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R&B Christmas Hits ~ Billboard Greatest R&B Christma
Amazon.com
From 1963 to 1974, Billboard magazine included a special Christmas Singles chart within its illustrious pages, reviving it briefly from 1983 to 1985. Nine of the 10 tracks featured on this 1990 compilation (created by famed chart researcher Joel Whitburn) predate that annual listing, and many appeared on the regular Hot 100. Only the Jackson Five’s catchy 1970 single “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town”–which sounds strangely out of place here–made that special holiday chart, naturally hitting the No. 1 spot at the end of their breakthrough year at Motown. Most of this album will appeal to lovers of ’40s and ’50s R&B, with stellar performances from Amos Milburn, whose “Let’s Make Christmas Merry, Baby” is a blues-slanted standout; “Merry Christmas Baby,” an R&B hit for Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers in three decades, featuring famed singer-pianist Charles Brown; and former Mrs. Brown Mabel Scott’s swinging “Boogie Woogie Santa Claus.” Doo- woppers the Cadillacs offer an amusing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” while Chuck Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run” sounds like…a typical Chuck Berry record! All in all, the album is a pleasing, if not an obvious, stocking filler. –David Nathan
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