This is a CD reissue of two Norman Luboff Choir albums from the 1950s, Songs Of Christmas from 1956 and Calypso Holiday from 1957.  This review will focus only on the album from 1956, Songs Of Christmas.  The album, Calypso Holiday, does not include Christmas songs on it.  Rather the songs are island-themed Calypso recordings that have nothing to do with Christmas.

This CD compilation was released by Collectables Records Corp. in 1999.  Collectables Records is a company that specializes in reissuing older albums from the 1950’s through the 1990’s and across all genres of music.

Norman Luboff was an arranger and choir director.  He was born in Chicago in 1917.  He started playing piano as a child and after college he worked with the composer Leo Sowerby.  He moved to Hollywood in the 1940’s and began writing music for radio, TV and motion pictures.  He also worked with some of the biggest selling singers of the time.

Norman Luboff started his choir in the mid-fifties and was known for working with Bing Crosby on his annual Christmas shows on TV.  The Norman Luboff Choir provided the backup chorus for Harry Belafonte on his Calypso album in 1956.  It was the first album to sell one million copies.

The Norman Luboff Choir would release over 70 albums from the 1950’s to the 1980’s.  They would release no less than 7 Christmas albums throughout their existence.  Currently, the only other one I have in my collection is Christmas With The Norman Luboff Choir from 1964.  (Look for a review of that album in this blog’s future).

The Norman Luboff Choir was known as much for their extensive touring as they were for their album releases.  They are considered one of the first modern choirs to make a successful living through album sales.

The front cover of this two-album reissue has pictures of both albums included set on a background of a Christmas tree.  The back cover lists both albums and a numerical track listing with writer credits and time signatures for each album.  At the bottom is a notation designating the release dates and the original catalog numbers for each album.

The front cover opens to a two-fold layout.  Most of the inside is taken up with a brief description of the career of Norman Luboff followed by a brief history behind both albums.  The third page of the inside artwork is a cut away that can be used to send off for a catalog for Collectables Records.  Once folded back up, the back artwork features a full picture of the Calypso Holiday album, a picture of a pink macaw.

I did include a full-size picture of the original album Songs Of Christmas in this review.  It shows a husband and wife with their children putting the star on the Christmas tree, surrounded by lots of ornately wrapped presents.  The title of the album is yellow, written in cursive and sits in the top left corner.  If you want to see what an average Christmas looked like in 1956, this is it.  I really like the original cover of the Christmas album in this collection.  It would have been nice to make the CD insert one page longer and include a full picture of the Christmas album as well as the one from Calypso Holiday.  That way I could have folded it up and used it as the front cover of the CD thereby giving the CD a look of the original Christmas album.

As I stated earlier, this review will take a look at the Songs Of Christmas album only.  There are 6 tracks on here, all in the original order.  All tracks are medleys of traditional Christmas carols and hymns.  There are actually 22 songs included throughout all the medleys, but you won’t find Jingle Bells, Frosty The Snow Man or Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer on here.

Choirs of this magnitude often stick to traditional hymns and carols, but not in all cases.  The songs on here are long songs and that’s a good thing because you get longer versions of each song in the medleys.  Most songs are close to six minutes with some that are up to seven.  Too often medleys will be a typical 3-minute song and if there are 3 songs in the medley, then you only get a snippet of the actual song.

Another good thing about the song selection is that even though they are medleys, each song has a final ending with a brief pause before the next song begins.  These were probably recorded separately and then placed in order.  If I wanted, I could digitally edit these into 22 individual songs and expand my collection a little further.

Many of the selections are a cappella and the ones that aren’t have very little instrumentation, usually just an organ that is barely heard.  The Norman Luboff Choir uses their voices and harmonies to communicate the traditionally arranged Christmas melodies.

There are all your favorite hymns and carols here and a few that you may not be familiar with.  There are carols from all over Europe.  There is Baloo Lammy from Scotland, Whence Come This Rush Of Wings from France, A La Nanita Nana from Spain, O Tannenbaum from Germany and the classic Silent Night from Bavaria.

England has always had their traditional cathedral choirs with some that go back hundreds of years.  Large choirs have been popular in the United States as well.  The Mormon Tabernacle Choir probably comes to most people’s minds first.  And there is the Harry Simone Chorale and the Robert Shaw Chamber Singers.  The Norman Luboff Choir was right up there with the others.  Their Christmas output throughout the years has shown that they are one of the best Christmas choirs of all time.  Their delicate harmonies and verbose baritones convey the spirit of Christmas very well.

If you enjoy choral music for your Christmas music pleasure, you should have the Norman Luboff Choir in your collection, if you don’t already.

I give this CD :

****