Shimmying Down the Chimney
Not wanting to be the only artist on the planet without a Christmas album, MARIA MULDAUR delivers a holiday evergreen in MIDNIGHT AT THE OASIS, recorded live in San Francisco.
Departments
What Christmas Is As We Grow Older
In his 1851 essay, 'What Christmas Is As We Grow Older,' CHARLES DICKENS emerged from despair to summon his youthful optimism about the future course of human events.
In Which He Keeps Christmas Well
The old curmudgeon, you ask? No, NICK LOWE is now the old sentimentalist, complete with his own Christmas album, QUALITY STREET. Be ye not dismayed: it's unlike other Yule fare.
Christmas Beyond the Blue
BLUES, BLUES CHRISTMAS VOLUME 3 leads this revised and updated review of four essential blues Christmas albums, including last year's DEATH MIGHT BE YOUR SANTA CLAUS
Cuddle Time
This delectable five-song missive--an unassuming but undeniably moving seasonal communiqué--is an affecting followup to Ms. Smith's 2007 Christmas gem, My Holiday.
The Murky Origins & Everlasting Life of ‘Jingle Bells’
In 1850 JAMES LORD PIERPONT, inspired by one-horse open-sleigh races in his home town, wrote a Thanksgiving ditty for his father's Sunday School class. Thus the humble origin of 'Jingle Bells.'
BEYOND TOMORROW (1940)
In DEEP ROOTS THEATER: a charming holiday movie, BEYOND TOMORROW. Three elderly industrialists killed in an airplane crash return to earth as ghosts to help reunite a young couple whom they initially brought together. Plus: Popeye.
The Yuletide Report From the Chairman of the Board
Revised and updated, this appraisal of Frank Sinatra's Christmas recordings as an art form unto themselves was first published in TheBluegrassSpecial.com in 2008.
John Bradshaw Knows What Makes Our Cats Tick (And Purr, For That Matter)
What makes cats tick? International cat expert and best selling author JOHN BRADSHAW offers his theories in this new book, CAT SENSE, and talks felines with our DUNCAN STRAUSS.
The Power of a Song
GHANDI's inspiring Salt March of 1930 provides the inspiration for a powerful new album by CHANDRIKA KRISHNAMURTHY TANDON, who reimagines the 241-mile trek, which led to India's independence, for a new generation. Interview and review follow.