Customer Reviews

God Rest Ye Merry Jazzmen

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4 star:		(1)
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Buying Christmas albums is always a crap shoot, and if you like jazz, as I do, it's doubly perilous. I bought this album back in the '80s when it was first issued on vinyl, and I'm amazed that I still play it around the holidays after all these years. The main thing is that these renditions aren't treacly or contrived or sentimental -- as you might guess from the artists involved, they're serious, entertaining, sometimes funky takes on familiar standards ... something jazz has always handled well. (I'll never forget the first time I heard a jazz rendition of the Flintstones' TV theme song, but that's another story.) My hands-down favorite is Paquito D'Rivera and John Miller's duet of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen". It's as spare as any jazz composition I've ever heard (and not especially long, either) but also one of the most unexpectedly moving and soulful. While it departs from the original music for some typical jazz improvisation, with Miller rumbling through a brief opening solo that betrays nothing at all of the "Gentlemen" to come, the full performance manages somehow to respect the solemn melody -- even the asceticism -- of the English carol. Which is quite an achievement, in its own weird little way.

This is my all-time favorite Christmas album and I heartily recommend it to everyone. A congenital Scrooge, this record melts my heart every year.

Something is a bit odd about the release date, though. Both the CD and this page list the original release date as 1981, but this was also my Grandfather's favorite Christmas record. He died in 1962, yet there is no acknowledgement of the original release date on the CD case or liner notes. I can't even find it on the internet. Weird, huh? Guess I'm a geek about these things, but it sorta feels like someone's taking credit for someone else's work.

Anyway, whenever it was recorded, it's a brilliant album and you should buy it immediately.

I'm a jazz neophyte and probably always will be, but this is a great album. The old standards are given new life by true legends (including a very young Wynton Marsalis). You'll want to play it all year 'round...