Nothing changes in our world, if you do not really dig into the little things - snow is falling from the sky, the same white and cold, as always, the winter blizzard is angry.
And we are having fun: in spite of the burden of worries, we are rushing with all our strength to the cherished milestone - to the chimes, to the New Year and new happiness.
Another thing is whether happiness is new?
But this is a philosophical question that has nothing to do with today's conversation.
With full confidence I can tell you one thing, dear and adored readers: music, good music for the kindest holiday of the year - it is always familiar to the point of impossibility, and yet new.
This is how we humans are arranged - we love to return to good times and pleasant memories, idealizing, endowing with symbols of magic everything that is dear to our hearts.
Vinyl.
Even crackling.
Even in shabby envelopes.
All these bears, toys, sweets and lollipops are slides.
Angels with shining trumpets, stars of Bethlehem, northern lights, deer in sparkling sledges ...
Photo of the stars of the era of energy and excesses.
The luxury of the impossible and unattainable.
The touch of a needle to a disc, a glass of champagne, candles and flickering lights on the tree ...
Year after year.
We go back to the past to create the future.
And also - music, the best remedy for the blues of the icy breath of time.
Therefore, like a year ago, I present a release of time-tested, not killed by mothballs, surviving the kitsch and glamor of new times - New Year's and Christmas records.
June Christy - This Time Of Year
, 1961 album, released via Capitol Records. Incredibly beautiful Christmas Heart and Merriest. June Christie - a little "cold", with a hoarse voice, calm, confident manner of singing. June is considered undeservedly underrated by both time and fans. She was one of the divas of the post-war cool jazz - the era of thinking about eternity and fleetingness of life, and meanwhile, the ability to appreciate the beauty and fragile appeal of the moment is heard in many of her songs. Perfect and nostalgic solemn - everything you need for December evenings of waiting ...
Dean Martin - A Winter Romance
, 1959, Capitol Records.
Brilliantly crafted I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm, Baby, It's Cold Outside!
Dean Martin, the coolest American cruner, of course, of Italian descent, boxer and bully, romantic and incorrigible playboy.
It was rumored about him, not without reason, that in his entire singing career he had not been in the studio for a single day, as well as on stage, sober.
He was called a great master of cool jazz, Elvis Presley admired him - never hiding his imitation of Martin in some songs.
Christmas, New Year's bustle - Dean's element.
Relaxed and pacified by life, he watches our bustle from heaven with some amazement and sadness, as if saying: "It's time to stop, take a sip of something warming - and to hell with all the worries!"
Dean Martin - The Dean Martin Christmas Album
, 1966, Reprise Records, even more mature and unbearably languid Martin. Luxurious Blue Christmas and even somewhere delightfully cheeky I'll Be Home For Christmas - you can easily imagine Dean thinking about whether he really should go to the family hearth of love or meet Christmas in a completely different place.
Peggy Lee - Happy Holiday
, 1965 album, Capitol Records, exemplary of exceptional style in Winter Wonderland and Happy Holiday. Swing, jazz and in general - an elegant mixture of everything with everything. The Little Drummer Boy, from which he freezes in his chest and wants to look at the lights of heaven flickering in the frosty haze. Peggy Lee is the brightest vocal star in Benny Goodman's King of Swing Orchestra. The refinement of musical phrases (she is not only a singer, but also an actress, composer, lyricist), always an unexpected and fresh reading of the most ancient classics. If a person is destined to become a master of his craft, you will not lose this, you will not exchange it for life. A true delight during the winter celebrations.
The Ventures - The Ventures' Christmas Album
, 1965th, Dolton Records, the sweetest record, subtle, even sparing (for such a time of year) humor - among the 12 Christmas standards you will find hidden, as if on the branches of a Christmas tree, all kinds scraps of hits, allusions to well-known songs and playfully played out visits to conquer the heights of rock. Ventures have always had one important and rare feature in the music show business - sincere self-irony. Fantastically cool made by Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer, Jingle Bell Rock and White Christmas! That, it would seem, what else can be squeezed out of this? It turns out you can. Dancing, screaming children, exploding firecrackers, Santa Claus and Snow Maiden with a bottle of champagne! And don't forget to grab some playful carnival costumes.
Lena Horne - Merry from Lena
, 1966 album, United Artists, with the perfect and sparkling voice of the great singer Jingle All the Way, The Christmas Song, What Are You Doing New Year's Eve? It is important to understand: the mixing of blood here is such that you can't even imagine - Lina Horn combined the genes of American Indians and African slaves. Her character, most of all similar to a pocket atomic bomb, suited few people and when. But she managed to build both destiny and career, was friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, was listed as a "convinced red" and always remained an exceptionally worthy person and a stunning beauty. The magic of jazz and vocals. An exceptional orchestra. Ten out of ten.
Ray Charles - The Spirit Of Christmas
, 1985, Columbia Records, just the end of the world from Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer alone. This is the same Ray, who all his life tried to reconcile whites with blacks and everyone with everyone. This is his Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music, which does not let music critics sleep even today, depriving them of peace, appetite and sleep. This is an explosion of a firecracker warehouse at a traveling fair, this is a glass of icy prosecco that has fallen from a lovely handle and picked up by a manly hand a centimeter from the marble floor. It! .. It just needs to be listened to. Brilliant and mesmerizing. Painful and voluptuous. Bravo!!!
Brenda Lee - Merry Christmas From Brenda Lee
, 1964, Decca Records, and no means will erase from our memory the forever cinematic Rockin 'Around The Christmas Tree and Jingle Bell Rock.
You yourself know what kind of film we are talking about.
Brenda Lee, a little girl who conquered the whole world at the age of ten and received the well-deserved title Little Miss Dynamite for her unusually powerful, rockable voice and singing style.
Happy.
Finding and not losing herself.
The owner of all possible titles and regalia.
True to her roots.
By the way, on December 11, Brenda Lee has a birthday - congratulations, wish you good health and invariably delight us with wonderful records!
Elvis Presley - Elvis' Christmas Album
, 1957th, RCA Victor Records, Elvis's third studio album and the first Christmas in all musical history - in the style of rock and roll and in an incredible mixture of genres - the first side of rock and pop standards, the second - spiritual chants. Here atomic Santa Claus Is Back in Town, Blue Christmas, Santa Bring My Baby Back (To Me), here, cleverly disguised as America's cruners (but no!) White Christmas, first performed by Bing Crosby (just Bing's calling card) and I'll Be Home for Christmas, the legal domain of Mr. Perry Como and Mr. Frank Sinatra. Elvis, sneaking into the high music society "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year", crowds both of them. It was this album that finally put America into a stupor and brought down the last obstacles on Presley's path to the top of show business. It was this album that was banned more than others,beat and crumbled on live TV, but ... We love him so much. He's so warm and homey. Elvis is so touching and sweet in his boyish spontaneity ... Something stronger, my dears. And in relation to glasses, and in relation to hugs. Very. Good. Plate.
To the gallery page
Connie Francis - Christmas In My Heart
, 1959, MGM Records, with the purest, transparent, like frosty skies, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Adeste Fidelis, Silent Night ... Italian, born in America, she still competes with divas of our time for the right to be called the most successful pop singer of all time.
Connie's voice is a meditative trance, immersion and dissolution in eternity, a happy opportunity to break out of the whirlwind of life - at least for the duration of the album's sound ... Incredible, touching, piercing.
December 12, Connie Francis celebrates her birthday.
Let's wish her success in everything - is it too much?
Eddie Dunstedter - Christmas Candy
, a unique album from 1965 in every sense, was recorded on Capitol Records. Eddie Dunstedter, composer and organist, who has managed to create a space of mystical, magical and magical sound of the most famous Christmas standards. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, Jingle Bells Bossa Nova, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow !, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (you can safely list all 11 tracks) - it's like a box with multi-colored candies, with delicious candies of all colors (and hence the name of the album) - there you were, but you are no longer there - you fly between the stars with a cup of hot cocoa and purr quietly under your breath a song. There is a warm scarf on the neck, mittens on the legs ... What else is needed for happiness on the glorious days of December?
Guy Lombardo And His Royal Canadians - Jingle Bells
, 1956, Decca Records.
Without exception, all 12 standards of the album sound exclusively.
Brothers Guy and Carmen Lombardo for America are a symbol of the embodied New Year, just like that (although, of course, Christmas too) - for several decades, first clinging to radios, and then to television screens, tens of millions of Americans greeted the coming year with the chime of the clock and to the incredible in its strength and depth performance of Auld Lang Syne - the anthem of winter celebrations, the anthem of an ancient and so reliable friendship ... How naive and fragile that world was.
It remains exactly the same now.
I will warn you - this is the album that Auld Lang Syne is not on.
But a little patience, a couple of clicks ...
And the whole world is yours.
Like all songs and melodies of New Year and Christmas celebrations.
Listen to good music.
And may under your spruce be exactly the gift that is more necessary and more important than other others!
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.