A Christmas Carol and Lyn Murray Singers

Columbia's two Christmas releases in 1942 were Basil Rathbone as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol and the Lyn Murray Singers in songs of the season. The label brought them together in 1948 for this early LP.

Rathbone as Scrooge

Rathbone was identified with the Dickens tale, and not just as Scrooge. He appeared in a televised version in 1954 as Marley's ghost, then returned to the central role for the 1956 TV musical, The Stingiest Man in Town. (I offered that album two years ago here.)

For its 1942 adaptation, Columbia advertised a "Hollywood cast," but it was mainly radio actors. Among the troupe were Arthur Q. Bryan (the voice of Elmer Fudd), Elliott Lewis (who has popped up on this blog a number of times, most notably in Manhattan Tower), Lurene Tuttle (a ubiquitous presence on radio and television), and silent film star Francis X. Bushman. The connecting music is by Leith Stevens, another semi-regular at this location.

The potted performance is an effective one, and the sound is alright. My pressing is a little worn. At one point it's hard to tell if it the ghost's chains or the groove's walls that are making the clunking noises in the background.

Lyn Murray

Don't neglect the other side of the record. It may look like a generic collection of carols, but it is very well done by the Lyn Murray Singers, a radio group of the time. Murray went on to become a Hollywood composer.

Columbia's ads for the set of carols (see below) quote composer-critic Deems Taylor as claiming that Murray's group rates with the "great English Singers". Most people these days wouldn't understand the comparison, and I doubt that most people then did either.

The English Singers were a pioneering early music group that also performed contemporary works. I have a 78 of the group in Christmas settings by Rutland Boughton and Peter Warlock that will soon be up on my other, long-neglected blog. I will say here that Lyn Murray's singers and the English Singers had little to do with one other, despite what Deems Taylor may have said. The repertoire was different, and Murray's group was much more secure technically than the Londoners.

The image below is the cover of the Christmas Carol's 78 set, presumably by Alex Steinweiss. You can see how the artwork was adapted for the LP cover above. The download also includes the inside of the 78 set and a different LP cover (these are not my scans).