It's Capitol Saturday today! This is the first of four and 1/2 albums I'm posting today from the famous (or infamous) "Christmas In" series that Capitol issued back in the day.
When I found three of these LPs in the middle of last year, I asked "Just how many of these "Christmas In" albums are out there? Which ones was I missing and when were they released?"
The Goldmine Christmas Record Price Guide had several listed but couldn't pin down the date. So I featured one track from each of the albums last year for the 2007 Yuleblog Sampler and transferred each of the albums figuring there will be something for everybody.
"Christmas In Italy" was a logistical nightmare. It took me nearly an hour to transfer the vinyl and digitally restore it, no problems. However, it took me nearly an entire day to encode the MP3s! Study the back cover carefully to see what I mean.
This album probably has the penultimate version of "White Christmas" sung in Italian - this one's has the intro and damn if it doesn't sound great!
I had to abbreviate the titles of most of the songs - for some strange reason, RapidShare has a problem playing MP3s with more than 72 characters in its title.
After completing the transfer of all three albums, I was doing some research at my local library for my appreciation of Stan Freberg's "Green Chri$tma$" (another Capitol product - coincidence?) when I came across an advertisement in the December 9th, 1957 edition of TIME magazine for Capitol Records:
(Click on image to enlarge)The ad showcased many of their 1957 Christmas releases (Sinatra's "Jolly Christmas From", Jackie Gleason's "Merry Christmas" to name two). At the bottom was a listing of EIGHT "Christmas Around The World" albums:
Christmas In England
Christmas In Germany
Christmas In Spain
Christmas In Sweden
Christmas In Mexico
Christmas In France
Christmas In Holland
Christmas In Italy
To double check, I Googled label numbers (Capitol T10091, 92, 93, etc) to see if I would get a hit on something and I got lucky. Another Capitol foreign release entitled "Modern Motion Picture Music of India" (Capitol T-10090) was released in 1957.
So I had the answer to my questions - eight albums total initially, all released in 1957.
Christmas In Italy
Happy listening paisans...
Capt
