral Direction by Hugh E. Perette |
23 |
SILENT NIGHT | 01:28 | Spear Records 109A Choral Direction by Hugh E. Perette Soloist - June Winters |
24 |
WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS - DECK THE HALLS | 01:38 | Spear Records 109B Choral Direction by Hugh E. Perette |
25 |
OH HOLY NIGHT | 01:34 | Spear Records 110A Choral Direction by Hugh E. Perette Soloist - June Winters |
26 |
GOD REST YE MERRY GENTLEMEN - RING CHRISTMAS BELLS | 01:22 | Spear Records 110B Choral Direction by Hugh E. Perette |
27 |
SANTA CLAUS WORKSHOP | 02:40 | Velvet Tone 1276-V Yuletide Orchestra |
28 |
ON CHRISTMAS MORNING | 03:14 | Velvet Tone 1276-V Yuletide Orchestra |
29 |
THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS | 03:14 | Peter Pan Records 2233-A The Caroleers Narrated by Mort Lawrence |
30 |
MEDLEY | 03:04 | Peter Pan Records 2233-B The Caroleers |
31 |
WHAT CAN YOU GET A WOOKIEE FOR CHRISTMAS (WHEN HE ALREADY OWNS A COMB) ** | 03:24 | CD: Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album Rhino R2 72529, track 4 Meco |
32 |
SLEIGH RIDE ** | 03:36 | CD: Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album Rhino R2 72529, track 6 Meco |
When I was young, I liked to play Christmas records on my old record player. Most of these records were my parents from when they were young. Some were standard 45-RPM vinyl singles. Others were small yellow 78-RPM vinyl singles. As I grew older, I would go out and buy my own recordings. Over the years, I kept and protected these older recordings. This is a collection of all the surviving recording with the exception of three discs manufactured by the PictureTone company which are made out of two brittle plastic records which sandwich a piece of cardboard. The tone arm on the record player kept being bounced off the rough edges preventing proper playback. In addition to the older recordings, five tracks from audio compact discs were added to fill the time plus two 78-RPM records given to me by a friend.
The album begins with "Santa and the Satellite" parts one and two. This is an interesting recording featuring clips from late fifties songs, funny voices, and sound effects. On the radio, I have heard a different edit from this copy. Next we listen to three Spike Jones songs. The first two recordings cannot be located on CD anywhere. "Rudolph" is the most rare of the three including additional lyrics and verses sung first person. The next three tracks are from the same recording with the bouncy and fully orchestrated "Frosty" on the front side and on the back side vocal and organ. What is Christmas without "Jingle Bells" sung by dogs? With modern digital sampling, this song it trivial to produce. In 1956, it was accomplished with more painstaking methods (there is an untrue rumor of shocking dogs with electricity to make them bark). The Royal Guardsmen of Snoopy and the Red Baron fame recorded the next single with "Snoopy's Christmas" and a "B" side song. "Hippopotamus" speaks for itself! The next two Jimmy Boyd songs are possibly the rarest recordings on this whole album. "The Mambo" was a follow up to his "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" single. "The Mambo" and "Santa Claus Blues" were no where near as popular and probably not held by too many collectors. Since "White Christmas" and "Adeste Fideles" were released on the Peter Pan label, one must assume these two songs were aimed at children's markets, even though they have the feel of adult recordings. Up to this point, all the recordings bar three came from 45-RPM records. Now we move into the 78-RPM realm. The next ten tracks come from small 78-RPM recordings, which include "'Twas the Night before Christmas" and the "Reindeer Dance". "Santa Claus Workshop" and "On Christmas Morning" come from a full sized 78 -RPM record, contain no recognizable Christmas music, and sound like the music from early "Merry Melodies" cartoons. "The Night Before Christmas" and the flip side medley also come from a full sized 78 RPM record. The medley is presented by Santa Claus, which, with careful listening, one can deduce that Santa Claus is not a pagan but a Christian. The last two songs are the newest on this album and appeared on "Christmas in the Stars". With the theatrical re-release of the Star Wars trilogy a few years ago, this album saw a CD release. "Wookiee" is sung by a bunch of toy making droids while "Sleigh Ride" is sung by C-3P0 and R2-D2. I hope you enjoy this album as much as I enjoyed the individual recording both when I was younger and now.
How was this CD made? The answer might be more complicated that you would think. Tracks 1 - 4, 6 - 8, 10, 11, 13 - 16 were standard 45-RPM singles (the ones with the "big hole") which were played back on a stereophonic MCS Series 6725 Linear Tracking Belt Drive Turntable and digitized directly into a PC using a Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE64 sound card using the Creative Wave software as 44100 Hz, 16 bit, mono "WAV" files. Tracks 17 - 30 were 78-RPM records which were played back on my very own Emerson 124 "kiddie" record player with the modification of a pair of wires attached to the leads from the stylus and diverted into the stereo inputs of a Radio Shack Seven Band Stereo Frequency Equalizer to take out the 60 Hz hum and cut the high end and low end surface noise. These were then recorded onto computer using the same sound card and software as the 45-RPM recordings. Except for trimming excess seconds off the front and end of the tracks and one other exception, no other edits were made to the songs. You will notice that there are no skips heard on any of the recordings. In reality there was a skip on the "Jingle Bells - Jolly Old St. Nicholas" track. The first line sounded like, "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle - ay". The words "all the way" were completely skipped over. To correct the skip, the first phrase was copied from later in the song and replaced. I used Sound Recorder which is built into Windows to do the edit. Unlike analog editing, there are no pops at the edit point. This was my first digital audio edit and in the future I will attempt more. The five audio tracks were pulled off of their audio compact disks with Real Jukebox version 1.0.0.436 as 44100 Hz, 16 bit, stereo "WAV" files. The 32 tracks were then burned into a CD using Adaptec Easy CD Creator version 3.5a using an Acer CD ReWriter CRW6206A. The cover art was assembled using the same software.
The cover art for the CD were based on two photographs taken during the 1970 Christmas season at both of my grandparents houses. The front cover is from the basement of my paternal grandparent's house which was located on Lyric Lane in Jeffersontown, Kentucky, a suburb of Louisville. The record player in the picture was originally my father's when he was a boy. It's amplifier utilized vacuum tubes, which meant it had to warm up before producing sound through the speaker. The record player's innereds have long ceased to produce sound and were discarded years ago, but the emptied red and white case was kept and is still used to hold my sister's old dolls. Even though I was three years old in this picture, I can remember some details of that day. Of all the toys in the background, the only one I still have is the blue Match Box Car case. The back cover picture is of my maternal grandparents live tree taken at my grandmother's current residence. Like most trees in those years, C-7 1/2 ceramic bulbs were used as lights. The uncropped original picture contains my only cousin at that time and me sitting under the tree and was taken during daylight hours. This picture was blurred to make the track listing stand out better.
Want to hear a few of the tracks, try these links:
Filename |
Length |
Size (bytes) |
Format |
Actual Quality |
Comparative Quality |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SANTA CLAUS BLUES | Whole Song | 389,149 |
MP3 | 20 Kbps @ 11 kHz mono | Distorted Digital Transmission |
| SANTA CLAUS BLUES | Whole Song | 1,226,014 |
WAV | 64 Kbps @ 8 kHz mono | Less Than Telephone |
| SANTA CLAUS BLUES | Whole Song | 1,245,671 |
MP3 | 64 Kbps @ 44 kHz mono | Near CD |
You can purchase the two CD's "Dr. Demento Presents the Greatest Novelty CD of All Time" and "Christmas in the Stars: Star Wars Christmas Album" at local stores and online. Just today (12/21/1999) I found I could purchase some of the 45 RPM recordings at Roy's Record Store in Maryville, Tennessee. He had the Spike Jones "Rudolph the Red-NosedReindeer" and The Royal Guardsmen's "Snoopy's Christmas". These are re-issued recording purchased on the wholesale market and have probably never been played before. One online auction had many Jimmy Boyd recording for sale, mainly by people who run used record stores.
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This page was created and copyrighted © 1999 - 2002 by Christopher L. Augustus