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Rockin' Rudolph
''Rockin’ Rudolph'' is the third Christmas album by The Brian Setzer Orchestra, released on October 16, 2015, through Surfdog Records. Produced by Peter Collins, it is the band's first Christmas album in ten years. Promotion In support of the album, The Brian Setzer Orchestra embarked on the 12th Annual Christmas Rocks! Tour. In the midst of the tour they performed at an invitation-only event for SiriusXM at The Hard Rock Café in Times Square. The concert was broadcast across SiriusXM channels in the days that followed. Critical reception ''Rockin' Rudolph'' received mostly positive reviews from music critics. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic rated the album three out of five stars and states: "Rockin' Rudolph deserves to sit proudly alongside the Brian Setzer Orchestra's other five Christmas albums because it serves up snazzy seasonal swingers, tunes that revel in their retro-kitsch." Track listing Source: iTunes Personnel Credits adapted from AllMusic: ;Productio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Brian Setzer Orchestra
The Brian Setzer Orchestra (sometimes known by its initials BSO) is a swing and jump blues band formed in 1990 by Stray Cats frontman Brian Setzer. In 1998, for their breakout album '' The Dirty Boogie'', the group covered Louis Prima's "Jump, Jive an' Wail", which originally appeared on Prima's 1957 album ''The Wildest!''. The BSO's follow up single, appearing on the album '' Vavoom!'', was "Gettin' in the Mood." History Setzer grew up in Long Island, New York. In his youth, he played the euphonium and other brass instruments in school jazz bands. In the 1970s, he found ways to hear jazz and big band music at the Village Vanguard, but he was also drawn to blues, rock, punk, and rockabilly. He admired the jump blues of Louis Prima and Big Joe Turner, but also the rock and roll of Elvis Presley, Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, and Carl Perkins. During the early 1980s, he led the rockabilly trio the Stray Cats and found popular and commercial success. After the band broke up, Set ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree
"Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" is a Christmas song written by Johnny Marks and recorded by Brenda Lee in 1958; it has since been recorded by numerous other music artists. By the song's 50th anniversary in 2008, Lee's original version had sold over 25 million copies around the world with the 4th most digital downloads sold of any Christmas single. Original recording by Brenda Lee "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" was written by Johnny Marks, who had previously penned "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "A Holly Jolly Christmas". In spite of her adult voice, Lee recorded the song when she was only 13 years old. In a 2019 interview with ''The Tennessean'', Lee recalled that she had no knowledge as to why Marks wanted her specifically to sing it: "I was only 12 ic and I had not had a lot of success in records, but for some reason he heard me and wanted me to do it. And I did." "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" is a rockabilly song. The recording features Hank Garland a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugh Martin
Hugh Martin (August 11, 1914 – March 11, 2011) was an American musical theater and film composer, arranger, vocal coach, and playwright. He was best known for his score for the 1944 MGM musical ''Meet Me in St. Louis'', in which Judy Garland sang three Martin songs, "The Boy Next Door (song), The Boy Next Door," "The Trolley Song," and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." The last of these has become a Christmas season standard in the United States and around the English-speaking world. Martin became a close friend of Garland and was her accompanist at many of her concert performances in the 1950s, including her appearances at the Palace Theater (Broadway), Palace Theater. Early life Martin was born in Birmingham, Alabama, the son of Ellie Gordon (Robinson) and Hugh Martin Sr., an architect. He attended Birmingham-Southern College where he studied music. He was a member of the Beta Beta Chapter of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. Career Martin wrote the music, and in so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is a song written in 1943 by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane and introduced by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM musical ''Meet Me in St. Louis''. Frank Sinatra later recorded a version with modified lyrics. In 2007, ASCAP ranked it the third most performed Christmas song during the preceding five years that had been written by ASCAP members. In 2004 it finished at No. 76 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs rankings of the top tunes in American cinema. ''Meet Me in St. Louis'' The song was written in 1943 for the then-upcoming film ''Meet Me in St. Louis'', for which MGM had hired Martin and Blane to write several songs. Martin was vacationing in a house in the neighborhood of Southside in Birmingham, Alabama that his father Hugh Martin had designed for his mother as a honeymoon cottage, located just down the street from his birthplace, and which later became the home of Martin and his family in 1923. The song first appeared in a scene in which a fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oakley Haldeman
Oakley W. Haldeman (July 17, 1909 – December 17, 1986) was an American songwriter ("Here Comes Santa Claus"), composer, author and the general manager for a music publisher. He joined ASCAP in 1949, and his other popular-song compositions include "Brush Those Tears from Your Eyes", "I Wish I Had Never Met Sunshine", "Tho' I Tried", "Pretty Mary", "Texas Polka", "Honey Child", "Vic'try Train", "Last Mile", and "Texans Never Cry". Haldeman was born in California, the son of Catherine (Oakley) and Clarence Edward Haldeman. He was the head of Gene Autry Orvon Grover "Gene" Autry (September 29, 1907 – October 2, 1998), nicknamed the Singing Cowboy, was an American singer, songwriter, actor, musician, rodeo performer, and baseball owner who gained fame largely by singing in a crooning s ...'s publishing company, and it was while he was in this position that Autry asked him to write the music for Autry's song ''Here Comes Santa Claus''. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gene Autry
Orvon Grover "Gene" Autry (September 29, 1907 – October 2, 1998), nicknamed the Singing Cowboy, was an American singer, songwriter, actor, musician, rodeo performer, and baseball owner who gained fame largely by singing in a crooning style on radio, in films, and on television for more than three decades beginning in the early 1930s. Autry was the owner of a television station, several radio stations in Southern California, and the Los Angeles/Anaheim/California Angels Major League Baseball team from 1961 to 1997. From 1934 to 1953, Autry appeared in 93 films, and between 1950 and 1956 hosted ''The Gene Autry Show'' television series. During the 1930s and 1940s, he personified the straight-shooting hero—honest, brave, and true. Autry was also one of the most important pioneering figures in the history of country music, considered the second major influential artist of the genre's development after Jimmie Rodgers. His singing cowboy films were the first vehicle to car ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Here Comes Santa Claus
"Here Comes Santa Claus (Right Down Santa Claus Lane)" is a popular Christmas song written and originally performed by Gene Autry, with music composed by Oakley Haldeman. Autry's original recording (in which he pronounces Santa Claus as "Santy Claus") was a top-10 hit on the pop and country charts; the song would go on to be covered many times in the subsequent decades. History Autry got the idea for the song after riding his horse in the 1946 Santa Claus Lane Parade (now the Hollywood Christmas Parade) in Los Angeles, during which crowds of spectators chanted, ''"Here comes Santa Claus"''. This inspired him to write a song that Haldeman set to music. Autry's lyrics combined two veins of the Christmas tradition, the mythology of Santa Claus and the Christian origin of the holiday (most explicitly in its mention of the nativity promise of "peace on Earth" to those who "follow the light"). A demo recording was made by singer/guitarist Johnny Bond, whose recording made use of ic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Wyle
George Wyle (born Bernard Weissman; March 22, 1916 – May 2, 2003) was an American orchestra leader and composer best known for having written the theme song to 1960s television sitcom ''Gilligan's Island''. He is the grandfather of musician Adam Levy. Early years Wyle was born to a Jewish family. In the late 1940s and early 1950s his orchestra served as backup for a number of Columbia Records singers, including Doris Day. Some of the recordings (including "I Said My Pajamas (and Put on My Pray'rs)" in 1949 and "I Didn't Slip, I Wasn't Pushed, I Fell" in 1950) were of his own compositions. Career Wyle wrote with Sherwood Schwartz ''The Ballad of Gilligan's Island'', the theme song for ''Gilligan's Island''. He also co-wrote the Christmas song "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" (first recorded by Andy Williams in 1963) and more than 400 other songs. His chief musical collaborator was Eddie Pola. Wyle served as the musical director for ''The Flip Wilson Show'' dur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Pola
Edward Pola (June 23, 1907 – November 3, 1995)Passenger list, S.S. ''Transylvania'', port of New York, 20 August 1931. was an actor, radio producer, radio/television producer, and songwriter. Pola was born Sidney Edward Pollacsek in New York City, the son of Ida (Friedmann) and Alexander Pollacsek, who were Hungarian Jews. In the 1920s, Pola began to write songs. He scored one of England's first sound films, ''Harmony Heaven'' (1930). Toward the end of the decade, he moved to the United States. He produced the radio comedy ''The Alan Young Show'',Sies, Luther F. (2014). ''Encyclopedia of American Radio, 1920-1960, 2nd Edition, Volume 1''. McFarland & Company, Inc. . P. 16. as well as dramatic radio programs. He continued as a producer, moving to television in the 1950s. His most famous songs include: * "I Didn't Slip, I Wasn't Pushed, I Fell" (co-written with George Wyle) * "I Love the Way You Say 'Good Night'" (co-written with George Wyle) * "I Said My Pajamas (and Put on My Pra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year
"It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year" is a popular Christmas song written in 1963 by Edward Pola and George Wyle. It was recorded and released that year by pop singer Andy Williams for his first Christmas album, ''The Andy Williams Christmas Album''. However, the song was not released as a promotional single by Williams' record label ( Columbia Records) that year, as they instead opted to promote his cover of "White Christmas" as the official promo single from the album. The song peaked at No. 21 on the UK Singles Chart in 2007 and reached into the Top 10 consistently in the 2000s, peaking at No. 5 in 2020 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in the USA. History Song content The song is a celebration and description of activities associated with the Christmas season, focusing primarily on get-togethers between friends and families. Among the activities included in the song is the telling of "scary ghost stories," a Victorian Christmas tradition that has mostly fallen i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hoyt Curtin
Hoyt Stoddard Curtin (September 9, 1922 – December 3, 2000) was an American composer and music producer, the primary musical director for the Hanna-Barbera animation studio from its beginnings with ''The Ruff & Reddy Show'' in 1957 until his retirement in 1986, except from 1965 to 1972, when the primary music director was Ted Nichols. Biography Curtin was a native of Downey, California, and had one son, Chris, with his wife Elizabeth. In the 1950s Curtin was an in-demand composer for TV commercials. He first met William Hanna and Joseph Barbera when he worked on a Schlitz beer commercial they were producing for MGM in 1957. :"About two weeks later they called and had a lyric they read over the phone. Could I write a tune for it? I called back in 5 minutes and sang it to them ... silence ... uh oh, I bombed out ... the next thing I heard was a deal to record it! ''Ruff & Reddy''. At that moment they had quit at MGM and started their own company. All of our first main titles wer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Hanna
William Denby Hanna (July 14, 1910 – March 22, 2001) was an American animator and cartoonist who was the creator of ''Tom and Jerry'' as well as the voice actor for the two title characters. Alongside Joseph Barbera, he also founded the animation studio and production company Hanna-Barbera. Hanna joined the Harman and Ising animation studio in 1930 and steadily gained skill and prominence while working on cartoons such as '' Captain and the Kids''. In 1937, while working at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Hanna met Joseph Barbera. In 1957, they co-founded Hanna-Barbera, which became the most successful television animation studio in the business, creating or producing programs such as ''The Flintstones'', ''The Huckleberry Hound Show'', ''The Jetsons'', ''Scooby-Doo'', ''The Smurfs'', and ''Yogi Bear''. In 1967, Hanna-Barbera was sold to Taft Broadcasting for $12 million, but Hanna and Barbera remained heads of the company until 1991. At that time, the studio was sold to T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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