The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Here is another interesting Bing Crosby flub, this time singing Jingle Bells with the Andrews Sisters. Enjoy!

http://pdx78s.cdbpdx.com/GME/JINGLE-BEL ... _01-cr.mp3

What this is, along with the Robins and Roses, Serenade In Blue (and there are others) are just outtakes. These weren't issued commercially, obviously, but lots of "bootleg" copies of them all are around and were widely available "under the counter" like many of the party records we see. They were all issued eventually on CD in the "Chronological Bing Crosby" set years ago. I've got quite a few of these that have come with collections over the years, some are shellac pressings of varying quality, while others are lacquers. My "Jingle Bells" is a vinyl pressing and the sound is phenomenal.

Hope this clears things up a bit,

Sean

I have the earliest volumes in The Chronological Bing Crosby, on the Jonzo CD label. I wanted them to not only obtain some of Crosby's rarer early (hot) sides, but they have good quality masterings by John R.T. Davies to boot. It may be the only game in town, really, short of acquiring all the 78's oneself.

Good stuff. But the series in all it's 60 some odd volumes may be a bit much for me.

Wolfe wrote:But the series in all it's 60 some odd volumes may be a bit much for me.

Is it that many? Good grief, I'd forgotten, but it shouldn't surprise me. Sometime back in the early-ish 2000s, I was given a 3 month membership to a music service online where you could search and download anything for a monthly subscription fee. They had the complete Riverside, Impulse, Concord catalogs and loads of small labels like Jonzo. I figured out a way to save certain searches and things would pop up I'd missed before, it's how I wound up with the Crosby stuff. I never bothered burning any of that series onto CD, but I grabbed it all. It was convenient though because the stuff would automatically import into my iTunes library with text, notes and everything else already there in decent enough sound quality. I grabbed literally thousands of albums in a short period of time and the service eventually terminated my membership for "overuse". Oh well, I'm sure I wasn't the only one!

Sean