🎄 Holidays! AOTW: Various Artists, "Something Festive"

[rmos]

I just bought a couple of CDs from Dusty Groove:

"Snow-Get Easy Christmas Collection" from Universal-Germany that has among its 24 tracks, Burt Bacharach's "Bell That couldn't Jingle" and Claudine Longet's "Snow."

and
"Cool Yule-Swinging Sounds of Christmas" from the UK that has Pete Jolly's "Most Wonderful Time of the Year." It has 22 tracks and maybe a bootleg, as it's on a CD-R, and some tracks sound cleaned up from vinyl.


Both discs are excellent, but are a little on the expensive side.

 

[RichardWarner]

Annually, from 1961 into the 1970s, Goodyear Tire Stores sold Columbia Christmas anthologys called "The Great Songs of Christmas." Each LP, which sold for $1.00, consisted of songs developed while Mitch Miller was head of A&R for Columbia.

It was under Miller's direction that those great Andy Williams, Robert Goulet, Doris Day and other classic holiday songs were recorded. For Columbia, the Goodyear samplers were a way to expose record buying to the tunes featured on the artists' LPs...and for Goodyear, the budget-priced samplers were a great way to build traffic into their tire stores.

Consumers have always mixed up the Goodyear and Goodrich brands... (Remember the TV commercials spoofing the "Goodrich blimp"?) so I figure plenty of Goodrich stores had customers coming in, asling for the Christmas LPs. Finally, their marketing people acted on complaints from store managers that THEY have something to sell, as well...

So Goodrich approached A&M, which was still in its days as a hip little MOR/jazz label. Goodrich commissioned the LP...gave enough of a budget for three songs to be recorded and the remaining to be repurposed from already existing cuts.

The experiment probably wasn't the success that Goodrich hoped it would be, because unlike its competitor, they stopped after volume one.

 

[rmos]

Actually, B.F. Goodrich was offering Christmas samplers starting in 1964. Titled "For A Musical Merry Christmas", they were produced by RCA Victor's premium records division, and offered both in mono (PRM) and stereo (PRS). They stopped in 1968 (IIRC) and picked up again with the "Something Festive" LP.
I remember going into our local Goodrich store (in Blue Island, Illinois) and buying them in the mid '60s. I was around 9 or 10 years old at the time, and I also remember the store guys laughing when this little kid came in to buy the record (and asking for the stereo version, as my dad told me to do!)

 

[henryjg]

The Sergio Mendes "Christmas Song" track from Something Festive appears on a new various artists Christmas CD called "Yulesville" on the Shout label.

 

[Harry]

The Sergio Mendes "Christmas Song" track from Something Festive appears on a new various artists Christmas CD called "Yulesville" on the Shout label.

Yep. There's a separate thread on that elsewhere. Unfortunately the track was edited to repeat Sergio's middle instrumental part twice. It sounds funny.

Harry
...disappointed with that one, online...

 

[jfiedler17]

"Something Festive!" has been our Christmas-music-of-choice in my family for as far back as I can remember, and why the album still isn't on CD comes up pretty often in our house, so I'm hoping someone can answer this question for me, as we've been wondering about it for years.
Exactly who owns the rights to "Something Festive!"? I know the album was an A&M release commissioned by BF Goodrich, and I'm assuming the tracks themselves were in the legal ownership of A&M. (Hence why, I'm assuming - according to what I've read on this site - a CD reissue of an A&M Christmas album containing many of the same tracks almost came to be?) But are the rights to the ALBUM owned by A&M/Universal or BF Goodrich? Are legal difficulties due to it originally being an A&M-through-BF-Goodrich release rather than a straight A&M release what's most holding up any chance of "Something Festive!" being re-issued?
If anyone has any info on the topic, I'd love to know!

 

[gmonet]

Yes, thank you for the heads up..sadly, when I got rid of all 3,600 vinyls I got rid of the Technics 1100A too. So..I guess I could get a local radio station to re-record this disc..I'll try it. Thank you for your kind response! gmonet.

 

[Rudy]

If you had a turntable around, this one seems easy enough to find used for a reasonable (under $5) price. I've got about four of these myself, and between them there's enough clean tracks to make a good CD transfer out of them.

 

[Dave]

Liza Minnelli: Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy -- This one I'm not sure of -- I don't have much in the way of Liza Minnelli, so I don't know if it's ever seen the light of day on CD.

This tune was on her debut A&M album, SP4141.

--Mr Bill

I once did have a RAGGEDY ANN & RAGGEDY ANDY album, which was a Children's LP; think it was based on an Animated TV Special. And Liza Minnelli sang "Raggedy Ann & Raggedy Andy" on there, too. I remember one song on it (which of course, I don't remember the name of) that had a catchy chorus, I think sung by a children's choir, that began and ended the LP.

The LP got a lil' too Raggedy to play or even keep, so I actually sold it for, luckily, more than I bought it for.

Dave

 

[Mike Blakesley]

But are the rights to the ALBUM owned by A&M/Universal or BF Goodrich

Goodrich probably does not own any of it. The Herb Alpert material is owned by Herb. Some of the rest of the material may be owned by Universal, but the bulk of it is probably owned by some publishing company, in some cases with 3 or 4 owners having bought and re-sold it since the album was first released.

If you think about it, it's very rare for various artist compilations (other than movie soundtracks) to ever be re-issued. The original issuing label pays for the rights to the songs for one go-around, and when the record is through selling, it goes into the cut-out bins and is never seen again. For such a package to be reissued, all the rights to all the songs would have to be renegotiated again with all the current owners. It would be too much trouble and expense in most cases to make it worthwhile, especially for a Christmas album that, unfortunately, doesn't exactly fit into today's mold of holiday music (Mannheim Steamroller and that kind of thing).

 

[jimac51]

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

 

[Rudy]

This makes one appreciate Rhino's box sets and the work that goes into compiling some of them. Reportedly the tough tracks to get for the Bacharach box set were (yep) the Herb Alpert and Carpenters tracks. Glad they were all included though.

 

[gmonet]

Absolutely Rudy, and the fact that they would modify the original as I have heard mentioned is a bit much..they did that on the original You Are the Sunshine of My Life by Stevie Wonder adding some brass to the intro..and everytime I hear it I say..what were they thinking? But the new trend is we can always fix it in the mix. I bidded on that collection on Ebay..if I get it for the $6.5 I will be happy, but won't go much higher, I only want the A&M vinyl! Thanks again.

 

[Rudy]

With Stevie's song, didn't they add the brass to the single mix only? (And therefore, on every subsequent compilation since then?) I'm trying to remember my original album version of this song. Without brass, if I remember correctly. Been awhile since I pulled those out. It was on Talking Book, I believe.

 

[gmonet]

With Stevie's song, didn't they add the brass to the single mix only? (And therefore, on every subsequent compilation since then?) I'm trying to remember my original album version of this song. Without brass, if I remember correctly. Been awhile since I pulled those out. It was on Talking Book, I believe.

Yes! I was almost shocked when I heard the difference..like where did that come from. But obviously someone thought it made a more "danceable" sound or something.