The Anita Kerr Singers

Anita Kerr is easily the most remarkable and accomplished female musician of the Space Age Pop era, yet she barely rates a mention in most pop music reference books. In the mid-1950s and '60s, the Anita Kerr Singers were one of the most popular group of backup vocalists in all of country music, appearing on countless recordings by renowned Nashville artists. Along with the Jordanaires, her group, the Anita Kerr Singers, were the seminal backing vocal unit of the era, and it is estimated that at their early-'60s peak, they graced fully one-quarter of all of the records coming out of Nashville's studios.

"We Dig Mancini!" has a measure of notoriety unrelated to its musical merits because it won the Grammy for Best Performance by a Vocal Group over the Beatles' "Help!" in 1965, making it a target of derision for those who see it as a symbol of the industry's eagerness to embrace a square vocal group over an adventurous rock & roll act.

Having made an enormous contribution to the establishment of the Nashville Sound and the modernisation of country music, Anita Kerr felt the need to expand her artistic horizons and in 1965, made the move from Nashville to Hollywood. She wanted to work with different people, to get her own songs recorded, to play jazz, to conduct an orchestra, to take on more ambitious and more varied projects musically, and to form a vocal group which, rather than be confined to studio sessions, might also appear in club and concert settings. Her arrival on the West Coast was well timed. She had just fought off The Beatles to win a Grammy for the album We Dig Mancini and she was quickly able to assemble a stellar Anita Kerr Singers (B.J Baker: alto, Gene Merlino: tenor; Bob Tebow: bass, with Anita herself as soprano and soloist) and secure a contract more tailored to her needs with Warner Brothers. The result over the next two years, were these five superbly fashioned albums.

RCA's wildly successful Living Stereo series spawned a number of ensembles with Living in their titles; the two that folks remember these days are The Living Strings and The Living Voices. Here's two holiday albums featured on this twofer that she released with The Living Voices remain treasured among Christmas music aficionados for their ornate orchestration, innovative arrangements, and, most of all, sweeping stereo sound. The first, 1962's "Sing Christmas Music", had actually come out on the Living Stereo imprint in 1959 as "Christmas Surprises" from The Ralph Hunter. The second album, 1965's "The Little Drummer Boy", featured the legendary Anita Kerr Singers and production by Anita Kerr herself.

'The Last Mile Home for Christmas' is one of two 2018 spectacular sets: a balance of sacred and secular songs by leading artists of the 1940s, '50s, and '60s that can be added to Jasmine's collection of great Christmas compilations. Here are large segments of tracks by Pat Boone, Fred Waring, Sammy Kaye, Billy Eckstine, and The Andrews Sisters.

This Hi-Res collection of Roy Orbison's recordings features the following albums: "Lonely And Blue" (1961), "Crying" (1962), "In Dreams" (1963), "Oh! Pretty Woman" (1964).

By 1968 there was a growing consensus that something had gone horribly wrong with the American dream. With urban riots, Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, and ever-climbing divorce rates, the American way of life was under scrutiny from all sides. The nation’s youth had loudly made their feelings clear, but now the older, pre-Beatles generations began to look at the country and wonder what the hell was happening. This album includes rare classics (the Beach Boys’ ‘4th Of July’), lost masterpieces (Roy Orbison’s seven-minute ‘Southbound Jericho Parkway’) and forgotten gems by some of the biggest names in the business (Elvis Presley’s ‘Clean Up Your Own Back Yard’).

Burl Ives parlayed his talent as a folksinger into a wide-ranging career as a radio personality and stage and screen actor. He made his Broadway debut in the Rodgers & Hart musical The Boys from Syracuse in 1938, had his own radio show by 1940, and made his major-label recording debut in 1944. His first charting single was 1948's "Blue Tail Fly" with the Andrews Sisters, and he soon took traditional folk tunes like "Lavender's Blue (Dilly Dilly)" and "On Top of Old Smoky" to the U.S. Top 20.