Song:Silver Bells
Album:Merry Christmas
So I understand that not everyone is looking for the latest and greatest Christmas albums. Some of you want the Christmas album your parents played when you were a kid. This is probably one of those. Johnny Mathis has recorded several Christmas albums over the years but Merry Christmas was his first in 1958. At the time, Mathis scored his first number one hit with Chances Are. But for the most part, Mathis was an album artist aimed at an older audience that also listened to Frank Sinatra. Merry Christmas was Mathis' sixth album for Columbia. But the album that made Mathis a staple on Billboard's album chart was the 1958 album Johnny's Greatest Hits. This was a collection of singles including Chances Are and Wonderful! Wonderful!. It topped the Billboard Hot 200 and was certified 3XPlatinum. Not surprisingly, Columbia wanted Mathis to record a Christmas album. Merry Christmas was released Oct. 1958. It reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 200 and still appears on the annual Christmas music charts. It has been certified 5XPlatinum which is amazing for a Christmas album. Percy Faith led the orchestra and wrote the arrangements. Mathis recorded standard Christmas classics but in 1958, a lot of these songs were still fresh. Today Silver Bells is a Christmas standard. It was written by the legendary songwriting team of Jay Evans and Ray Livingston and it was performed in the 1951 film The Lemon Drop Kid by Bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell. Bing Crosby, the King of Christmas, was the first to record it. Mathis has recorded several Christmas albums but this is the one you want. It's available as a budget CD and the 2003 reissue adds a couple of bonus tracks that were only released as singles. Here's a video for Silver Bells by Johnny Mathis. Sony has done yule log videos for several Christmas songs on Youtube. You could run them as a mix on your smart TV.
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