Customer Reviews

Hillbilly Holiday

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This is a collection of Christmas songs by country singers. The oldest song is from 1945 and the most recent one is from 1972. This is a fantastic collection full of great performances. Every song on this CD is terrific. Some of my personal favorites include "I'm Gonna Lasso Santa Claus" by Brenda Lee, "Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy" by Buck Owens, "To Heck With Ole Santa Claus" by Loretta Lynn and "Daddy's Drinking Up Our Christmas" by Commander Cody. But, of course, I like all of them. This has been one of my favorite Christmas CDs since 1988 (has it really been 18 years?).

Rhino records did a great service to country fans when they released this collection of rare country Christmas songs that had been unobtainable. Since then some tracks, including those by Brenda Lee and Buck Owens, have been released on CD's by the individual artists, but most have not. Now that this collection is out of print, those tracks that have not been re-issued elsewhere are again hard to find.

Brenda Lee's I'm gonna lasso Santa Claus is a socially-aware song about how Santa discriminates against the poor. Two Buck Owens tracks are featured - his classic Santa looked a lot like Daddy and Christmas time's a-coming - this latter being an original song, not to be confused with the Bill Monroe song of the same title that opens this collection. Bill's song has become a standard on bluegrass Christmas albums.

This collection contains many rarities from (mostly) the fifties and sixties by George Jones (My mom and Santa Claus), Tex Ritter (Christmas carols by the old corral), Ernest Tubb (not his classic Blue Christmas, which is easy to find, but I'll be walking the floor this Christmas), Hank Snow (Reindeer boogie, revived by Trisha Yearwood on her excellent Christmas album, Sweetest gift), Faron Young (I'm gonna tell Santa Claus on you), Loretta Lynn (To heck with ole Santa Claus) and Christmas boogie (Davis sisters).

If you are into country music of the fifties and sixties and you enjoy original Christmas music, it doesn't get better than this. Only Pretty paper (Willie Nelson) and It came upon the might clear (Louvin brothers) are versions of songs that are well known - in Willie's case, the original version. I'm thankful that I bought this when it first came out. I wish you the best of luck finding a copy - or persuading Rhino to re-release it.

This is by far my favorite Christmas CD. Imagine my disappointment to find that it is out of print. (Rhino Records confirmed this). I had about 400 CDs stolen from my home last week, including this one. If anyone knows where I can get this I would be so appreciative.