Customer Reviews

Merry Christmas

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This lovely mix of classic Christmas music set me back on my heels the first time I heard it. I was six years old again looking out the picture window at the night snowfall, Mom's Christmas tree twinkling in the dark. What a feeling of calm I get every time I hear this CD.

Some of the most beautiful Christmas music I've ever heard. Put this in your CD player, turn down the lights and light the Christmas tree. Share a cup of cocoa with your special someone and experience the full effect. Extremely romantic!

Exquisite in the portrayal of some of the Christmas music I grew up with. You will not often get the chance to hear something like this.

I too grew up with this exceptional holiday classic and while we must always allow for nostalgia, Jackie Gleason's "Merry Christmas" has few equals. My parents bought it in 1958 when they purchased their first hi-fi system (yeah, that long ago!). To find this CD after so many years fulfills a long-cherished dream.

One reviewer called Jackie's arrangements "soporific," but they aren't. As the original jacket blurb states (I still have it, though the original disc is no longer playable), this record is "warming, fireside holiday music," meant for "those precious hours when evening reaches toward dawn and thoughts drift into dreams of holidays gone by, and of those yet to come. The mood is soft with the glow of Christmas lights seen through a snowfall.... The melodies are familiar ones but their settings most certainly are not, for even "Jingle Bells" emerges as a lovely, almost haunting thing in the hands of Jackie Gleason...."

Gleason's liking for slow, dreamy arrangements was well known and serves him well here. Imaginative settings of traditional holiday melodies add entrancing new dimensions to the familiar. Even today, they are fresh, arresting, instantly memorable--and easily cherished.

Slow tempos, with wordless choral passages and soft, caressing orchestrations (prominently featuring an angelic celeste) add immeasurably to the indefinable charms of this evocative album. With the late Paul Mickelson's "The Best of Christmas," now also available in CD (praises be!), Gleason's "Merry Christmas" is fundamental to holiday enjoyment.

A lovely and rather unusual Christmas album, originally released in 1956. Unusual in that it does not feature any carols and most of the arrangements are at a slow tempo. How Gleason managed to convince Capitol Records executives that a Christmas album without a few carols would still sell is a mystery. Good for him I say. Although Gleason's sound is not as lush or full as Percy Faith, Mantovani or Frank Chackfield he makes up for it by creating a very romantic sound to the usual Yule time classics and a neat touch is the use of a wordless chorus (the Keith Textor Singers) on most of the tracks.

I enjoyed these fourteen festive season arrangements with their unique slow romantic sound, the perfect CD to play at twilight with the snow falling and the Christmas tree lights twinkling. BTW, this CD has nine of the ten tracks on another Gleason CD `Snowfall'.

Have been looking for this ever since I lost my albums in a house fire in 1986. Found one CD with some of the songs, but never the other. Thanks for allowing me to renew a friendship of many years that brings back so many wonderful Christmas memories in which Jackie Gleason's music played such an integral part.

In 1956, we were driving home to PA from AR when a song from this album came over the radio. My father, having a discerning for the ultimate in good music, stopped the car. He found the closest payphone (not easy in 1956), located the phone number of the station, and got the name of the album. He bought it the next day. We listened to it from then on. In later years, when the LP was worn out, and the album out of print, we still listened to the scratchy version. A few years ago I was ecstatic to locate it on CD. This year, I realized that I have been listening to it for 50 years! There is just no other CD of Christmas music like this one!

I can't remember the first Christmas I heard this album. I know it was at least 40 years ago and the record(s) has been played every year since. It was and still is the Best, most Beautiful Christmas music I've ever heard. We (our family) have worn out two vinyl records and are thrilled to see it out on CD. We still turn out all the lights, light the candles and tree and just sit and listen over and over. The music will soothe, relax and gently get you into the Christmas spirit.

This is my favorite Christmas album of all time. My Dad's vinyl copy, the one that I wore out playing it year after year, is so scratched that I had to get the CD version. This is the tops in dreamy, romantic Christmas music - but don't expect the usual renditions of these classics. This is serious mood music.

There's never been better Christmas music performed. Most have heard the beautiful, soothing melodies and have no idea that it belongs to Jackie Gleason. He is the Great One!