Lush

John Herbert Gleason was born in 1916 in Brooklyn, New York.  Most everyone should be familiar with Jackie Gleason and his comedy show, The Honeymooners, in addition to his movie roles in the Smokey And The Bandit movie franchise, but few may know that he was also an accomplished song writer, producer, arranger and orchestra leader.  For the purpose of this blog, and this review, we will concentrate on Jackie Gleason’s music career.

Jackie Gleason’s love for music came about because he enjoyed listening to music and believed that background music made everything better.  He believed in soft, subtle arrangements full of lush strings and soft choral voices.  Jackie Gleason can be credited with developing “mood music”.  His direction and vision of how he saw the melodies of familiar Pop standards was as much about the emotions the music brought out in the listener as it was about the quality of the production.

This compilation CD could almost be considered a re-release of his first Christmas album, Merry Christmas, in 1956.  It’s not a re-release though because this CD only has 10 of the 14 songs found on the original album.  We’re missing 4 songs.  Bummer.  This just means that I must get the original album, and possibly his second one too.  But no worries because I already have them.

Even though this is not a reissue of an older album, all the songs on this CD were included on the original album.  And it is here, and not in the upper heading, that I will tell you that that album charted at # 16 on Billboard’s Album chart in 1956.

The cover of the CD is simple.  It features a black and white photo of a smiling Jackie Gleason in all his finest.  The picture seems to be from around the mid-1950s.  There is a small light blue bar across the top of the front cover and Jackie Gleason’s name appears in it.  Below, in red letters that are hard to recognize against the dark background, is the CD title, Snowfall.

The back of the CD has a different black and white picture of Jackie Gleason.  This one, I believe, is an older picture, perhaps from the mid-1940s.  The same blue bar runs across the top of the back of the CD and in it is a numerical track listing in sentence format. Traditional copywrite notices are included at the bottom of the back cover.

There is no need to remove the front cover to gain any new information.  The back of the front cover is completely blank.  Super Bummer!

So, we have a compilation CD that is “missing” 4 songs, and the artwork is seriously lacking in any valuable information.  We don’t even have writer credits for the songs.  But I’m not gonna knock Jackie Gleason or EMI-Capitol Music.  This is what you get with budget CDs, and I got this when I was first starting to collect Christmas music.  This was before Amazon was as big as it is, and I was probably still getting most of my CDs out of catalogs.  This is just another reason to acquire the originals as much as possible.

As I said earlier, there are only 10 songs on here, and for the most part, they all sound very similar.  It would be redundant to describe each song individually as I normally do, because all the arrangements are instrumental, lush, string laden soft melodies.  The background singers that do a fantastic job on all the songs are the Keith Textor Singers.

I do have my favorites, but I am a big fan of Jackie Gleason’s albums, and I truly like them all.  All the songs are familiar Christmas titles, and all are secular Christmas songs from the 20^th century, except for Jingle Bells.  Although the titles are familiar, it may be hard to pick up the song because even the ones that are traditionally arranged upbeat with a faster tempo, are presented here in slow motion.  That’s one of the key elements of the Lush sound, slow and easy.

The CD begins with one of those types I just spoke of.  The 1^st song, I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm, is usually an upbeat, even jazzy, arrangement.  Here it is presented in a soft, somber mood.  The melody is familiar, but it isn’t until near the end of the first verse that it becomes clear as to what song it is.

The 2^nd and 3^rd songs are Winter Wonderland and The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas To You), respectively.  I think it would be by the time you got to the 3^rd song that you begin to understand what Jackie Gleason is trying to accomplish.

The 4^th song, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, opens with only the soft chorus.  Soon the lush strings join in, but the chorus makes a strong presence.  I like the middle part with the organ, which has a wonderful, lush harmonium sound to it.

The organ does play an important role in all the arrangements.  It is usually there for the middle interludes on most songs.

The standout song on here is the title track, and my favorite Jackie Gleason Christmas song, Snowfall.  It really isn’t a Christmas song per se, but rather a Winter song.  Nonetheless, Snowfall was originally composed of a lush arrangement by Claude Thornhill and his wife in 1941.  So, this suits Jackie Gleason’s Christmas mood music very well.  The arrangement begins with soft cascading strings before the baritone voices carry the rhythm.  At first, I thought it was cellos, but on closer listening, you can tell it’s a male chorus.  This is a terrific arrangement of Snowfall in where it uses voices to carry the many different rhythms going on.  I am familiar with the song very much and I find it amazing how Jackie Gleason arranged the voices to mimic the instruments typically heard.

The 6^th song, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! is not unlike all the previous songs except that brass instruments play a larger role in this arrangement.  I know that at one time Bobby Hackett was a featured trumpet player in Jackie Gleason’s orchestra, but I’m not sure if he has the trumpet solo in this or not.  Most likely he does.

White Christmas begins eerily but with mostly voices as the baritones take center stage again.  There is very little instrumentation featured here.  It is almost all the Keith Textor Singers.

If you don’t know the sound and style of Jackie Gleason’s music by now, then the 8^th song should clear it up for you.  It’s not unlike the others at all, it’s just the perfect example of what Jackie Gleason was trying to accomplish.  I’ll Be Home For Christmas starts with lush strings and chimes.  Then the soft voices take the melody and glide through the song effortlessly.  I particularly like the one female voice that hits the high notes whenever the melody quietens down.

It is interesting to hear what Jackie Gleason does with Jingle Bells.  You can slow this song down only so much, but Jackie Gleason goes beyond that.  The beginning is mostly our harmonium sounding organ playing the high notes sounding like chimes.  It will continue this way throughout the song while the lush strings are accompanied by a quiet acoustic guitar.  Wait, what are we listening to?  Jingle Bells?  Oh, yeah, that’s it!  While the song usually invokes a feeling of gliding through the snow, in a one-horse open sleigh, I think here we are simply walking in a forest with a light snowfall.

The CD closes much too soon with the endearing Christmas wish song, Happy Holiday.  Once again, the melody is masked in a slow tempo with our chorus providing the high notes in a somber mood.

I absolutely love this CD.  I make sure to always have it with me when I travel for the Holidays.  This can provide the quiet background music you need when you have a gathering of friends but don’t want the music to drown out the conversation.  This is Christmas music for when you don’t need to rely on the music to keep the party going.

With that being said, I would not recommend this for a festive gathering where people are going to expect to hear their favorite Christmas songs that everyone can sing along to.  You might want to get out some Bing Crosby or Johnny Mathis for that, but this does have its place in an eclectic Christmas music collection.

In fact, this is best shared between two people.  If you find yourself in a romantic mood, and it’s Christmas Eve and the snow is lightly falling, and everything is as quiet as a mouse, that is when you reach for this CD.  This was made just as all of Jackie Gleason’s music was made, to be shared between just two people.

Because of the lack of 4 songs and the lack of any useful information, I must take one star away.  I usually don’t declare why or why not a CD got its stars, but in this case, I feel the need to because if it only had all 14 songs would I feel justified in giving it five stars.

I give this CD :

****