7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
If you remember the record A Tennessee Ernie Ford Christmas Special, December 9, 2008
This review is from: Tennessee Ernie Ford: Christmas Favorites (Audio CD)
My parents had the 2-record set "A Tennessee Ernie Ford Christmas Special" when I was a kid, and I wore it out. As far as I know, it has never been available on CD. This 2-CD set is the closest I have been able to get. There are 20 songs on the original LP, and 17 of them are here. Missing are "O Christmas Tree! (O Tannenbaum)," "Good Christian Men Rejoice," and "The Friendly Beasts." In my opinion, it is still worth it to try to find the LP in good condition to get those songs. This CD set has many other great songs in the same style, with orchestra and chorus, as the Christmas Special LP, including "The Star Carol." The second disc has 4 or 5 songs that to me were in a hokier style (more countrified and with kids singing) that didn't fit in well with the rest of the material. There is also some surface noise on some of the songs. The noise and the lower-quality songs are the only reasons I gave this 4 stars instead of 5. Tennessee Ernie Ford was a uniquely talented singer, there are some Christmas songs here that aren't recorded very often, and the arrangements are wonderful. For example, even a commonly performed carol like "What Child Is This?" is given an arrangement here that makes you hear the song differently. It's worth paying extra to get this hard to find CD, or the original LP.
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