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A Christmas Yuleblog Sampler - 2011

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Merry Christmas! We've had quite a year here - digitizing all of our Christmas music, a radio show , and remastering yuleblog samplers past.  But I can't complain.   Taking the nine months to get every album and MP3 onto my hard drive (and an external hard drive for backup) was the best decision I may have made in my Christmas life.  To have every song at my fingertips saves me time and led to discoveries of songs I never knew I had.  I thought that what the CD was supposed to do but that only shows you how far in the past I was living. The radio show was very satisfying.  The folks at the radio station were very supportive and thrilled with the end results.  Will it happen again next year?  I'm hopeful but only time will tell.  Lots of things are in store at the station...  Okay... enough about you Capt...  where's the samplers? During a break in digitizing in June, I went back and remastered the Yuleblog ...
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O Tannenbaum - Christmas On The Rhine (Decca Records)

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On the surface, this may seem to be an ordinary German Christmas album. If you look and listen a little deeper, you just might find some surprises.  There are abundant copies of this album anywhere you look. eBay probably has a few copies listed for auction as you read this. But... some album covers have some suspicious red writing directly under the words "Christmas on the Rhine". These words read: "Mixed Chorus and Orchestra under direction of Werner Müller " That explains why this album is a cut above the rest. When you heard the words "German Christmas record", visions of oompah bands and overbearing Teutonic singers straight out of a Wagner opera might have filled your head. Not this album. This is a well-orchestrated, well-arranged, and well sung album. Many of the standards are covered ("O Tannenbaum", "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht") but there are a few gems that standout from the rest. "Leise Rieselt Der Schnee (...
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Ruth Lyons - The Christmas Music Of

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We're recovering here from a weekend in Cincinnati. For the past several years, my wife & kids, my brothers and their families, and my father & stepmother gather to watch baseball games between the hometown Reds and my beloved Chicago Cubs. We didn't get a chance to drive or walk down Ruth Lyons Lane downtown but maybe next road trip. Ruth Lyons was (and still is) an institution in Cincinnati. She had a four decade career in broadcasting, first in radio, then television and "accidentally" invented the daytime TV talk show. An estimated 7 million viewers in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and West Virginia tuned in (including some who credited her as an influence - Phil Donahue, Jane Pauley, and David Letterman). Back in 1939, a visit to Children's Hospital left her depressed over the thought of young children being hospitalized over Christmas. The Ruth Lyons Children's Christmas Fund has raised more than $21 million over the past six decades. Insu...
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