For our fiftieth "Jingle Bells" post, we turn to perhaps the most famous version of all: the Singing Dogs!
The original issue of the recording was part of a medley issued on the B-side of a 1955 record on RCA Victor:
Interesting to hear "Jingle Bells" in its original context!
The A-side, "Oh! Susanna" was a hit and actually hit number 22 on the "Billboard" singles chart!
Here's that record:
The story goes that Danish ornithologist Carl Weismann would record bird calls and sometimes he'd inadvertently get dogs barking on his recordings. He spliced those together to make it seem like they were singing and teamed up with record producer Don Charles and the rest was history!
Since that record was successful a follow-up was definitely in order, so another single was released in 1956. Here are both sides of that one:
Pretty fun!
Now, ordinarily that would be that, but "Jingle Bells" took on a life of its own, so in 1971, RCA Victor released a longer version of "Jingle Bells" without the circus sound effects:
And it remains a holiday staple!
You have to dig the old school nature of actual dog barks being spliced together back in the day before anyone could do anything with a computer!
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