VARIOUS ARTISTS `YULESVILLE' (Bear Family)
Here 33 Festive tunes you probably won't have many of. It's that time of year again, Bear Family have been rummaging where others haven't when it comes to compiling festive compilations.
Unless you have an extensive collection of rarities it's unlikely many of these have featured in your previous playlists, in some cases that's a tragedy, Three Aces And A Joker's uber rare 'Sleigh Bell Rock' disproves any theory that Christmas songs have to be cheesy, this cracker rocks but only 600 people got a copy back in 1960.
Rarity is the feature of the album, it's impossible to list the merits of all the tracks in a short review, yes there are some jingle belled contrived numbers, well it's Christmas after all.
There's some ear-popping good stuff too the earliest from 1950, jazz but so near rock n roll, add some quirky, do-wop and rockabilly bopping and you have a tremendous compilation The booklet is packed with artist information too as you'd expect coming from this label, ideal if you're an anorak like me
Simon Nott
