Annie's Christmas

Sorry to get this out so late. I figure that some people may still do part of their Christmas celebrating this weekend, so I'll slide this holiday album out to you. This features the same cast as "Keeping Fit with Annie", but also includes the character of Miss Hannigan. (She was never in the comic strip, was she?) A couple of crooks plan on stealing money from the orphanage, but Annie, Sandy, and the gang all come to the rescue.

I've actually got a couple more Christmas albums coming my way. Depending on how late I get them, I'll either get them up here as soon as I can put them together or I'll wait until next year to get them up here. I hope everybody had (or will continue to have) a wonderful Christmas!

Click here or here to download!

Merry Christmas from Me and Bob Hope!

Hey, here's the last cut from "Hope for the Holidays" celebrating Christmas. And look, I put it in on exactly December 25th (at least, that's what future generations will think! SHHHHH!!!)


Click here or here to download!

The Small One: A Christmas Musical for Young Voices

Here's another Christmas album for you. This is a musical version of the story "The Small One", as sung by the Jay Stream Singers of Carol Stream, Illinois. The basic story is that a little boy is forced to sell his troublesome donkey (who is also his friend). He has no luck until he finally gets to sell it to Mary and Joseph. The donkey carries Mary who is great with child, as they say. And of course, this is the same Mary who gives birth to Baby Jesus. (Oops, should I have thrown a Spoiler Alert in here??)

Anyway, as pleasant as this album was, it was all about the pictures for me. First of all, somebody wrote "Discard" in big letters using black marker on the front cover and there was a big sticker in the top right corner that I couldn't get off. This was my first experience using Microsoft Paint to get rid of the incriminating evidence. I think I did OK for a rookie, don't you?

Secondly, take a look at the back cover here:



See this young guy in the ruffledy shirt?



I saw that and joked to myself, "Hey, it looks like they got 'Dukes of Hazzard' star John Schneider to perform on their album!"

Then I glanced down at the credits:



Yep, that's really him! I think he performed the voice of David's father and later sang the Auctioneer's Song. (In fact, I seem to think for some reason I might have heard him sing that song somewhere else. At a telethon perhaps?) This album was copyrighted 1977 and "Dukes of Hazzard" started on TV in January 1979, so this may have been one of the last performances Schneider did before he started working on the show.

OK, enough talk. Enjoy the album! (By the way, the story and songs were intermixed so the track breaks are somewhat arbitrary.)

Here's the track list:

1. Introduction
2. Destiny
3. That's the Way It Is with Friends
4. I'll Whistle
5. The Auctioneer's Song
6. Would You Like to Buy a Donkey?
7. That's the Way It Is with Friends (Reprise)
8. Miracles

Click here or here to download!

The Dangerous Christmas of Red Riding Hood

This is kind of an odd one. It was the soundtrack to a television Christmas special shown on ABC on Nov. 28, 1965. It takes the classic Little Red Riding Hood story and puts a Yuletide slant on it. And check out this cast list: British actor Cyril Ritchard (at that time known as the definitive Captain Hook from the musical "Peter Pan") as Lone T. Wolf; Liza Minnelli as Red Riding Hood; Sinatra-esque singer Vic Damone as the Woodsman; and the Animals (yes, as in "Eric Burdon and the") as the Wolf Pack. If you like Liza and Cyril, they have most of the songs here and, as would be expected, do a nice job on them. Unfortunately the Animals only have one song here, but it's a fun one nevertheless. I don't know how much the special focused on the Christmas connection, but only three of the songs here reference it. So while I'd call this one only tangentially related to Christmas, I'm counting it anyway!

Hey, I just found out that this special was recently released to DVD, and you can get a copy of it here!

Here is the track list:

1. Overture - Orchestra
2. We Wish the World a Happy Yule - Cyril Ritchard and the Creatures of the Forest
3. My Red Riding Hood - Liza Minnelli
4. Snubbed - Cyril Ritchard
5. Woodman's Serenade/Granny's Gulch/Along the Way - Vic Damone and Liza Minnelli
6. I'm Naive - Liza Minnelli
7. Red Riding Hood Improvisation (Ballet) - Orchestra
8. I'm Naive (Reprise) - Cyril Ritchard
9. We're Gonna Howl Tonight - The Animals
10. Ding-a-Ling Ding-a-Ling - Liza Minnelli and Cyril Ritchard
11. Poor Mouse (Ballet) - Orchestra
12. Granny/Along the Way (Reprise) - Liza Minnelli, Cyril Ritchard, and Vic Damone
13. We Wish the World a Happy Yule - Cast

Click here or here to download!

The Little Drummer Boy - The Ambassador Chorale and Players

Hi! Here's a Christmas album for you. Hopefully nobody has put this one up yet. Except for the title track, all the rest of the songs here are original. This one's a mixture of some silly songs and some rather serious ones as well. Anyway, here it is and I hope you like it!

Here's the track list:

1. The Little Drummer Boy
2. The Twenty-Fifth of December
3. Christmas on the Farm
4. A Little Girl's Flute Song
   
5. Grandfather Clock
6. The Chimney and the Fireplace
7. Christmas Lullaby
8. The Jolly Gent Who Jingles
9. A Doodle-Oodle Christmas Song
10. A Shepherd Boy's Carol
11. The Angels Merry Christmas
12. Christmas Rush

Click here or here to download!

(NOTE: Links have been fixed. The original link wasn't playing "Little Drummer Boy" as the first track.)