Thursday, January 27, 2022

"Jingle Bells" - Part 97 - Bubbly!


As we continue with "Jingle Bells," it's not too much of a jump from Canadian singer Diana Krall to Canadian crooner Michael Bublé!




He's joined by the Puppini Sisters on his version of "Jingle Bells" from his 2011 "Christmas" album on Reprise:



That's a lot of fun and it's obviously based on the famous 1943 record by Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters, down to Michael slipping in the "Oh, we'll have a lot of fun" à la Bing!

Here's a studio clip with Michael talking about the influence


:
I remember when this album came out that some Christmas purists (snobs, actually) were skeptical that a popular modern singer could record a solid holiday album and they were surprised it was good.

But those of us who were familiar with Michael Bublé's earlier work (and are not snobs anyway) knew he could handle a standard and were not surprised at the quality of the album!

Michael had actually released a Christmas EP back in 2003 (as Diana Krall had done in 1998) which featured his first version of "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!":


That's a great showcase for his way with a standard!

As for the Puppini Sisters, the retro trio had recorded their own version of "Jingle Bells" for Verve in 2006:



That's also fun. The obvious inspiration seems to be the Andrews Sisters, but they must like the Boswell Sisters too!



That single was later followed by the Sisters' full-length album "Christmas With The Puppini Sisters" in 2010, which featured them retro-izing a variety of Christmas songs, including this take an often-heard modern classic:




That's a blast!

And Michael Bublé actually had a unique ballad arrangement of that song on his album:



For the record and since no one's asking, I do think the original by Mariah Carey is played a lot, but I like it, so more power to her!

Back to "Jingle Bells" and Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters and whatnot, Barry Manilow teamed with Exposé back in 1990 for an even more faithful version of that arrangement on his "Because It's Christmas" album on Arista:



I think that's fun too! How can you go wrong?

For completists, I'll point out that the Puppini Sisters sang the Bublé arrangement with singer/entertainment reporter Rory O'Connor on their 2020 "Christmas at Home" special and also overdubbed vocals with the London Symphony Orchestra onto the original Crosby/Andrews recording for the 2019 album "Bing at Christmas."

No comments:

Post a Comment

Popular (For Some Reason) Posts: