Song:We Need A Little Christmas
Album:Christmas Is...Percy Faith
If you're looking for an old school Christmas album, you can't really go wrong with Percy Faith. Of course Faith started out with the CBC in Toronto and then he moved to New York as an arranger at Columbia Records. Though Faith would occasionally score a hit single, for the most part he produced dozens of easy listening albums for older adults. His albums usually sold well enough that Columbia allowed Faith to continue to record until the mid-70s. Christmas Is... is from 1966. It has the usual Christmas standards that you would expect. But the first single from the album was the lesser known Christmas song We Need A Little Christmas. Jerry Herman wrote the song for the 1966 musical Mame. Angela Lansbury performed it in the Broadway production. So at the time, this was a new song. The record charted on the Adult Contemporary chart. It's not one of those Christmas songs that has been covered to death. It turned up in the TV series Glee in 2010. But Faith's recording is probably definitive. Some of the other songs on the album are more familiar. It's available as a budget CD. It's not my kind of music. But I guess Faith's sound can be very soothing during the holidays. That's why he had such a long career. Here's a video for We Need A Little Christmas by Percy Faith His Orchestra and Chorus.
I loved his rendition of "A Summer Place". My mother used to sing along with the musical piece as it played on the radio. I like it to this day.He was easy listening for another generation, that has mostly passed on at this point.
ReplyDelete