Wow, I can't believe this is the 100th post about "Jingle Bells!"
We are still more-or-less in contemporary times with my vote for the current King of Christmas - Brian Setzer!
Since the first release by the Brian Setzer Orchestra in 1994, the ex-Stray Cats frontman has released three Christmas studio albums, plus various live albums and DVDs and compilations. He obviously loves Christmas music!
It all got started when the BSO recorded "Jingle Bells" for the soundtrack of the 1996 movie "Jingle All the Way":
That's just a blast!
I didn't see the movie back in the day (still haven't) and didn't pick up the soundtrack album, but I thought I got the soundtrack version on the "Merry Axemas" compilation from 1997:
Obviously it's not the same recording as this one's an instrumental, although the arrangement is very similar.
Brian then re-recorded the vocal version for his first Christmas album "Boogie Woogie Christmas" in 2002:
That sounds a lot like the soundtrack recording, but it has a few differences.
So, for quite some time, I thought that the 2002 recording was the first with a vocal and that the instrumental was on the movie soundtrack.
Luckily, I wasn't particularly hindered as I went through life under that delusion!
I think I eventually caught on when I came across Brian's 1996 video of the soundtrack recording:
That made me research the situation!
I'm guessing he cut the soundtrack vocal version and the instrumental version at the same sessions back in 1996, as both recordings have the same credits, including producer Phil Ramone.
Here's a more recent clip from 2016:
Always sounds great!
In any event, now that I've reached 100 "Jingle Bells" posts with I-don't-even-know-how many-versions in lots of genres, I'm going to branch out a bit!
But, do you have a favorite version of "Jingle Bells" that I may have omitted?
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