Rhino's HAVE A NICE CHRISTMAS: HOLIDAY HITS OF THE '70s [1994]

CAVEAT EMPTOR

This disc gets almost no play here at The Holiday Hideaway. (Did you see what HERC did there?)  Back when he had the obsessive compulsion to complete sets, he bought this one to round out the Have A Nice Day: Super Hits Of The '70s series of 25 discs.  (Wouldn't it have been cool if this was the 25th disc?) The CD came out in September 1994 and features 16 songs; fourteen from the decade of the Seventies, one from 1954 and one from 1984*.

In 1953, Liberace's record company released an album, Christmas At Liberace's, consisting of three 7" 45RPM discs. The second side of the second disc was where you could find this medley, which charted for two weeks on the precursor to Billboard's Hot 100 chart, peaking at #21.  The medley was included with other Christmas medleys on a 1963 album, A Liberace Christmas.  (That album was issues on CD in 1987.) The liner notes for Have A Nice Christmas has the following explanation about including a song from the Fifties on a collection of songs from the Seventies: "(Liberace) re-popularized the performance on his holiday season show in the mid-1970s during a late career renaissance.

Of the 14 tracks actually release during the Seventies, none were hits.  Jim Croce's "It Doesn't Have To Be That Way" (above left), was the only single to actually make the Hot 100 albeit following Croce's tragic passing earlier in 1973. While "Santa Claus And His Old Lady" (above right), Cheech & Chong's ode to Mrs. Claus, made Billboard's Christmas Singles chart each year from 1971-1973 before making a surprise appearance on Mainstream Rock Tracks in 1998.  The other dozen songs all failed to chart as did the Have A Nice Christmas album itself.  As the two best songs are available elsewhere, this is for completists only and the less said about it the better.

*As for the 1984 song: HERC would like to state that he has intentionally listened to the song twice, both times before 1996 and 1999 when the artist, a huge Glam Rock star in the Seventies, was convicted of unspeakable acts.  The liner notes explain that though the song was recorded and released in 1984 , it is "Stylistically reminiscent of his '70s rock ethos".