Over the past few holiday seasons here at “The Daily Vault,”
\nI’ve occasionally pulled out an album which I grew up with, and I
\nconsider to be a true holiday standard. I’ve talked about the music
\nboxes of Rita Ford, and the jazz stylings of Vince Guaraldi; in
\ntime, I’ll talk about the Harry Simeone Chorale… that is, once I
\nget an idea of what the actual track listing of
\nThe Little Drummer Boy<\/i> is. (I’ve seen several copies of that
\nalbum, all of them with different track listings. It’s enough to
\nmake a grown man cry.)<\/p>\n
Johnny Mathis is an artist who falls into my persoanl “holiday
\nstandard” definition. When I was a little boy, my mother had two of
\nMathis’s Christmas albums in the house –
\nThe Sound Of Christmas<\/i> (which is long out of print) and
\nMerry Christmas<\/i>, Mathis’s 1958 collection with Percy Faith
\nand his Orchestra.<\/p>\n
What’s interesting about this album is not that it’s still
\navailable 42 years after its original release… but that it can
\nhave so much material which still seems fresh next to material that
\nhasn’t aged as well.<\/p>\n
This particular album will probably be forever remembered for
\nfour songs. The first, “Winter Wonderland,” is the one I’ll always
\nremember when I think about Christmas. Faith’s orchestral
\narrangement, especially at the bridge, is worthy of the highest
\npraise. Likewise, “Sleigh Ride” is still a lot of fun to listen to.
\n“The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas To You)” is delivered with
\nlove and tenderness, as if Mathis were singing one of his own
\nsongs. And Mathis’s version of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas”
\nprobably still makes eyes well up.<\/p>\n
Yet
\nMerry Christmas<\/i> hits a few ice patches along the way. The
\ndrawn-out version of “The First Noel” was probably very noteworthy
\nback in a time when Christmas wasn’t a marketing department’s
\nultimate wet dream; now, hearing the song performed in its entirety
\nmakes it feel a lot longer than the time it takes for the track to
\ncomplete. Likewise, “It Came Upon The Midnight Clear,” “Silver
\nBells” and “Blue Christmas” are delivered with a melancholy backing
\narrangement, making these tracks sound a little lazy. I’m not
\nsaying that Mathis or Faith should have embraced the rock style
\nwhich was still in its infancy back then, but “Winter Wonderland”
\nand “Sleigh Ride” had exciting arrangements. Why couldn’t some of
\nthese tracks have been given that kind of treatment?<\/p>\n
So does this mean I don’t like
\nMerry Christmas<\/i>? Of course not; it’s still very much a
\nholiday standard in my book, and faithfully I dust it off each
\nChristmas and give it a listen, especially when I sit wrapping
\ngifts. But with each passing year, I find this album gets a little
\nolder-sounding… and, for a timeless standard, that’s not a good
\nthing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6513],"rating":[5614],"class_list":["post-36935","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-johnny-mathis","rating-rating-c-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36935"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}