
Frankie Avalon’s Christmas Album
The period from 1955 to 1964 is a weird one in American music.

Seoul Wanderer – Christmas Carols
Christmas albums are, for the most part, one-offs, and one particular effect of this is that they rarely ever get truly tight.

Eraserheads – Fruitcake
Every Christmas album is, in a way, a concept album. But, conversely, we rarely see any of them that venture far beyond the connotations offered by Christmas itself.

Christmas With Arthur Godfrey and All The Little Godfreys
One of the most wonderful things about listening to the very earliest attempts at Christmas albums is to see a genre take form. Take radio personality Arthur Godfrey.

Heavy Christmas
There’s a fascinating parallel between how traditional Tin Pan Alley pop, on the one hand, and prog rock, on the other, is treated by mainstream music journalism.

Rotary Connection – Peace
You’d hardly expect a hip, critically lauded psychedelic rock band of the late sixties to release a Christmas album.

Elvis Presley – Elvis’ Christmas Album
Perhaps the most unique feature of the rock‘n’roll revolution in the mid-fifties is its cross-market singularity.

Noël aux Antilles avec Abel Zenon et son Combo
One of the unexpected sorrows of dealing with a music genre that, let’s face it, had its absolute heyday more than 50 years ago, is to frequently have to see its legendary cr

Christmas in Hong Kong with Kong Ling
It is the eternal fate of a vocal album, for better or for worse, that it will be judged mainly by the quality of its vocals.

Urbie Green and his All-Stars – A Cool Yuletide
The release is on a recently-launched budget label, whose lack of any clear direction meant that it would soon be wound up.