Spike Jones' Christmas album - Liner notes by Richard C.

[Tony]

This may be old news, but I don't recall it being discussed previously. I just found out that the liner notes for Spike Jones' "Let's Sing a Song of Christmas" on Verve Records were written by none other than Richard Carpenter. Of course, many of us already knew that Jones' 1956 record "Xmas Spectacular" was a big inspiration for the Carpenters' "Christmas Portrait", so the connection with him is familiar. But the discovery of these notes is a surprise. Has anyone here read them?

http://www.vervemusicgroup.com/artist/releases/default.aspx?pid=9714&aid=2840

 

[Rudy]

Thanks for the post! No, I wasn't aware of Richard's contribution to the liner notes. That would make for interesting reading.

Musically, the songs are nicely done (Jones' bands always had top-notch musicians), but they aren't the type of Spike Jones recordings that Jones made his name with back in the 40s. Just wanted to point this out, since these are not the Spike Jones recordings with hiccups, giggles, gun shots, washboards, horse races and plungers that made up the bulk of his well-known catalog. These are more of an instrumental-with-chorus presentation.

For those original Spike Jones recordings, the Rhino 2-CD set, now out of print, is one of the best out there since it was created from metal masters rather than RCA's own reprocessed tapes with fake stereo:

http://www.amazon.com/Musical-Depreciation-Revue-Anthology-Spike/dp/B00000336S

Mel Blanc guests on "Clink, Clink, Another Drink" BTW... And Jones regular Doodles Weaver (who did the horse/car racing songs) is actually the uncle of actress Sigourney Weaver and brother of Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, an NBC executive back in the day.

Enough trivia for one day...

 

[Mr. Guder]

I have a copy of this great album, and the liner notes are indeed by Richard Carpenter. He gives a general summary of Spike Jones' career and describes how the Carpenter family were all big fans of the City Slickers. He mentions how he and his father went to a music store in 1956 and purchased this album and how influential it was when the Carpenters were recording Christmas Portrait. A lot of the songs and specifically a couple of medleys (First Snowfall/Let It Snow in particular) can be traced back to this Spike Jones album. Richard also mentions his fondness for Spike's version of the Nutcracker Suite released in December 1945 (and available on the "Spiked!" cd compilation released on the BMG label c.1994).

Hope this helps,

Peter