Happy 10th Anniversary to A MFD Christmas (2014)

 

It's been ten years since our good friends the soft rock kid™ and Dirk Digglinator® first took the pretty paper off the only holiday album you need this celebratory season. You can read more about A MFD Christmas HERE, on the kid's own 1976-1985: My Favorite Decade site or listen to it HERE on Dirk's Mixcloud. In today's revival of a ten-year-old post, we're geeking out at the records included in this now timeless tradition.

Love it or hate it, we have Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" on no fewer than ten twenty-one different CD compilations though we would love to have the red vinyl FOR JUKEBOXES ONLY! 45 shown above on the right.

Motown and their associated labels issued one or more Holiday albums seemingly from every artist on the roster and many compilations. Our four favorite Motown Christmas albums are from Stevie Wonder, The Jackson 5, the one above by the Temptations, and A Motown Christmas.

One Summer Day in 1983, our mom brought two or three albums home. They had been given to her by her co-worker whose brother, David, was a DJ at a local station. One of those albums was the triple live album Wings Over America; another was the debut, self-titled album by Root Boy Slim & the Sex Change Band with The Rootettes. When we pulled the record out of its jacket, this 45 fell out. It soon became a favorite and appeared on two early cassette Christmas comps we made and have since lost. Sadly, the album and the "hidden" 45 were borrowed at one of the two parties we ever held at our apartment in the mid-eighties and never returned. Sure, we have it on CD now but we still miss that 45 with the cool label.

We've never included this song on any of the many Christmas mixtapes, CDs, and playlists we've compiled over the past 30 40 years. Thanks to its inclusion here, in the context of other Holiday songs, that streak is about to be broken.

The music video for Hall & Oates covering "Jingle Bell Rock" is one of the few videos we remember seeing on MTV. So festively cheesy - that's our kind of Christmas. This song came relatively late in the boys hit-making career and wasn't included on any of their albums until 2006. We scored a 12" promo copy of "Jingle Bell Rock" at Al Bum's or PDQ Records but there was also apparently a "Jingle Bell Rock" 12" picture disc along with both red & green 45s pressed as well. One side of each of these records featured Daryl Hall on lead vocals while the flip side featured John Oates singing lead. The duo finally issued an entire Christmas CD entitled Home For Christmas in 2006.

Originally released on the comeback album Learning To Crawl and as the B-Side to the "Middle Of The Road" single in the States, "2000 Miles" was released as a single all across Europe. HERC has the song on an even dozen twenty-seven CDs.

Definitely a Top 10 song in our pocket-sized holiday hymnal of hits. We never knew it was released on white vinyl until 2014. Despite having the song in both its more-than and less-than-five-minute incarnations on over a dozen seventeen CDs, we still want that sweet white vinyl.

We have "Jingle Bell Hustle" on the same CD as everyone else does: Rhino's Have A Nice Christmas Holiday Hits Of The '70s.

Another great song that is available in three sizes: the 4:22 regular, the hard-to-find 4:45 medium, and the 6:43 large (aka Pudding Mix). Not to mention dozens of covers over the past thirty forty Christmases. We have this song on only nine thirty-one CDs.

The Silent Generation might know this song as a Charles Brown blues number. Millennials may know it as a Jon Bon Jovi song. We have "Please Come Home For Christmas" by the Eagles on a 45 and a CD made to resemble a 45. I once had another 45 of it - bought it at Hollywood Records after someone returned it because it had the A-side label on both sides of the 45!  Paid $1.99 for it and sold it three years later for an even $20.

Gorgeous song performed by a gorgeous voice. Horrible bang cuts on the record sleeve, though. Richard continues to futz with all the duo's tracks and in 2024 issued the fourth Carpenters Holiday music collection Christmas Once More following Christmas Portrait (1978), An Old Fashioned Christmas (1984), and Christmas Collection (1996), although technically that last one is just the previous two combined into one special edition package. "Merry Christmas, Darling" is on the latest disc albeit in its 2018 remastering, the one backed by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Fifty-four years after the original single version of "Merry Christmas, Darling", the song has undergone four significant re-recordings, remixes, and remasters in 1978, 1992, 2004, and 2018. The 1978 version features re-recorded vocals at Karen's own request using her "soft" voice. This version is the one most often heard on radio.

Haggard's always managed to rub a few folks the wrong way and he's admittedly fine with that. His 1973 hit "If We Make It Through December" is generally hailed as a country Christmas classic but ol' Hag himself said it was not a pure Christmas song though he included it as the first track on his 1973 album Merle Haggard's Christmas Presents. 1982's Goin' Home For Christmas features Haggard re-recording a few songs from his Christmas Presents album for his new label.

"One Christmas Catalogue" is probably our least favorite of the fourteen songs on A MFD Christmas.  This one can be found on Rhino's Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Christmas like a couple of other songs here.  The original single pictured above has a cover of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's "Relax" on its B-Side. Man, we loved some Christmas Catalogs. Sears, J.C. Penny's, Montgomery Ward, and Speigel are the ones we remember best.

Christmas Medleys are relatively easy to find. Good Disco Christmas Medleys, on the other hand, are extremely rare. Scooch over Rudolph, Olive, Ernest, and especially you Kirk Cameron. The Salsoul Orchestra is saving Christmas once again with this epic track from their Christmas Jollies album. For completists, there's also the well-intentioned but weaker Christmas Jollies II from 1981.