Short Takes, Christmas Edition: Collections Coming from Peggy Lee and Buck Owens
This Friday, Capitol Records and UMe will release Peggy Lee’s Ultimate Christmas on CD and vinyl as part of the Peggy Lee 100 celebration. This yuletide follow-up to Ultimate Peggy Lee brings together 22 holiday favorites from the late artist including selections from her Capitol albums Christmas Carousel (1960) and Happy Holiday (1965) – the latter an anthology of old and new material – as well as Decca and Capitol single releases and more. Ultimate Christmas includes a number of songs written or co-written by Lee including “Christmas Carousel,” “Don’t Forget to Feed the Reindeer,” “Peace on Earth,” “My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year),” and “Here’s to You.” This set promises to be the most jam-packed of Lee’s Christmas collections in the CD format, with six more songs than both 1990’s expanded edition of Christmas Carousel and 2006’s Capitol collection Christmas with Peggy Lee. In addition to her singularly stylish takes on such holiday standards as “Winter Wonderland,” “The Christmas Song,” “White Christmas,” and “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town,” the set features “I Like a Sleighride” (her jolly reworking of “Jingle Bells”), two duets with Bing Crosby (a radio performance of “Here Comes Santa Claus” and their 1952 Decca single of “Little Jack Frost Get Lost”), and Lee’s interpretation of “Peace on Earth” from the score she and Sonny Burke composed for Walt Disney’s Lady and the Tramp.
Ultimate Christmas offers new liner notes by Peggy’s granddaughter Holly Foster-Wells and discographer Ivan Santiago-Mercado. The compilation will be released on CD, 2LP vinyl, and digitally. Other digital releases this year have included Decca Rarities, a 31-song collection from her 1952-1956 affiliation with the label, and The Capitol Transcriptions 1946-1949, compiling her rare studio recordings made especially for radio airplay. Look for Ultimate Christmas this Friday!
Omnivore Recordings is dusting off and freshening up another anthology from a legendary Capitol artist. On November 13, the label will reissue Buck Owens and The Buckaroos’ 1970 double album A Merry “Hee Haw” Christmas in a remastered and expanded edition. The Bakersfield country icon and his celebrated band recorded two Christmas albums at Capitol, 1965’s Christmas with Buck Owens and His Buckaroos and 1968’s Christmas Shopping. Both consisted almost entirely of original songs from Buck and co-writers such as “Bard of Bakersfield” Red Simpson and Buckaroo Don Rich. Both, too, were successes, reaching the Billboard Christmas Albums chart (multiple times, in the case of the 1965 LP) and spinning off hit singles. “Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy (Daddy Looked a Lot Like Him),” from Christmas with Buck Owens and His Buckaroos, may still remain Owens’ most beloved holiday original, but Christmas Shopping also yielded its memorable title track. In 1970, Capitol capitalized on Buck’s television success as co-host of CBS’ Hee Haw with the release of A Merry “Hee Haw” Christmas on two LPs. The compilation boasted most of the two original albums – but oddly dropped “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and “It’s Christmas Time for Everyone But Me” from the first as well as “All I Want for Christmas Is My Daddy” and “It’s Not What You Give” from the second.
For its first-time-on-CD reissue, A Merry “Hee Haw” Christmas gains those three songs back as well as two 1972 public service announcements recorded by Buck for Toys for Tots (originally issued on a Capitol promotional single). Everything has been remastered from the original analog master tapes by Michael Graves. This set produced by Cheryl Pawelski and Patrick Milligan will also be available digitally. Buck’s Christmas celebration, Bakersfield-style, is set for release on November 13!
Peggy Lee, Ultimate Christmas (Capitol/UMe, 2020)
CD: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
Vinyl: Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada
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- Winter Wonderland
- The Christmas Waltz
- Here Comes Santa Claus (with Bing Crosby)
- The Christmas Song
- Ring Those Christmas Bells
- Happy Holiday
- The Christmas Spell
- Deck the Halls
- Christmas Carousel
- Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town
- Don’t Forget to Feed the Reindeer
- White Christmas
- The Star Carol
- I Like a Sleighride
- The Tree
- It’s Christmas Time Again
- Little Jack Frost Get Lost (with Bing Crosby)
- The Little Drummer Boy
- Peace on Earth
- Song at Midnight
- My Dear Acquaintance (A Happy New Year)
- Here’s to You
Tracks 1, 6 & 18 from Happy Holiday, Capitol ST 2390, 1965
Tracks 2, 4, 8-14 from Christmas Carousel, Capitol ST 1423, 1960
Track 3 from The Bing Crosby Show (radio), 1949
Tracks 5 & 16 from Decca single 9-28939, 1953
Tracks 7 & 20 from Capitol single 54-90035, 1949
Track 15 from Capitol single 4311, 1959
Track 17 from Decca single 9-28463, 1952
Track 19 from Songs from Walt Disney’s Lady and the Tramp, Decca DL 5557, 1955
Track 21 first released on Christmas with Peggy Lee, Capitol 09463-63376-2-3, 2006
Track 22 from 2 Shows Nightly, Capitol ST 105, 1968
Buck Owens and His Buckaroos, A Merry “Hee Haw” Christmas (Capitol LP STBB-486, 1970 – reissued Omnivore OV-403, 2020) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada)
- Christmas Shopping
- Christmas Time Is Near
- The Jolly Christmas Polka
- All I Want for Christmas Is My Daddy
- Merry Christmas from Our House to Yours
- Good Old-Fashioned Country Christmas
- One of Everything You Got
- Home on Christmas Day
- Christmas Schottische
- A Very Merry Christmas
- It’s Not What You Give
- Tomorrow Is Christmas Day
- Santa Looked a Lot Like Daddy (Daddy Looked a Lot Like Him)
- Blue Christmas Lights
- Christmas Ain’t Christmas
- Jingle Bells
- All I Want for Christmas Dear Is You
- Santa’s Gonna Come in a Stagecoach
- Christmas Time’s A-Comin’
- Blue Christmas Tree
- Here Comes Santa Claus Again
- Christmas Morning
- It’s Christmas Time for Everyone But Me
- Because It’s Christmas Time
- Toys for Tots (Version 1)
- Toys for Tots (Version 2)
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6 thoughts on “Short Takes, Christmas Edition: Collections Coming from Peggy Lee and Buck Owens”
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I will buy these but I’d almost rather have what Second Disc and Real Gone Music could have coaxed out of the vaults. Maybe next year.
Thanks, Brian. We were working on a lot of great stuff until COVID-19 came along and derailed us. We’ve all got our fingers crossed for next year (and while our Second Disc slate has been delayed, Real Gone has at least a couple of cool Christmas releases coming up).
Always the highlight of the year when we see the Christmas titles announced from Real Gone. Covid has been a tragedy on so many levels. Fingers crossed for 2021.
Too bad they couldn’t have FINALLY included ALL of Peggy’s Christmas recordings in one package..,
If they had of included Christmas Riddle and The Christmas List then this CD would have had all of Peggy Lee’s Christmas recordings in one set. Christmas Carousel is the one of the best Christmas albums of all time. Fun, sweet, gorgeous, cool and all class. It has such great cover art (front and back) too. I wish Capitol/Universal would just reissue it with all her other stuff as bonus tracks. Thanks for the info though. Sounds like the booklet could be quit nice.
Always great to see Buck Owens reissues. The Hee Haw Christmas double LP became a favorite country holiday album in the early 70’s. However many folks were not aware that collection was actually an abridged reissue of two earlier LP’s.
Although Buck’s individual Christmas LP’s have been available on CD for many years the Hee Haw compilation was never reissued. Nice to see that they restored the four tracks from the original LP’s that had been deleted for the double LP set. However Omnivore’s notes about the Hee Haw LP track list are incorrect. That is puzzling because Omnivore is selling original vinyl copies of Buck’s LP’s on their website including the Hee Haw Christmas LP so it’s easy for them to compare the tracklists!
To be clear the Hee Haw Christmas LP set omitted TWO SONGS from EACH of the original albums. The original LP’s had 12 tracks each but the Hee Haw set contained 10 on each LP. Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy from the 1965 LP WAS included on the 1970 2-LP release. However the fifth track from both sides of that ’65 LP were omitted – All I Want For Christmas Is You [from Side 1] and It’s Christmas Time For Everyone But Me [from Side 2] All I Want For Christmas Is My Daddy [from Side 1] was dropped from the 1968 Christmas Shopping LP as was It’s Not What You Give [from Side 2]
Buck’s remaining holiday recordings for Capitol Records were reissued on CD in 2011. Rockbeat Records re-released the Merry Christmas From Buck Owens & Susan Raye duet album.