Jingle All The Way

The Brian Setzer Orchestra has established a new standard by which holiday albums are judged. They struck a major chord with audiences everywhere and catapulted the super-charged 18 piece Big Band into a Christmas franchise via their annual sold out holiday tour. This magnificent collection is a combination of the very best tracks from their two holiday releases, paired with two previously unreleased tracks plus two seasonal selections from his 2007 materpiece Wolfgang's Big Night Out.

A rhetorical question: what makes a great Christmas album? We know all or most of the chestnuts, both commercial and religious. The Drummer Boy flams, someone's dreaming white, and another will be home in their dreams. The annual marathon Yuletide programs rely heavily on the tried and true with an occasional novelty thrown in. Classical purists hit up the legit pantheon. With this album, a capella vocal group, Accent adds a Who's Who of world-class arrangers (Jorge Calandrelli, Nan Schwartz, Elliot Deutsch and including group members James Rose and Simon Åkesson), celebrated musicians (including Arturo Sandoval), and takes the obligatory jazz Holiday album to an invitingly unique level the appeal of which is infectious.

A compilation of 46 outtakes, alternate versions and live recordings. Comprised of recordings from live shows at Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, California (December 1963) and the BBC Playhouse Theatre, London (November 1964), as well as studio session outtakes, Keep an Eye on Summer - The Beach Boys Sessions 1964 is a snapshot of the Beach Boys in the early 1960s.

"A Ding Dong Dandy Christmas" is nuts all the way through. There is at least one other Three Suns Christmas record, but nothing approaches this one. Santa's sleigh is hauling fast with this all-uptempo platter of holiday mayhem. And for a stocking present, there is an extra track on each side.

Gene Autry was the first of the Singing Cowboys, renowned as a pioneering figure in country music for his performances of country-flavoured songs in the western movies of the 1930s and ‘40s in which he starred. He wrote, co-wrote and performed many of the best-known songs associated with the particular style of easy-going cowboy country that evolved in parallel to the likes of Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family. He was also particularly famous for his introducing some of the best-known Christmas songs, which were also among his biggest hits in the latter era of his chart career.