"Jingle Bells" - Part 36 - Around the World!

We last left "Jingle Bells" in the capable  hands of Peggy Lee in 1962, backed by Billy May and the Jimmy Joyce Singers. 

We now go back a couple of years to 1958 for the LP "A Christmas to Remember" by the Jimmy Joyce Singers (not credited on the font cover - hmmm...), backed by Billy May on Warner Brothers Records.

A late-1950s LP of Christmas music involving Billy May seems right up my alley, but I don't care for the singing on this. At all. 

The Jimmy Joyce Singers on this album include adults as well as kids and the adults especially seem to be trying too hard to entertain us or something. I don't know.

But, the instrumental backing is just fine, as expected when we see Billy May's name on the label. Is there a way to hear the music but not the singing?

Well, sort of, as there are a couple of instrumental tracks, one of which is the very clever "Jingle Bells Around the World":

I think that's a hidden gem!

You might recall that Billy May played the trumpet solo on Glenn Miller's record of "Jingle Bells" back in 1941!

Billy didn't record a lot of Christmas music under his own name, but he did cut this Mambo-ized version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" for Capitol Records in 1954:

That's a lot of fun and that track has been reissued a zillion times on various compilations since the 1990s.

I always thought it's interesting that the label credits Alvin Stoller with a "vocal" whereas he really just yells out some things, as that's what one does on a mambo record.

In his usual guise, Alvin Stoller was a brilliant drummer who did tons of session work.

Back to "Jingle Bells," there was an earlier record entitled "Jingle Bells Around the World," recorded by George Cates for Coral Records in 1951:

I was actually kind of disappointed by that record, as it's not really all that clever, just really being Tom Mack singing the song in different languages.

George Cates started a long association with Lawrence Welk around this time and the square-ness on this record is evident of such things!

The various language-ness made me think of that old Joe Gumin record from 1931. 

Interesting to note that Joe had recorded an updated version on the small Chord label in 1948:

Kind of fun, but by the late 1940s, definitely just a seasonal novelty.

Billy May saves the day!