The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. CXXXVI

Do you guys love your family?  If so, how much?

Album Title:  Fanny Farmer presents The King Family Christmas Album

Album Artist:  The King Family

Another dusty relic pried from the Radio Wasteland Dollar Bin, this one stood out to Yours Truly a year or so ago (or whenever it was that I last scooped up a pile of old, Holiday vinyl for reviewing) thanks to the sheer number of people on the album cover. At first glance, you'd assume it's some kinda choir, right? Some kind of Mormon Tabernacle thing going on here, one would think. That or it's the most crowded, insane wedding cake topper I've ever seen.

But then you catch the album title - "The King Family" - and you think to yourself, "No wait, this can't be - this can't all be one, single family, right? RIGHT?' How many kids did the mom and dad have? Are cousins and siblings involved in this undertaking, or is one branch of the family and as kids have kids of their own they're just automatically drafted into active, Holiday service?

Seriously. Who has a family that big in the first place, let alone cramming all these sons of bitches into a studio somewhere in order to cut what is, I'm sure, a great piece of Holiday music.

I had to know more.

So not being at all familiar with the 'King Family,' I figured this one would be worth a spin around the ol' yuletide turntable. I can speak as someone who has a moderately-sized family - five siblings, each of which has three kids (-ish, we're the exception with two) - that putting all of us together in some 1960s recording booth and having anything remotely close to being 'music' come out would be an insurmountable task. A few of us play instruments, sure, but getting us all to work together without killing each other (or staying sober) would be a staggering undertaking, and I don't know if we'd be able to pull it off.

With that in mind, I was willing to give the King Family - who, according to the album cover's back text box, number over 50 - the benefit of the doubt. Who knows, maybe they have their shit together.

Nope.

It clearly becomes evident that, for the most part, they don't have the entire family on here crooning at all times. As crazy as it sounds when the whole clan is crammed into the studio at the same time, shouting over one another like train going off the rails, I'm almost let down they didn't lean full-tilt into this the entire time. God knows this album would have gone from 'boring' to 'terrifying,' and then perhaps this one would be worth of remembrance somewhat. But no, for the most part the family seems to play it safe and take turns with each song: a small collection of ladies sing a lot, and I assume those are the daughters (going by the jacket's backside photos), then there are dudes singing in baritone (dramatically of course, 'cause it's the 1960s), and those guys gotta either be the sons or else husbands of aforementioned daughters. 

Are these all siblings you think, or husbands and wives?

I like to think that for those poor sons of bitches who married into the King Family, this was something that was party of the marital agreement. "Yes Clark, I'll marry you, but you have to sign here on this contract agreeing to participate in any and all future Christmas albums we as Kings will be undertaking until Papa says we can be done." If the guys didn't run for the hills at the first site of that wedding clause, well hell - that's on them. They knew what they were getting themselves into.

You'll be happy to know that later on in the album, on Side B, they even release the young children from their cells and let them growl and sputter on some of the more upbeat carols. It's as unbridled and chaotic as you might expect from a dozen or so kids hopped up on sugar and finally able to stretch their legs a little. None of these little urchins can sing, obviously, but everyone knows that this is a FAMILY affair: everyone's gonna participate in this great, family fun whether they like it or not.

Anyway, this album is mixed pretty well, but the engineer tends to let the vocal soloists dominate at a higher volume than they probably should have. When there's a chorus going, the mix is pretty decent (by 1960s variety show standards, that is), but when it's only one or a handful of singers on display (for lack of better term), the engineer dials it up to assumedly let 'the stars shine.' How much of this is at the bequest of the King matriarch and her legion of mom-aged daughters, I have no idea - I'm guessing they had a say in the creative process here. 

As far as song selections go, for the most part the good people at Fanny Farmer - whoever or whatever the hell that is - had the good sense to stick to the classics. God knows the folks over at The Mike Douglas Show or The Ed Sullivan Show probably wouldn't tolerate too much of that 'original' Christmas music. According to the back jacket cover, this King Family was a well-known act back in the day that had done their due diligence on the ol' black-and-white TV circuit - they know the drill. Sticking to the whole 'variety show' playbook, they blend different songs together in little medleys or suites, never devoting an entire track to a song in its entirety. If I had to wager a guess, it's due to the fact that they wanted to squeeze as many relatives as possible on to the album without pissing anyone off. That's the sorta thing that could really ruin a family Christmas. Or future family Christmas album.

Gonna go out on a limb here and assume this is 'M. King.'

The vibe of this album plays out like a cheap version of the music used in movies like Bing Crosby's White Christmas. I noticed 'M. King' wrote many of the arrangements on to be found here, and he must have been the brains behind the operation, wheeling extended family members into the studio by forklift and arranged them in groups in front of microphones when they were needed. Still, I've heard countless Christmas albums that have used these same, boring, 50s/early 60s, 'pop culture' arrangements. Holiday music to slow dance to. And later drink yourself to death in front of a Christmas tree.

This album reminds me of the early 2010s when some indie rock bands would have like twenty people in their acts, and you'd have people on stage whose sole responsibility was like shaking some maracas or dancing or some crap like that. That used to annoy the shit out of me, and I wanted to pull these bands aside and be like, "Guys, it's totally cool to have friends on the side, not all your buddies have to be in the band at all times." I get that the King Family has a lot of members in its tree, but Jesus H. Christ folks - trim the fat here and there. Maybe Cousin Al doesn't have to be on this year's Christmas album, maybe he can just be the guy that drives all these people around in the converted, old school bus you use to drive from county fair to county fair. And hook up with fat chicks with gonorrhea working the Tilt-a-Whirl from time to time.

There are no stand alone tracks on this album that deserve special scrutiny. I really tried to find you guys something comically bad about this one to eviscerate, but damn it all if this entire album all sounds the exact same. Variety Show sleeze, predictable and boring, like we've all heard a million times before. 

Just with, you know, something like 50 f***ing' singers. So if that's your jam, folks - maybe you'll enjoy this one.

I sure as hell didn't.

VERDICT:  4/10 - Borophyll (Less is more, guys.)

- SHELVED -

- Brian

The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. CXXXIII

Who's ready for some more yuletide, audio snobbery? Anyone?

Album Title:  The Joyful Season

Album Artist:  The Voices of Jo Stafford

This one might be a bit of a let-down, guys. So, like practically every other album reviewed this year, I snatched up yet another dollar bin treasure from Radio Wasteland based on the album artwork. Jo Stafford has one of those looks that, to me, screams 'boring church lady music.' The beehive haircut and disapproving look leads one to believe that this lady was probably used to wielding the 'N-Word' around like a battle ax back in the day. 

Because God forbid those people use the same sidewalk as her children.

Here's the shtick with this album: 'The Voices of Jo Stafford.' At first I wasn't sure what the hell this meant, like were they a group of singers who were forced to bear the name of only one, beehive-wearing bitch (who's most likely a racist)? Does she have multiple personalities and each of them get a chance to sing on this Holiday album (because, as terrifying as that would probably be for the studio engineers to record, I bet it'd be pretty awesome to listen to)?

Nothing nearly that cool, I'm afraid. They recorded multiple vocal tracks of the same, stupid lady and then layered them over the music. That's it.

Jo would like to speak to your manager, pronto.

Guys, that isn't anything special. That's called backing vocals, and they're present in nearly every song ever recorded, this isn't some groundbreaking thing you just invented. Folks do it all the time, except most people use other people for backing vocals. 

Jo must have insisted on - nay, demanded - only using her 'angelic voice' on this album. Probably while smoking a cigarette in the studio, hand on her hip, glaring at the black janitor that was taking out the trash in the sound booth.

Because 'they' shouldn't ever be allowed in her presence. Her grandfather probably rode with Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Anyway, can this lady sing? Meh, I guess. She sounds like a middle-aged woman from the '60s singing. A click up from the 'pretty good singer at church' that we've reviewed a hundred times or so on this blog of ours, but nothing impressive enough to commit to memory. She must have been in her 40s when this was recorded, because her voice is relatively low for a female - only decades of being beaten down by life (and maybe a husband, considering it was the '60s), birthing kids, watching blacks get Civil Rights, etc. can do that to a woman's voice.

The saving grace here is that Jo isn't singing a church-y Christmas album at all, which was my initial impression upon adding this one to my stack of Holiday records a month or two ago. No, these are all secular Holiday favorites that everyone knows the lyrics to - just check out the track listing. This alone adds a point or two in Jo's favor, because had this been a set of overly-religious, Christmas music (WHY was that so popular sixty years ago?), or a collection of god-awful 'original' Christmas songs (there's thousands of Holiday favorites in the Public Domain, guys - go nuts), this would have been a shit-show.

From Our House to Yours. Racistly.

Jo can sing well enough, like I said, and the arrangements themselves are decent for the time period. It's a chill album, there's no upbeat music, no 'swing' to be found here (despite the fact I'm pretty sure this was released in the '60s.) No, Jo likes to keep it slow and low, as if she's singing to herself while slowly, stumbling up the stairs of her home late at night after she passed out drunk on a living room couch in front of her black-and-white, 14" television set.

So again, kinda disappointed because I was hoping to find something comically bad with this one, and instead I just got a half-way competent - but ultimately boring - Holiday album from some racist Karen from the '60s.

VERDICT:  4/10 - Borophyll (Was the 'beehive' haircut the 'I want to speak to the manager' haircut of the 1960's? 'Cause I'm assuming it was.)

- SHELVED-

- Brian

The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. LXXXIII

Prepare yourself, comrades, for a Luftwaffe-level assault on the Holiday senses. . . . .

Album Title:  Holiday Sing Along with Mitch

Album Artist:  Mitch Miller

Sweet Baby Jesus.  This one's weird, folks.

Such versatility. . .

Mitch Miller made a name for himself with an early '60s TV series called Sing Along with Mitch, that featured this dude and a male chorus (choir?) singing traditional, folk, and pop songs, while lyrics flashed along the bottom of the screen with one of those bouncing balls over each word as it was sung.  Due to the show's popularity - yes, it was popular with viewers -  they released a whole slew of records for people to sing along with.  Pop records, country records, showtunes records, and, like we have here, Christmas records.

Look at all these wonderful. . . lyric sheets.

The fact that someone could make so much money on something as stupid as singing along with music - something we all do anyway with regular, non-karaoke records - really says a lot about the early 1960s and how starved they were for entertainment.  The packaging on this album is interesting, for sure.  There's a still-intact lyric sheet with tear-out pages for each song, so folks could - I assume - rip out the page for the song they were listening to if. . . they didn't feel like holding. . . the entire album cover. . . .?  I guess?  I don't get it.

Anyway, so what does this slicked up production sound like?  Well, have you guys ever seen that meme online that says that when men reach their middle ages they have to either get really into smoking/grilling meats or really into World War II?  It totally makes sense to me, and Yours Truly is definitely guilty of the latter.  This evening I was actually watching the Stalingrad episode of WWII in Color (or something like that - it's really, really good) on Netflix shortly before retiring to the Study to put this album on my turntable.  Upon dropping the needle down, I immediately experienced flashbacks to what I had just been watching.

The first handful of songs on Side 1 are marches, sung by a boisterous male choir (chorus?), seemingly recorded in a large, barren room (the reverb and distance in their voices clearly give this away.)  And maybe it was the fact that I had just been watching German soldiers marching victorious through the burning fields of the Soviet Union in 1942, but listening to these first few songs it was impossible to not imagine a smoky beer hall filled with celebrating Nazi infantrymen.

Why are Nazis singing Christmas carols?  Why are they singing in English?  Who the hell is playing all the accordions?  

Questions like these I don't have answers to.

Not every song on this sing-along album sounds like Nazi propaganda, though.  There are polka-ish numbers, which shouldn't be too shocking for anyone, considering the rabid obsession Americans had with polka music in the '60s.  Other songs sound more folksy in nature (folksy in the Rankin Bass/Glenn Yarbrough The Hobbit vein, that is) - again, not too shocking considering the climate of American music back then.  There's even some children's songs on here. . . and yes, they're equally justifiable and run-of-the-mill for the time period.

While the song styles themselves vary every-so-slightly, the one consistent variable across all songs on this album (aside from the over-reliance on accordions) is the relentless, Aryan male choir.  Whether the song's fast or slow, hard or soft, march or polka, folk or children's, the Fuhrer's Supreme Choir rolls ever onward, crushing all resistance in its way.  There is no stopping the constant barrage of baritone, male bellowing that refuses to cede a single inch or decibel across both sides of this Holiday album.  Poland, France, Belgium, Norway, Czechoslovakia. . . . and now Holiday Sing Along with Mitch. 

What we really need here is for this choir to suddenly find itself bogged down and stuck in snowy, -30 degree weather for awhile.  

If history has shown us anything, guys, it's that a Russian Winter is a sure-fire way to force the Germans to a grinding halt. . .

VERDICT:  4/10 - Borophyll (Indiana Jones said it best, folks: "Nazis. I hate these guys.")

- SHELVED -

- Brian