What's your favorite Christmas album/CD? Why?

Subject: RE: BS: What's your favorite Xmas album/CD? Why?
From: John P
Date: 24 Nov 00 - 10:56 AM

I can't say that this is my favorite Christmas album, but perhaps the weirdest I have heard is called "A Toolbox Christmas" by Woody Phillips. Instrumentation includes 2x4s, nails, circular saw, spray paint cans, ratchets, table saw, pipes, etc, etc., with occassional assists from mandoin or dulcimer. It is astonishingly musical.

My favorite album of early music for Christmas is "Christmas in Anglia" by the Ensemble for Early Music. My all time favorite is an album my wife and I recorded a few years ago. I guess it's not surprising that I like it -- we picked some of our favorite Christmas music and arranged it the way we wanted to hear it. It's encouraging to me that I still enjoy listening to it.

John

Subject: RE: BS: What's your favorite Xmas album/CD? Why?
From: Airto
Date: 24 Nov 00 - 11:41 AM

Loreena McKennet's Winter Garden is great, especially her version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.

The Voice Squad's version of The Wexford Carol is also fine.

Miles Davis - Blue Christmas.

Rocking Around the Christmas Tree

Best of all, because of personal associations, is Chuck Berry's Run Run Rudolf.

Subject: RE: BS: What's your favorite Xmas album/CD? Why?
From: greenfields
Date: 24 Nov 00 - 11:03 PM

My favorite right now (I started playing today--I have about 15 Christmas albums/CDs/whatevers...and if I don't start the day after Thanksgiving I don't get to hear enough of them in the season) is Jessye Norman's "Christmastide". The title song is beautiful, and I've never heard it anywhere else, and it has a lot of beautifully arranged good songs--"The Holly and the Ivy", Once in Royal David's City", O Come, O Come, Emmanual", "I saw three ships..." AND it is sung with the American Boychoir from Princeton, whose voices really do sound angelic.

I also like the Chieftains "The Bells of Dublin" like several other folks here, and two more. One is Chanticleer, "Sing We Christmas"--a lot of classical, but the last part is a 12-minute rendition of various spiritiuals in their harmony. The word beautiful is overused, but...it is!!

And, last year, bought The Irish Tenors Christmas album. Just listened today...they do a wonderful version of "Amazing Grace", John McDermott is particularly wonderful. AND they do a great job on "The Holy City", which is sometimes called "Jerusalem".

I belong to a CD club that sends out flyers on holiday music, and it's unbelievable how much Christmas music has been recorded, by everyone from Ray Charles to Asleep at the Wheel. Ray's version of "The Little Drummer Boy" is also wonderful!

Subject: RE: BS: What's your favorite Xmas album/CD? Why?
From: John Hardly
Date: 25 Nov 00 - 07:54 AM

My favorite new one is Joel Mabus' "How Like The Holly"--It's refreshing to hear a new take and some originals for a change.

There's a lovely Christmas song by Bob Franke called "Staw Against The Chill"--a new favorite.

John

Subject: RE: BS: What's your favorite Xmas album/CD? Why?
From: Hollowfox
Date: 25 Nov 00 - 11:55 AM

I just love this stuff (in season, I don't listen to it much in June). My favorites that haven't been mentioned yet are the cd by the baltimore Consort, "Star Carol" by "Tennessee" Ernie Ford (what a voice!), and when I'm sick ant tired of the commercialism, "Arrest These Merry Gentlemen" by the Kipper Family.

Subject: RE: BS: What's your favorite Xmas album/CD? Why?
From: Matt_R
Date: 25 Nov 00 - 04:29 PM

Well wait one durn minnit! No one even mentioned our own Seamus Kennedy's Christmas album! I love it! As my mom said this morning "I hope Seamus knows we're wearing out his CDs!"

--M

Subject: RE: BS: What's your favorite Xmas album/CD? Why?
From: black walnut
Date: 25 Nov 00 - 05:36 PM

i believe the song you were asking about, mousethief, must be 'Down in Yon Forest'.

the liner notes to the Cockburn album say:
"If there were a contest for the title of the spookiest Christmas carol, this ought to win hands down. Collected earlier in this century by John Jacob Niles, it hails from North Carolina. I believe it to be of great age, though, both because of the melodic style and because of the lyrics, which resonate with the Grail myth, and with the ancient custom of every few years draining the blood out of one's king onto the soil to ensure its continuing fertility."

if anyone knows more...

~black walnut