"Jingle Bells" - Part 75 - Mouse Party!

Sticking with kiddie offerings, we come across a version of "Jingle Bells" included on "Mickey Mouse's Christmas Party," an early 1950s release on Golden Records:

That is a lot of fun with "Jingle Bells" featuring Mickey's and Donald's voices as provided by their official theatrical portrayers, Jimmy MacDonald and Clarence Nash, respectively!

And throw in a little bit of a story and a cameo from Cinderella!

But wait... there's more!

Although those two sides were released as a stand-alone single, they were also part of a larger four-record set issued by Golden Records that expands the story to include additional characters and songs:

That's really a lot of sun and you can see 1950s kids having a blast with their little record players!

I like the meta moment of Goofy telling us to flip the record over as well as us listening to a record of Donald and the gang listening to a record!

The set also had a couple of fold-out pages that show even more characters:

The first page challenges us to name all the characters and I do spot Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket, Figaro, Gus Goose, Li'l Bad Wolf, Dumbo, Timothy Q. Mouse, and Bongo who are from stories not mentioned on the record.

The mashup of characters from different stories gets especially interesting with the inclusion of the mice from Cinderella tagging along. Mickey and Minnie are mice, of course, but not at all similar to Jaq and Gus!

As I frequently mention, the kiddie record labels often repackaged and reissued their recordings and the single and multi-record versions were reissued in 1955 with the imprint of the "Mickey Mouse Club" TV show.

Here are the sleeve and labels for the single:

And the sleeve for the set:

I think I have all of that straight!

Adding to the intrigue, there was also a single release of "Santa's Toy Shop Song" and "Santa's Toy Shop" on Golden Records in 1950, billed as a Disney item, but not including the famous characters:

That's a fun little record on its own. Maybe predates the Mickey material?

It also had a tie-in Little Golden Book:

Now, of course, I do need to talk about the two "pop" songs that were included in the set!

The song "Jing-a-Ling, Jing-a-Ling" actually has a Disney pedigree, as it's based on a melody from the 1950 Oscar-winning True-Life Adventure "Beaver Valley." It's especially noticeable when a bunch of otters are frolicking around!

However it wound up being adapted into a seasonal tune, there were a bunch of recordings of the song in 1950, including this RCA Victor release teaming the Fontane Sisters with accordionist Dick Contino and backed by Hugo Winterhalter:

And I know "The Christmas Symphony" from Perry Como's 1950 recording on RCA Victor:

Perry gets a chance to sing the song at a much slower tempo, as he had the whole ten inches to work with, but Mickey and the gang only had six!

A lot of fun with lots of characters and songs, with Mitch Miller on hand to wrap it all up in a great package!