Santa Swings ... the Windup: 27 Christmas Stockings Full of Shellac Dust

by Various Artists

Shellac instead of stardust: when Santa Claus takes off his boots and unpacks the gramophone after his work is done: Bear Family Records® delves deep into the shellac box! No intrusive bells, chumming ho-ho's or strangely distorted reindeer voices: Every year around the same time the displays of the department stores are bending with hastily and often suspiciously similar compiled 'swing' samplers, since "swing is coming back." Our journey through the depths of various shellac racks, however, brought to light quite a number of undiscovered treasures. Thus we could stand up for the true 'Spirit of Swing'. Thrilling music of the '30s and '40s, highly danceable, elegant but cool, performed by expert jazz musicians, at the time pressed onto a mélange of shellac, slate flour, soot and cotton flakes, to be played with a steel needle (or optionally cactus spikes for lower volume) at an unbelievable 78 RPM and .... extremely fragile. 'Windup', by the way, refers to the suitable playback device with a crank; from today's point of view, very sustainable and environmentally friendly! Big names like Glenn Miller - with a very special Jingle Bells version, recorded live on Dec 24, 1941!!! - Paul Whiteman, Louis Armstrong a.m.o. have expressed themselves in their own way on the subject of Christmas.