Christmas Swing

With five discs and 100 tracks, this holiday set is expansive and interesting. Some of the sides will be familiar to nearly everyone – classics like Bing Crosby's version of “White Christmas” and Perry Como's “Winter Wonderland” pop up in the stores and all over the radio dial during the season’s festivities – but other selections here are fairly rare and give things a depth that a lot of holiday collections don’t reach…

Sister Swing is a fresh, exciting trio of singers which has captured the Big Band Swing era and brought it to the 21st century. Heavily influenced by groups like the Andrews Sisters, the Boswell Sisters, and Manhattan Transfer, Sister Swing brings a new sound to an old style. The three ladies, Leigh Hannah, Valerie Marston and Paula Chafey-Merrill, genuinely have a good time on stage and that transcends to their audience. An evening with Sister Swing will take you back in time to an era of glamour, romance and innocence.

A nostalgic and varied Christmas compilation, not only for the holidays, either danceable or dreamy with a mixture of swing and jazz, rhythm & blues and crooner pop! Bear Family's latest edition of 'Season's Greetings' for 2020! Nostalgic Christmas with 31 Lindy Hop-Jitterbug-Boogie-Jive and Easy Listening rarities of the years 1940-1967! Among them the title song Christmas Ball, as well as the B-side of the rare 1951 Coral single of the Georgie Auld Orchestra with the great singer Bill Darnel, never before on CD! Knuckles O'Toole & The Brigadiers version of Jingle Bells is also included, as well as New Year's goose bumps classic Auld Lang Syne in the worn version by Guy Lombardo, and the famous version of the classic Sleigh Ride in the interpretation of orchestra leader Leroy Anderson, also known from the movie 'Polar Express'! Besides The Andrews Sisters there are more ladies with their great voices, above all the stunning Dinah Washington, the crooner lady Dorothy Collins and last but not least Kay Martin, who makes it quite slippery and erotic.

A rare find, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy's release Whatchu' Want for Christmas gives the listener a peek back @ one of todays original, 'classically fresh' and unique swing bands. This album is a mix of early recordings of their current hits, You and Me and the Bottle Makes Three Tonight (baby), Go Daddy-O, The Jungle Book favorite, I Wanna be Just Like You and, three Christmas tunes that promise to get you in a swingin' holiday mood. If there is one thing this album lacks it is the presence and "finishing touch" Josh Levy (piano, vocals) and Karl Hunter (alto, tenor & baritone saxophones, clarinet) provide in the band's current self titled release. Amidst all of the '90's swing' being thrown our way, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy offers an original yet classic swing sound that will leave you Jumpin' Jack… Go-Daddy-O!!

With The Alleycats! swingin' holiday classics with big band arrangements.
This oldies quartet formed in 1987 while attending Fullerton College in California. Inspired by 1950s doo-wop sounds, The Alley Cats - Royce Reynolds (bass), Todd Dixon (baritone), Andre Peck (tenor), and Armando "Mando" Fonseco (baritone) - landed their first singing job at Disneyland as part of Disney's "Blast to the Past" show in 1988 and 1989. John O'Campo and Terron Brooks joined the group in 1997 after the departure of founding members Peck and Dixon. The group went on to do television and radio appearances, including a promotional gig with Sunkist Paradise Fruit Juice and a performance on the Arsenio Hall Show…

Christmas Jump & Jive is one of two holiday-themed compilations included in Rod McKuen's series "Songs That Won The War." This collection is sourced primarily from radio broadcasts and transcriptions. It is a strange package: many of the selections are not holiday tunes; many are not from the 1940s, much less the war years; and some of the track titles are dubious at best: the "Quiet Christmas Riot" attributed to Buddy Rich is plain old "Quiet Riot," and Benny Goodman's "Jingle Bell Jive" is the 1935 "Jingle Bells" recorded for Victor. But buried in the filler are some rare gems: a breakneck broadcast version of Duke Ellington's "Ring Dem Bells"; a rare parody of "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer" by the equally rare pairing of Bing Crosby and Ella Fitzgerald; and a broadcast performance of Nat King Cole's "Mrs. Santa Claus."

Lay in a good round of cosmopolitans, ditch the rug and get ready to turn 2004 into 1944 with these retro swing kings. In an album where horns are king, the Big Bad Voodoo Daddy Christmas disc will please fans and remind the elders that the big band sound has not left the building. While singer Scotty Morris is a bit too mannered at times, he does an adequate job of covering the Yule's coolest, including "Blue Christmas," "Merry Christmas Baby" and "Is Zat You Santa Claus?" and can write a seasonal tune worth returning to every year: Highlights include Morris' own "Rockabilly Christmas," the timeless "Christmas Time in Tinsel Town" and "Last Night (I Went Out with Santa Claus)." But with the Daddy's baritone sax master Karl Hunter blazing and the rhythm section fanning the yule log on "Jingle Bells (Cha Cha)," this might be the disc to jumpstart your holiday party – even before Thanksgiving dinner gets in the oven.