The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. CXXVIII

The Shadows of Mordor stretch out across the frozen landscape of mid Michigan, corrupting an otherwise tranquil snow-covered morning. . .

Album Title:  Christmas Album

Album Artist:  Jim Nabors

Happy Snow Day, America. 

With school called off this morning due to slick roads and a few of inches of early-season snow (for the 2020's, at least), I decided to scrutinize one of my dollar finds from the bargain bin at Radio Wasteland.

I know I've heard this Jim Nabors guy before on a compilation somewhere, and I vaguely remember thinking he was a comically bad singer, but I had no idea just how terrible this piece of shit was until I dropped the needle on this Holiday release. 

You ever see the 1977 Rankin & Bass cartoon version of The Hobbit (Tolkien's prequel to the Greatest Books of All Time)? Remember the orcs in that cartoon? And there were like songs that the orcs and goblins sang in the cartoon? Where they're hunting down Thorin Oakenshield and company, or marching off to besiege the city of Minas Tirith?

This guy sings like an orc.

In the same vein as the infamous Tennessee Ernie Ford, Jim Nabors is a hot frickin' mess of a baritone singer. Baritone singers should not sing like tenors, they just. . . shouldn't. You can most certainly write songs for deeper-voiced singers, but not all songs should be done for people this low on the audio spectrum. And that goes for like 90% of Christmas jams.

I don't care how many albums this guy sold back in the day, I don't care that he was a regular in Vegas and on shitty '60s variety shows. I don't. You know, a lot of Americans were exposed to lead and asbestos in the '40s - '60s, so there's a whole swath of the population who developed mental deficiencies severe enough to warrant purchasing this asshole's music. 

People also got swept in all of Hitler's crap back in the '30s and 40's, look where it got us.

Anyway, ol' Jim here decides to record a Holiday album. Why not, that's all the rage back in the day. He selects a handful of - surprise, surprise - religious Christmas carols, which I suppose we could consider a blessing because if I had to listen to this guy sing children's Christmas carols like 'Up on the Rooftop,' 'Santa Claus is Comin' to Town,' etc. I might just take my own life. 

From Jim's Home (the Tower of Barad'dur, most likely) to Yours. . .

The only song that sort of works with a voice this low is 'O Holy Night,' as the music works with a lower-register voice like Jimmy's here. Even 'O Come, All Ye Faithful' - which is usually a thunderous carol, about the closest thing to an 'anthem' you can get for a Holiday song - sounds ridiculous with this guy singing over it. 

He dials it up to '11' every time he gets behind the mic, and it's just straight-up jarring. There's no way people could listen to this in the comfort of their own shag-carpeted homes back in the day and enjoy this without being half-tanked. 'Jingle Bells,' a light-hearted Christmas song, must have been a forced march for the studio engineers to record - like most of the songs on this album, it's well-mixed and competently produced, but then Jim lays down the vocal track and torpedoes all their hard work. Case in point: one should never 'belt out' 'Silent Night.' That's Christmas Music 101. That's a somber song, there's no need to shout it from the rafters.

This whole album is like when someone spends hours and hours working on one of those competitive baking TV shows only to sneeze all over the damn thing while putting the finishing touches on the frosting.

VERDICT:  3/10 - Seriously? (I gave this train wreck a bonus point because the musicianship and production value is decent for the time, and had a better singer been hauled up from the pits of Mordor this would probably be a solid '5.')

- SHELVED-

- Brian