Not sure how much success they had, and the only song on here that has had much shelf life has been the adaptation of "The Night Before Christmas" by Johnny Marks, who produced several Christmas hits, starting with "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."
But it's a good record nonetheless. I enjoy pop tunes with a holiday theme that haven't been heard over and over, and this is a good collection of them. The artists include some of Coral's finest, including the Ames Brothers, Don Cornell, Eileen Barton and Johnny Desmond.
One reason why record companies like Christmas albums is that they can bring them back on a yearly basis to generate new sales. Coral did that with this record in 1953, just with a slight modification of the cover. You can see the results over at Ernie (Not Bert), one of the web's leading purveyors of Christmas music.
Note (December 2023): this record has now been remastered in ambient stereo and has complete scans.
7 comments:
So this was originally a promotional piece? Didn't know that! Thanks for sharing the back story of this great record.
Hi Ernie,
I think I mislead you. This was not a promotional record in the sense that it was given away. Not sure if there was a special price on it or not. My copy says $3.00 on the back in pencil, but that price may have been a later addition.
I see. They probably just took the date off of it the following year so people wouldn't think it was last years product. $3 seems like a pretty high price, though. I want to say that stereo RCA 12" were $3.95 a couple years later, or maybe it was $4.95, either way, three bucks for a 10" 5 years earlier seems high.
$3 then equates to about $24 now. Records were not inexpensive.
Can you reupload this? I'd love to hear it.
Please re-up.
Thanks again in advance.
Thank You!
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