The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. XCVI

So uh, here we go again, folks.  Time for some G-Rated Holiday fun from a B-Rated 'Country' singer. . . I guess.  Let's do this.

Album Title:  Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Other Christmas Songs

Album Artist:  Tex Johnson and His Six-Shooters

Another Radio Wasteland Dollar Bin find this year, I had a pretty good idea I was in for some bottom-shelf Children's music, capitalizing on the '50s Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer craze.

I had never heard of 'Tex Johnson' before, but when I picked this up I assumed he was some old Country singer who had a few hits back in the 1940s and 1950s, and now he was being thrown a few bucks in order to cut an album of Children's Christmas songs.  That isn't out of the ordinary, of course - popular singers have been cashing in on the well-accepted practice of recording their own Christmas album for decades.  I mean, it is pretty fool-proof when you think about it:  you already have an established career, so you record and album where you're covering songs that are already well-known favorites that everyone already knows and loves.  It's a win-win, you're bound to make some money off it.

Turning to Wikipedia to learn more about this dude, I was once again Gene Riley'd (a term I'm going to try and use from now on when coming up with nothing on the Internet's signature Encyclopedic site) - the only 'Tex Johnson' page I came across was this guy, who was a baseball pitcher during, oh, World War I.  

Going out on a limb here and concluding that they aren't the same guy.

The history of Rudolph and. . .um. . . Johhny Marks.

The back of the album wasn't much help, either.  The entire backside of the sleeve was the backstory of the popularity of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and his creator, Johhny Marks.  No mention of the guys that actually perform on this album.  Never a good sign.

The signature song on this album is 'meh' at best.  It's not in the same ballpark as Burl Ives (who did the song better than anyone), but instead comes across as a Dollar Store, cheap Chinese knock-off of the Gene Autry rendition (Autry being the original artist, recording it back in 1949.)  Tex here tries his damnedest to imitate Autry with his performance, drawling and twanging through the number with a safe and non-offensive approach.  It comes across as a performance you'd expect to find on a Saturday morning, Children's variety show.  On the radio (because this was probably recorded before TVs were commonplace in American living rooms - I'm trying to be historically accurate here, folks.)

Had this song been the standard for the remainder of the track list, we'd have ourselves a solid '5' here, but the album goes downhill in a hurry.  Tex can carry a tune, in that hokey, 'lonesome cowboy' sorta way that appealed to millions of Americans back in the day, and the album is clearly aimed at kids - something to keep in mind, for sure - but Children's albums are dangerous things, and they're easier to screw up than you would think.  Allow me to point out some mis-steps from Tex and the gang on this one. . .  

I'm gonna say this once and I want to be very clear about this, ladies and gentlemen:  we do not need accordions in Christmas music.  This isn't a pirate shanty, it's a Christmas album.  I can't think of ever listening to a Christmas song and ever once thinking, 'Damn, you know what this song needs?  Some motherf***ing accordion accompaniment.'  And there is soooo much accordion on this Goddamn album.

There's some weird barber shop-ish a cappella stuff in here as well that also, obviously, has no business being on a kids' album. If you want to have a choir doing vocalizing sans music accompaniment, that's fine and all, but you better be performing a religious Christmas song.  Like something solemn in tone and message, something churchy in nature.  Kids certainly don't wanna hear that shit, Tex.

The upbeat country numbers on this album - 'Wait for the Wagon (on Christmas Day)' and 'Pride of the Prairie Mary', for example - are the easiest to listen to.  The target audience for songs like this are those cowboy-obsessed kids of the 1950s, like Ralphie in A Christmas Story.  Still, songs like 'Cheyenne,' which is definitely a country/western song, are overly done to the point where nowhere in the lyrics - at any given point in time - is anything remotely related to Christmas ever mentioned.  Not once. 

Santa apparently flipping off Tex for not being included.

Don't get me wrong, folks. I like old timey Country/Western music as the next guy, but c'mon, Tex - this is supposed to be a Christmas album.  Ain't nobody got time for songs about the Lonesome Trail.  How hard would it be to change up the lyrics a bit here and there.  Maybe instead of meeting a fair-eyed girl on the praire, you find - oh, I don't know - Santa Claus.  Maybe instead of leading your horse through a gully on a starlit night, you're leading a reindeer.

It practically writes itself, Tex.

The saving grace here is that this may be the shortest Holiday album I've ever reviewed - each song is, like, a minute long.  The whole offering is probably 15-20 minutes, tops.  As unbearable as it can be in spots, at least it's over fast.  Like ripping off a band-aid.

On the Lonesome Trail, of course.

VERDICT:  4/10 - Borophyll (A nobody from the 1950s cuts a Children's Christmas album, but overdoes the Country/Western thing, and inexplicably decides to double-down with an accordion and an obnoxious backing vocal group.  I decided to grace it with a few pity points for it's super-short running time, the title song, and a couple upbeat Country songs, but this sort of music has been done far better by other folks who, you know, you can actually find on the Internet.)

- SHELVED -

- Brian