As we continue with "Jingle Bells," we come across one of Jo Stafford's main competitors fro the top female vocalist of the nebulous post-big band/pre-rock & roll period: Patti Page!
Patti was extremely popular and prolific recording artist, so it must come as no surprise that she has a number of Christmas songs in her discography.
Her first Christmas LP was the ten-inch "Christmas with Patti Page" on Mercury Records in 1951. It included her version of "Jingle Bells":
The flipside of the 78 from the set was "Christmas Choir":
Patti was a natural for a song like "Christmas Choir" as many of her records featured the new-fangled technique of multi-tracking her voices.
Mercury had fun with the labels, as the "Christmas Choir" label saying the vocal is by "Patti Page, Patti Page, Patti Page, Patti Page" to let us know how many Pattis are on there!
I don't know too much about the logistics, but I don't think just anybody could pull off the overdubbing, so it shows Patti's talent that she was able to sing harmony with herself.
The main competitors of the technique at the time were Les Paul and Mary Ford and we all know what a technical whiz Les was!
I had mentioned before when talking about Mabel Scott's record of "Boogie Woogie Santa Claus" that Patti Page had recorded a version of that sing in 1950 as the incongruous flipside of her mega-hit "The Tennessee Waltz."
Mercury Records apparently thought about it and reissued "The Tennessee Waltz" with a non-holiday flipside. But since they already had "Boogie Woogie Santa Claus," they reissued that in 1951:
I think Patti's version is fine, but I like Mabel's better.
For the flipside of the reissue, they plucked "Christmas Bells" from Patti's Christmas album:
I really like that one a lot and it's long been on my early 1950s holiday playlist!
The original issue of Patti's Christmas album was the ten-inch version shown above, but in 1955 Mercury released an augmented version as a 12-inch album with what I think is a great mid-century modern looking cover:
I totally want to hang out with Patti at a Christmas party there!
Just a note that Patti was about ten years younger than Jo Stafford, so while the Big Band Era was still going on when she started her career and she did sing with Benny Goodman at one point, Patti came to fame as a solo artist with her records on Mercury rather than having made a national reputation as a band singer.
Patti switched from Mercury to Columbia Records in 1964 and recorded a new Christmas album (with a not particularly original title!) for her new label in 1965.
It included a new arrangement of "Jingle Bells":
Patti sounds good, but I can't really say I dig the children's chorus. I like it better when she accompanies herself!
The album yielded this inspirational song:
With a remake of "Christmas Bells" on the flipside:
As with most remakes, I prefer the original, but these newer recordings sound very much like what you would hear in the mid-1960s on the family stereo!
Before we go, we do need to hear "The Tennessee Waltz":
No wonder Miss Page was all the rage!
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