A Christmas Yuleblog

Last year, we shared out a great Christmas album (Jay Jay 1080) chock full of Polish Christmas songs and polkas by L'il Wally and his backing band The Harmony Boys. This album was discovered at Beverly Records in Chicago - one of the greatest vinyl stores left on the planet. Earlier this year, I raided Beverly Records' famed WALL of Christmas music and came up with another gem from Chicago's very own polka king! This album you're looking at was released a year or two earlier judging by the label numbers (Jay Jay 1026) and contains mostly Christmas standards with the full L'il Wally polka treatment. You've never lived until you've heard "Frosty", "Rudolph", and "Jingle Bells" with a polka beat! However, the tracks you really need to listen to are the original tunes. "Merry Christmas Mom And Dad", "How Lovely Is Christmas", and "Dance Around The Christmas Tree" all have that familiar polka...

Yesterday morning, I met with my best friend Joel who's constantly on the lookout for anything Christmas that I don't already own in my collection. He actually found this album on eBay and called my wife to scan through my collection to see if I already had it. She looked at my CDs and not the albums - Joel bid and won. When I opened this and stared at the cover, I was floored. Joel immediately screamed for and cried tears of joy, thinking he had found something I didn't own. " Ummm , Joel?" With those two words, his bubble was burst. However, when I explained that I didn't own the artwork, then he perked up. Thanks Joel for trying to find something new and succeeding (sorta). I'm confident you'll come up with something like you did when you introduced me to Jana . What does this me for you? It means if you visit the original L'il Wally & The Harmony Boys post, you'll find a new link for full high-resolution scans of thi...

Earlier this year, I travelled solo to Chicago and raided every thrift store, Salvation Army, Goodwill, and vinyl record store in search of new and exciting Christmas albums. The trip yielded quite a harvest and this little nugget was one of my finds. The Beverly neighborhood in the southwest corner of Chicago is a blue-collar, middle-class neighborhood that has flourished over the years. While other parts of Chicago look like Baghdad, this part of the city prides itself on its work ethic, family principles, and an urban sense of community that never went out of style back in the late 1960s like it did throughout the entire country. Back in 1967, John Dreznes decided to buy a record store on South Western Avenue for his wife Christine. Christine wanted a positive place for neighborhood kids to visit, get after-school jobs, and a place where "Mrs. Dee" could keep an eye on her friends' kids. Her choice of name for this place? Beverly Records. As the business to...