A Christmas Yuleblog

Several weeks ago, I posted a yuleblog entry about electronic music, the theremin, and the Moog. To quote from that entry: " Any other Christmas Moog albums out there that I missed? I know of one which I found sealed in a Chicago record store that I'm planning on sharing next month... " Well, here it is. My final offering for my Christmas in July celebration. Guess I saved the best for last. There's not much out there on Douglas Leedy. According to a rather meandering Wikipedia entry, he was born in 1938, studied many varied styles of music all over the world, and has been composing and conducting music for most of his life. He eventually ended up in Brentwood, California at UCLA. It was here that he founded UCLA's electronic music studio and specialized in the Moog and Buchla synthesizers and an electronic gizmo named the Ognob Generator: (Click on image to enlarge) Being so close to Hollywood, the good folks at Capitol Records soon came ca...

Here's the final batch of 2006 albums I've just pulled and reposted from the oven: Bowen & Csehy - Christmas Steepletime A Country Christmas DeWayne Fulton - Christmas Greetings From Earl Grant - Winter Wonderland Jim & Tammy - Christmas With Sy Mann & The Malvin Carolers - Let's All Sing Christmas Carols The Bob Mantzke Choralaires - Christmas Songs Pat O'Brien - A Quiet Christmas The Piano Rolls & Voices - All Time Christmas Hits Bob Ralston - Christmas Hymns & Carols Happy listening... Capt

I've gone back and answered comments left here at the yuleblog for the past two months. If you've left a comment here during that time, the answer now awaits you at the post you left it at. Or simply click on the link: Zube has left a new comment on your post " JohnsCDs 2006-1172-001 - A Sleigh Full Of Joy: Sharity Rarities 2006 ": Love your site, have been enjoying it for some time. I would love to have a copy of this CD, but I can't make it work for me. I have dialup at home and the download never finishes. I have some blocking at work so fileshare is off limits. Would it be too much of an imposition to get you to upload this CD to filehosting.cc? That one I can download at work without problems. Thanks, Zube Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " April 2007 ": All right Captain. You do deserve a break! In fact, you deserve a raise! Thanks for all the elbow greese on the keyboard! I have enjoyed the ride immensely! Jonatha...

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...

I'm still hustling here... here's some more goodies from last year freshly updated: Jimmy Dean - Jimmy Dean's Christmas Card Pete Fountain - Candy Clarinet: Merry Christmas From (STEREO) Will Glahe & His Orchestra - Christmas Greetings From Germany Shirley & Squirrely - Christmas With Happy listening... Capt

Wow... time has certainly had its way with me over these first few weeks of July. Between the T-ball games of my oldest daughter, chaperoned day care outings, theater obligations, travels to Chicago to see my family and my beloved Cubs, I have had zero time to do anything Christmas related. Especially when the kids don't want to play in the hot Indiana summer and rather play computer games. And the scary thing is... my family and I are about to head to Chicago (again) and the rest of my July is booked solid. The silver lining around this is between today and Wednesday, I have a window to actually work at the computer (since I've hidden all my kids CD-ROMs but you didn't read that here). My original plans were to share out around eight new Christmas albums and any re-link requests you submitted. Due to all my activities with the family, these have been scaled back. Not as bad as you think, though. There will be four new Christmas albums to offer... and I'm wor...

Dear readers of the yuleblog, If you haven't noticed, there hasn't been much activity around here for a while. It seems just as I'm ready to get into a flow, a routine, a schedule that I can follow to crank out some reviews, the fates conspire and I find myself back at square one. About a week and a half ago, the play I was involved with since the beginning of March of this year ended, leaving me with actual free time to devote to whatever I wanted. This is also where my summer began. The house & yard needed attending, the kids were thrilled to have their daddy back, we all travelled to Chicago to take in a Cub game and some museums, and the wife needed some much deserved time with all of us and by herself. Yesterday was the first time I sat down in front of my computer in over a week. I was planning on working here yesterday and today but the backlog of e-mails from family and friends, and the yuleblog backlog of questions and comments still need to be addre...

Three years ago, The King of Jingaling at FaLaLaLaLa.com offered one of the greatest Christmas albums of all time. Two years ago, I downloaded not one but two fantastic albums from our friend Ernie (not Bert) (which were re-offered last year). These three albums were recorded by the late, great Eddie Dunstedter and I never reviewed these albums at the yuleblog. I promised Ernie that these albums would be the first ones to get the yuleblog treatment after my return from acting. However... the almighty Google keeps referring to Ernie's posts when you enter the name of Eddie Dunstedter and there is surprisingly little about the man online for research. The few online facts that I found? Dunstedter discovered the vocal group The Merry Macs back in 1926, was the musical director of several radio shows back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and has one movie credit to his name - the music score for the 1953 schlock horror movie " Donovan's Brain " (with futu...

As far as I can remember, I've always had an affinity for Hawaiian music. Somewhere among my archives is a picture of me in a fourth grade school play where I play an obnoxious tourist flying to Hawaii. If that ever surfaces (think Jimmy Hoffa), I'll be sure to post it... Some time in high school, I began actively searching out Christmas music. I cannot recall what was the very first Hawaiian Christmas music album in my collection but I was hooked, lined, and sinkered onto that genre. I tried to find as much Hawaiian holiday hulas as I could find. When the smoke cleared, it emerged as the largest sub-genre of my collection (until Christmas organ overtook it last year). These sat on my upgrade list for quite awhile until two wonderful people named PDMan (from the FaLaLaLaLa community) and Ernie (of Ernie (Not Bert) ) came through in a big way last year. The first album (pictured above) by the Paradise Islanders was offered by PDMan at FLLLL.com back last December...

A funny thing happened on the way to the yuleblog this morning... a local power outage wiped out a majority of what I had previously saved in a first draft. So... starting from scratch... Here's another great Christmas album courtesy of Mr. Ernie from Ernie (Not Bert) . He first offered this album back in 2005 which I gobbled up and quickly added to my collection. But last year, Ernie decided to revisit the Moog Machine yet again. In his words: "The sound should be better on this one than what I gave you last year, anyway. I know the cover of this one is in much better shape than the one I scanned last year. Also, I'm sharing stuff at a slightly higher bit rate this year, so even if the vinyl weren't cleaner (and it is), it will sound better." Where do I start this review? How about Russia? Back in 1919, a Russian inventor named Leon Theremin was fiddling around in his workshop with two radio frequency oscillators, two radio antennae, and a louds...

Many moons ago, this elegantly lush album was offered at Christmas time at Basic Hip - one of the first vinyl sharity sites. It was a good rip of the mono version of this album, with a good scan of the front cover only. (BTW, they still offer a great deal of rare, exotic, and incredibly strange albums via their Basic Hip Digital Gold service where I picked up the soundtrack to "Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls"!) I searched high and low, both on the Internet and off, to find a copy of this album so I could acquire the back cover or perhaps (dare I say it) a stereo version! Late last November, a member of the FaLaLaLaLa community named PDMan (he was once a program director in radio, hence PD, man!) stunned everyone when he shared a pristine copy of the STEREO version of this album with complete artwork! The "Idol Of The Air Lanes" aka Jan Garber would have been mighty proud. Born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1894, Garber studied music at the Combs Conser...

Our friend Ernie, whose astoundingly fantastic blog Ernie (Not Bert) always has something for everyone, offered this last Christmas and I was able to snag it for an upgrade. This version replaced a previous one I acquired from Ernie two years ago when he wasn't fully prepared to share this album out. He sent me the music but no artwork so I had to improvise (see below). To quote from Ernie's hilarious notes: "This is a group founded by one of the members of that original group, Don Les. The group leader was Jerry Murad, and he seems to have been the one that had most of the talent... "And on top of all that, it's a pretty crummy label. One of the songs listed on the the cover, Upon The House Top (sic), is not even on the LP. Instead, you get O Little Town Of Bethlehem. "Also, if you look at the Christmas ornaments on the cover, you can see the reflection of the photographer and his tripod, over and over and over again. Not to mention the whole th...

This CD was given to me by my family last Christmas and has patiently sat next to my computer the longest in a stack of CDs that are upgrades to my personal collection. This brand new album was reissued last Christmas and replaced a CDR copy of the original 1990 issue (see below) I obtained in a trade with another Christmas collector long ago. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Where do I begin? Long before Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, long before Madonna, Stevie Nicks, and Janis Joplin... Long before Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, and Connie Francis, long before Patti Page, Rosemary Clooney, and Billie Holiday... there was a woman named Ella. Born in 1917, Ella didn't want to be a singer as a little girl. She wanted to be a dancer. After moving to New York, her mother was killed in an auto accident and went to live with her aunt - who died suddenly of a heart attack and she moved back to her native Virginia. After dropping out of high school, Ella got two odd j...

As usual, there are several stacks of CDs next to my computer. Some are waiting to be entered into my master spreadsheet, some are waiting to be reviewed here at the yuleblog, and some are waiting to be classified in both categories. To ease back into the flow of things, next week I've decided to look at a small stack of CDs that are upgrades to my collection - either I've acquired better or complete artwork for my CD-R copies or I found an actual copy of the CD that replaces the CD-R altogether. Most of these upgrades occurred last Christmas during the 2006 downloading season and came from our good friends Ernie at Ernie (not Bert) and FaLaLaLaLa member PDMan. So here's the tentative schedule for next week: Monday, June 11 - Ella Fitzgerald's Christmas Tuesday, June 12 - The Don Les Harmonicats - Christmas With Wednesday, June 13 - Jan Garber - Christmas Dance Party Thursday, June 14 - The Moog Machine - Christmas Become Electric Friday, June 15 - Hawai...

Last evening, we held our preview for the play I'm currently undertaking.  51 people showed up and so did our nerves... there were some mistakes, blown cues, dropped lines... but, that's why it's called a preview. Tonight is Opening Night and we're expecting a slightly larger crowd. So to get my mind off of things, I've decided devoting some time to the yuleblog is the perfect way to do just that. The local newspapers did a good job covering the show. For a good story and a few pictures of me resplendent in some of my Chicago Cub gear: http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/entertainment/17336439.htm This whole play has taken up a good amount of my time but I've missed banging the keyboard and talking about Christmas music. Stay tuned... another small post to follow today! Capt

GREAT JUMPIN' ICEBERGS!!! Haven't typed that in a while so I figured I'd get that out of the way. Back in April , I announced that I was appearing onstage as an actor in a two man show about baseball (the main reason for the break). I figured six weeks off to commit to memory my lines for the play and I could again use the free time to devote to the yuleblog. I originally planned on cranking out the reviews again around the time I posted the Kay Martin review in conjunction with my 365 Days contribution in mid May. That was the plan. However, when you have 40 pages of dialogue to memorize, then add my stay at home dad duties, end-of-the-school year shebangs like school picnics, programs, and field trips, plus a few trips to Wrigley Field in Chicago to see my beloved Chicago Cubs mostly lose, time sort of has its way with you. We're just entered June, the play rehearsals are at the stage where I'm feeling extremely comfortable with the lines, movemen...

If you're visiting us from WFMU's 365 Days Project, welcome to the yuleblog! I've posted a special entry today that goes hand in hand with my contribution to the 365 Days Project. Feel free to look around, read some entries, click on some links, and leave a comment or two. Regular postings will begin again very soon. For more info on this, click here . Thanks for stopping by and I hope you'll enjoy your time at the yuleblog! Capt

If you're a serious Christmas music collector, then you're probably familiar with this 1962 chestnut (pun intended). However, if you've never heard or seen this album before, pull your eyes away from the bodacious cover and let me explain to you several tidbits about this album. I first became acquainted with this album around 2002 or 2003 when Basic Hip - the granddaddy of all vinyl sharity sites - first offered it around Christmas time - a simple clean rip of the album and an average scan of the front cover only. BTW, that is NOT Ms. Martin on the cover. Like many adult party records of the day, an anonymous model would grace the cover with all the right body parts covered. More on Kay in a moment. As the years went by and I started to seriously collect Christmas music, I began to learn how special this album was. This wasn't an album to the Christmas music community - it was a secret handshake that gained you entrance into the fraternity of die-hard holid...