How Many Days Until Christmas Again? - Page 3

The Andy Williams Christmas Album and Merry Christmas (by Andy Williams)

Andy Williams is still out there, singing away. Sometimes I think it's almost unfair how someone becomes successful and then ends up a caricature, but I suppose it's inevitable; even the icons of rock and roll are susceptible to the same effect of the passage of time, and school children today find little, if anything, to like about the rambling of Bob Dylan or the sounds of Led Zepplin or the Rolling Stones. Still, for many folks, singers like Andy Williams are something of a joke, just another easy listening crooner singing "Moon River" to the old folks in his theater in Branson, Missouri. But there's more to his success than that, and these two discs demonstrate Williams at the height of his 1960s era success.

Each disc has twelve songs, and again they are the carols and songs many Americans might remember: "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," "Winter Wonderland," "Christmas Holiday," "Silver Bells," and many more. On Merry Christmas Williams even sings "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music, while on The Andy Williams Christmas Album he offers up a variation on the twelve days of Christmas with "A Song and A Christmas Tree." They're songs that have stood the test of time, and Williams sings them well, if a bit like - well, like a sixties era "pop star" still stuck in the big band/crooner mode. Both are fun additions to the Christmas collection (and for variety's sake, let's remember that a wide selection of Christmas songs is required simply because you have to listen to them from Halloween through New Year's Day - I believe there may even be a federal law mandating that).

The Manhattan Transfer: The Christmas Album

And now for a change of pace: the re-release of a remastered version of The Manhattan Transfer's Christmas Album. The group's fusion of pop and jazz brought them a growing fan base throughout the seventies, and in 1981 they made music history by becoming the first group to win Grammy Awards in both the pop and jazz categories in the same year. Their Christmas Album was originally released in the winter of 1992, and is a very different kind of Christmas music classic. As producer Johnny Mandel writes:

Article Author: W.E. Wallo

W.E. Wallo is a book and movie junkie whose writings have appeared in a variety of print and online publications.

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