Deep Roots Magazine — Roots Music and Meaningful Matters

Reviews

When Vintage Becomes Timeless

DAVID IAN did it in 2011 with Vintage Christmas, and does it again in 2012 with Vintage Christmas Wonderland: gather the combo, pare the set list to five songs and deliver a Christmas gem.

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Reviews

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.

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Sing We Now of Christmas

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.

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Reviews

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.

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Reviews

Essential Sondheim

STEPHEN SONDHEIM's life and music, inextricably linked, are explored in captivating fashion in the new HBO documentary, SIX BY SONDHEIM, airing through December. Review herein.

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Reviews

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

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Sing We Now of Christmas

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.

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Sing We Now of Christmas

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.'

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Deep Roots Theater

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.

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Spotlight Album

Very Mary Indeed

Unquestionably the top new Christmas release of 2013, A MARY CHRISTMAS, the DAVID FOSTER-produced holiday long player from MARY J. BLIGE, is an instant soul Christmas classic.

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