A Christmas Yuleblog

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To the readers of the yuleblog, I appreciate all the non-spam comments I've received here (over 150 comments) since my last blog post in March.  Or the last month when the Cubs were in first place.  Each of the comments were published and posted to their individual blog entries.   At some point in time, I hope to get to answer them.  At some point in time, I hope to rework this blog - correct the grammar errors caused by glitches in the code and by the author, upgrade the template, expand the columns to add more stuff, etc, etc, etc. Then there's the little matter of sharity. All of my shares were hosted by Rapidshare since the beginning.  About two years ago, they reworked their plans and upped their yearly fees.  I had banked enough Rapid points based on download hits that allowed the shares to be carried without cost to me until June of this year. I made the decision not to renew my account with RS for the following reasons: 1.)...

“I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut.” - Goethe   What you are looking at is approximately two and one-half years in the making.  The tower of CDs represents the 240+ Christmas albums I've downloaded in that span of time from various Christmas blogs and sharity sites around the Internet.  Various blogs?  Half of these came from that mad genius Ernie (not Bert) ...  thanks for doing your part for the economy Ern! At the beginning of 2009, I was overwhelmed by the task of getting everything organized and burned.  So it began to pile up here, some over there, and everything that was downloaded was uploaded onto a Western Digital 500 GB external hard drive. After getting a new ...

The album you are looking at holds a special spot in my collection.  It was one of the first Christmas albums I actively searched for when I seriously began collecting Christmas music.  It also was the first album I ever shared online (first at FaLaLaLaLa.com , then here ).   And it's still one of the most popular shares in my sharity list   (over 800 downloads since I first posted this). Since I'm a sentimental guy, I decided when I got my new USB turntable in hopes of remastering many of my older shares that this would be the first album that would get the star treatment. I think Mae West would have been pleased. I had rescanned the covers (300 dpi) and the record labels and was getting ready to drop the needle to re-record the glorious tones of Ms. West. But... I was reading my new copy of Goldmine Magazine and discovered a vendor selling a new Canadian import 2-for-1 CD.  In addition to this album, you get West's 1970 album "The Fabulou...

The jazz and musical world lost a great friend two days ago when Dr. Billy Taylor died at the age of 89 in Manhattan. Taylor was born in Greenville, North Carolina and had his first piano lesson at the age of seven. His family later moved to Washington D.C. and attended Virginia State College for Negroes (now known as Virginia State University) where he studied music. After graduation in 1946, Billy moved to New York City at a time when jazz and bebop was about to explode onto the music scene. Within two days of his arrival, he began working with noted jazz musician Ben Webster and later became the house pianist at the famous Birdland Jazz Club. He formed his own jazz combo in 1951, toured all across the United States, and even put his music degree to good use; lecturing at schools on jazz, writing extensive articles for DownBeat magazine, and even had a long tenure of concerts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. Taylor's diverse resume deepened with stints on tel...

Merry Christmas! Usually at this downloading season, I would be posting new Christmas albums that I would have rummaged for at thrift stores, haggled for at record shows, and sniped at the last minute on eBay. Several things prevented me in doing that this year - I could bore you with the details but I'll refrain. I did want to continue the tradition that I started five Christmases ago - the annual Yuleblog Sampler. Normally, this would have been posted on Christmas Day - my present to you. But I decided to move the release date up by 10 days since I don't have anything else to post this season. I'm excited about this release for two reasons: 1.) Many of the 45s and 78s I found for the sampler were nowhere to be found in my 22,000+ Christmas song library. 2.) These singles were the first vinyl transferred on my new Stanton T.92 USB turntable and captured to digital on my new Dell PC. None of the vinyl I've transferred before has sounded better than...