In all probability Universal owns the recordings,sans Herb stuff. As for reissuing a various artist album,the logistics are indeed a nightmare. But Tim Neely puts an annual Christmas column in Goldmine and finds tons of budget stuff licensed stuff all over the place. Many retail companies produce custom CDs for sale-a la the Goodyear albums-True Value Hardware is probably the Grandaddy of these-still going strong and appoaching 40 years. As for age of content-you might be surprised at how much material from the '60s shows up on budget packages. Sony,with its wealth of Coniff,Mathis,Andy Williams,etc. is far and away the leader of this stuff. What is common with most of these comps is that they usually use one major company to fill the CD-at ten tracks,who can blame them?One problem is that nobody knows who Pete Jolly is,outside of a small circle of jazz fans,getting older by the day-and yet that track would make any Starbucks Christmas jazz comp sparkle and shine. Liza Minelli or Claudine Longet would turn away many who cannot phathom Christmas songs by them. We Five? A true one-hit wonder and a trivia question for many who lived through the time. Any company using Universal's vault for a Christmas compilation will finds 100s of titles before these few gems would get looked at. As for a reproduction of the original album-which,I believe,was a possiblility a few years ago-the select few who would recognize this and the chance that that it would apppear in a budget bin with tons of other titles thrown together-I just don't think anyone would take the gamble today. And remember,the tracks that could bring a moderate to buy-just as in the original-Herb's material-is not going to be there. The only place I could see this happen would be Collector's Choice,since they have already licensed material from A&M-(e.g.-the Baja Marimba Band,We Five) and I think the Herb material would be the stumbling block again. Really a shame,though. Mac