Ray Conniff – We Wish You A Merry Christmas
Joe Siegler
- AllMyVinyl #97
- Band: Ray Conniff
- Album Title: We Wish You a Merry Christmas
- Release Date: ?? 1962
- Date purchased: 7 May 2020
- Location purchased: Amazon
- Color of vinyl: white
- Number of discs: 1
- Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]
Given it’s Christmas Day as I write this one, I had to bump it up out of order for today.
This will be a short one because it’s a simple one to write about. It’s an album originally released in 1962 by “Ray Conniff & the Ray Conniff Singers”. It’s an album of traditional Christmas music. The reason I have this is solely down to my wife. When she was a little kid, her parents would play this album all the time around Christmas. It was a big special memory to her. While my wife and I do have her parents’ old copy of the Bonanza Christmas album, we do not have the original copy of this. That copy is lost to time. However, some years back we picked up a copy of this on CD, and the tradition continued.
Then in the spring of 2020 I was looking around for vinyl, and happened to see that this was available – NEW from Amazon, so I jumped on it. So I surprised her with a fresh new print of it on vinyl. When I opened it a little later, I was quite surprised to see that the vinyl was white (as you can see in the attached picture). I had no idea that was going to be the case, a very pleasant surprise. The Amazon listing for it now mentions white, but at the time it didn’t. It’s quite striking visually, I think. For an album designed for play in late December that is all Christmas music to have it look like snow is quite nice. This pressing appears to be out of print again, so I lucked out big time to find it when I did.
The vinyl copy sounds much nicer than the compact disc does. I don’t know if they did anything special with this pressing, but it sounds so much clearer than the CD (or even the linked copy on Youtube I have in my article). The vinyl is definitely my preferred copy.
As I said earlier, it’s an album of traditional Christmas music. Here’s a track listing (several of these are medleys of some sort).
- Jolly Old St. Nicholas / The Little Drummer Boy
- O Holy Night / We Three Kings Of Orient Are / Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly
- Ring Christmas Bells
- Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! / Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep) / We Wish You a Merry Christmas
- The Twelve Days of Christmas
- The First Noel / Hark! The Herald Angels Sing / O Come, All Ye Faithful / We Wish You a Merry Christmas
No surprises here. It’s what you expect. No appearance by Tony Iommi on guitar, it’s traditional Christmas music – which isn’t always my favorite thing, but this album works for me. I’m sure the fact that it’s a draw to my wife’s childhood that is a big part of it. But I’ve grown to enjoy hearing this on the 25th of December. In fact, as I write this it’s playing for a second time – I had to flip the disc back to Side 1 and play again while dinner prep is happening.
I’m not doing a track breakdown for this one as I don’t feel it needs it, but I didn’t want to not write about the vinyl. It is one I own, and I AM listening to it today, so I had to get some words down. If it wasn’t for my wife, I can say I’d never buy this on my own, but after 28 years of marriage it’s wormed its way into my head as well.
Ring, Christmas bells! Merrily ring! Tell all the world Jesus is King!
Loudly proclaim, with one accord, the happy tale! Welcome the Lord!
Ring, Christmas bells, sound far and near.
