A Christmas Yuleblog

Dear readers of the yuleblog, For the past few months, my somewhat usual schedule has been turned up, down, and every which way but Saturday. This can be attributed to a great number of reasons (stay-at-home dad duties, school activities with the kids, involved with several theater productions, travelling between Chicago and Cincinnati to watch the Cubs play great baseball) that has pulled my focus away from the computer. In late March, I reached my peak and was posting two reviews a day. Since the beginning of April, my daily output here has trickled to an anemic one post a week. How bad has it gotten? We've now reached mid-September - the month I usually have reserved to create and produce my annual Christmas CD for family and friends for the past nine years - and I'm two weeks behind in that regard as well. I still have about 100+ albums that I downloaded last year that I haven't reviewed (or even burned and added to my permanent collection). I have approxima...

At first glance of this album cover, the gentlemen seated on the couch looks more like a high school principal or shop teacher than a world renowned orchestra leader. Nevertheless, these two fantastic offerings were presented last year at Ernie (not Bert)'s blog within a two day span of time. I juggled my schedule of downloads around a tad bit to feature both on the same day. Today is Mr. Swing And Sway Day! The first album, " Christmas Day With Sammy Kaye ", was offered on November 25, 2006. It was originally released at Christmas, 1960 by Decca Records. The second "album" (pictured to the right) is actually a collection of 45 singles from 1951 and boxed up in a festive cover entitled " Christmas Serenade " by Columbia Records. Not bad for a guy who received a degree in civil engineering while playing in small time bands throughout college. After Sammy left college with his degree, he found his true calling in music. He quickly began h...