Twas the Night Before Christmas/Christmas Time

Twas the Night Before Christmas/Christmas Time

If there was ever a pair of Christmas albums crying for the twofer treatment, it would be these two 1955 Decca-label albums from Fred Waring and his band, The Pennsylvanians. Waring doesnâ€™t get his due these days, but the man was one of 20th century pop musicâ€™s foremost innovators; as Virginia Morley Waring wrote in her biography of her husband, "Fred Waring was the first to have a singing band, the first to use megaphones, to feature vocalists with an orchestra, to combine an orchestra with a glee club, to originate the show choir concept, to make a full length musical talking picture, and the first to present weekly musical spectaculars on television.â€ Top it off with the fact that he launched the careers of Robert Shaw and Harry Simeoneâ€”and still found time to invent the Waring blender!â€”and itâ€™s no exaggeration to say that Fred Waring introduced the sound of a choir to pop music. That sound propelled many a pop hit, over 50 of â€˜em, in fact, but his most enduring recordings just might be the two Christmas albums he put out in 1955, â€˜Twas the Night Before Christmas and Christmas Time. Dubbed as â€œcompanion releases,â€ their repertoire had been polished and perfected by Waring and the Pennsylvanians for over a decade, as Waring had recorded Christmas music under both of those titles for the 78 rpm format in the early â€˜40s, then as a 10-inch 33 1/3rd releases before re-recording and adding new songs in the mid-â€˜50s for these two full-length 12â€ releases. As befitting its classic Norman Rockwell cover art, â€˜Twas the Night Before Christmas is the more spritely of the two, with some of the greatest renditions of â€œJingle Bells,â€ â€œRudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,â€ and â€œSanta Claus Is Cominâ€™ to Townâ€ on record, but Christmas Time is every bit as beguiling; together they make an irresistible pairing. In fact, the Christmas music website The Yule Log ranks them as the #5 and #6 greatest Christmas albums of all time, but neither of them has appeared on CD before; for this most momentous debut, weâ€™ve enlisted Tom Pickles to write detailed liner notes and Mike Milchner to remaster. A must-have for any Christmas music lover!
Country USA
Brand Real Gone Music
Manufacturer Real Gone Music
Binding Audio CD
ItemPartNumber 43160-89127
ReleaseDate 2017-11-03
UnitCount 1
UPCs 848064006435
EANs 0848064006435

Country	USA
Brand	Real Gone Music
Manufacturer	Real Gone Music
Binding	Audio CD
ItemPartNumber	43160-89127
ReleaseDate	2017-11-03
UnitCount	1
UPCs	848064006435
EANs	0848064006435