Customer Reviews

Santa's Greatest Hits

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I buy one Christmas CD every year. This was my 2009 purchase, largely because of the glowing review here. Well, that guy is wacky. This is a snoozer, starting with Rod McKuen (yes, that famous Christmas crooner) and lumbering mostly downhill after that.

Perfunctory is the word that comes to mind. There are certain artists whose songs are hard to imagine performed by anyone else, and therefore if you don't know the original, you don't know the song, but these tunes are unknown to me because, well, frankly, they stink. Tex (whom I like enormously) on Rootin' Tootin' Santa, and other famous performers on justifiably unfamous "hits", are just dreadful. After seeing the huge sums Gene Autry made from his novelty songs, everyone tried to write the next Rudolph. There's a reason none of these made it to TV specials. A good reason.

And I realize that the licensing on such a CD makes things like Brave Combo's "Must Be Santa" (which is, in my opinion, the truly greatest hit of/by/with Santa) a challenge, but even the Mitch Miller version should have been available for a "song".

So, if you don't have Eartha Kitt doing "Santa Baby" (a performance and lyric I've always found uncomfortable) you can get it here cheap. But the rest of this CD is mostly quite forgettable.

Thank goodness we were nice and not naughty, or Santa. baby may not have released this CD that's as historical as it is hysterical. The stellar tracks are many --- Dinah Washington's "Ol' Santa Claus," Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five's "Santa Claus, Santa Claus," Tex Beneke with the Miller Orchestra's "Rootin' Tootin' Santa Claus" and Louis Armstrong's "Zat You Santa Claus." Makes us want to be big and fat and jolly ... if just for one night a year.