Customer Reviews

Christmas in the Charts 1920-2004

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book lists the information for every Christmas (or New Year's or Chanukah or winter) song or album that every appeared on the Billboard music charts. And by charts I mean EVERY chart. Information was taken from the Pop charts, the R&B charts, the Country charts, the Jazz charts, the Children's music charts and every other chart that ever appeared in Billboard magazine (including, of course, the actual Christmas music charts). The songs are arranged by both the performers and the song titles. So, for instance you can look up Bing Crosby to find out which of his Christmas singles and albums charted (by the way, the albums listings list all the songs that are on the albums). Or you could look up "White Christmas", to see how many different Christmas albums that song appeared on (the answer is 232, by the way). There is also a color section, which has beautiful reproductions of old Christmas records and their covers. The book is very comprehensive, so since it does exactly what it sets out to do, I am giving it five stars.

Loaded with information, it has to be the Bible of Christmas music.

As a collector and DJ I adore this book. Whitburn's Pop Singles helped me make my oldies collection and I'm just finishing up my Christmas collection using this book. Honestly, I recommend any book put out by Record Research.

When I purchased this book, I expected to know how Christmas songs did in the charts over the years. I found that the singles were just a part of the Christmas Music story. People bought albums for a complete experience of Christmas (Duh!). After reviewing the book, I came to a better understanding of the genre. Typical Whitburn format and outstanding quality. Unless you actually work with the music, you probably wouldn't benefit from this book.

Since I'm one of those kind of people that can listen to Christmas music in the middle of July and feel jolly, I really liked this book. It gives a lot of information. It seems music for Christmas mostly started in the 40's. I'd recommend this book if you're a Christmas music fan.