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Rocky RhinoRhino Records laid the cornerstone of my embarrassingly vast Christmas music collection. Their early vinyl compilations turned me into an enthusiast, and their prodigious compact discs revealed a vast world of hip holiday wonder. More than any label, Rhino is responsible for my obsession - and this website. My mea culpa is that Rhino reissues and compilations comprise a disproportionate percentage of my Top 20 Albums.

Rhino was a fairly early adopter of the compact disc, releasing CD's as early as 1984 - the Turtles' 20 Greatest Hits being the first. But, it took them a while to fully embrace the format with all its advantages - fidelity, dynamic range, and, especially, length. Once they did, however, they quickly became the unchallenged leader in reissuing classic Christmas music. For about a decade at the height of the CD era - mostly between 1988 and 1996 - we got more than 20 marvelous compilations documenting holiday music in a dizzying variety of genres: country, jazz, blues, doo wop, reggae, punk, new wave, swing, Latin, and more (see full list below). To find all the rare records Rhino collected would have been an impossible task - remember, the internet had only just begun. And, even if you could find them all, you probably couldn't afford them! Rhino provided an invaluable service to record collectors - while preserving our precious musical history.

Go To Rhino Records!

Rhino Records was founded in 1973 as a record store - not a record label - in Los Angeles, California. The label was formally founded in 1978, though Rhino had begun releasing records in 1975 with the self-promotional 7-inch "Go To Rhino Records" by Wild Man Fischer. Most of their early releases were punk and novelty 45's, and their first Christmas release was, in fact, both: the Ravers' novelty EP "(It's Gonna Be A) Punk Rock Christmas" in 1978 (title track later included on Punk Rock Xmas). In 1981, Rhino released another 7-inch, the obscure but wonderful "Santa's Gone Surfin'" by the Malibooz (a-side later included on the digital edition of Malibooz Rule). In 1982, they released a cute green vinyl EP shaped like a Christmas tree, and in 1983, believe it or not, Christmas Time With The Three Stooges, originally released as The Three Stooges Sing Six Happy Yuletide Songs in 1959. They also reissued Commercial Christmasland, a crass 1983 parody by the "Scrooge Brothers" for Engima Records, but it's hard to say when.

Blue Yule: Christmas Blues & R&B ClassicsBut, in addition to all that ephemera, Rhino was also responsible for several key vinyl compilations of Christmas music during their first decade: Rockin' Christmas (two volumes in 1984) and Cool Yule (two volumes in 1986 and 1988, respectively). Around that time, however, Rhino stopped pressing vinyl editions of their albums. But, that's when things got interesting and the CD deluge began. Starting with their Hillbilly Holiday (1988), Rhino began to build a digital library chronicling the secret history of Christmas music, compiling hundreds of obscure, strange, wonderful records on compact disc.

Perfect Sound, Forever

The compact disc was introduced in 1982 and promoted with the slogan, "perfect sound, forever" - meaning no hiss, no scratches, no wear-and-tear. It could hold 80 minutes of music - legend has it because conductor Herbert Von Karajan advised the engineers to make it long enough for Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Despite that fact, some early Rhino holiday CD reissues - like the unique Bummed Out Christmas! (1989) or the generic Billboard Greatest Christmas Hits series (1989-1995) - were modeled after the LP and included just 12 tracks. On the other hand, the 16-track Dr. Demento's Greatest Novelty CD Of All Time (1989) expanded on an earlier 12-track LP, part of a seven-volume series. A lot of early Rhino CD's were often abridged versions of double albums or larger series - packed with music, perhaps, but decidedly inferior to their vinyl counterparts. For instance, the single CD edition of Anthology 1959-1967 by the Shirelles had 16 tracks, whereas the two-LP set had 28. Rhino's landmark Nuggets garage rock series was condensed from 12 vinyl volumes to just three compact discs (though much later reimagined as a series of phenomenal CD boxed sets). Similarly, The Best Of Cool Yule (1989) was a distillation of the two aforementioned vinyl albums, and Christmas Classics (1988) was basically a reduction of the Rockin' Christmas series, even if Rhino didn't market it as such.

But, once they really got going, nearly all of Rhino's Christmas compact discs adhered to a uniformly high standard: expertly curated, annotated, and illustrated, as well as generously programmed - usually 18 tracks. Unlike a lot of what Rhino was doing at the time, these CD's were not part of a unified series. Most stood on their own and several, in fact, were holiday adjuncts to other Rhino series such as Alligator Stomp, Have A Nice Day, Smooth Grooves, VH1: The Big 80's, Just Can't Get Enough, and Mambo Mania. But, taken as a whole, they comprise the first large body of work to take a serious look at music often seen as frivolous. Again, see the full list below and follow the links to read full reviews of each.

Punk Rock XmasIf I have any other criticism, it is this - and it's a minor complaint. On most of their CD compilations from this period, Rhino would throw in a few newer, but inevitably inferior tracks. The label seemed compelled to prove that whatever genre they were documenting was still relevant on the modern music scene. But, they often ended up making the opposite point by including recent recordings that suffered mightily in comparison to the historical tracks that surrounded them. Sadly, all that did was dilute the high quality of what remains. Blue Yule (1991), for instance, includes" Christmas Holidays," a 1990 song by Texas Pete Mayes. It's fine, but it can't hold a candle to tracks by Lightnin' Hopkins, Sonny Boy Williamson, or John Lee Hooker. In other cases, the new tracks stood out like a sore thumb. Tim Fuller's "Silent Night" (1989) on Hipsters' Holiday and the Flashcats' "December Twenty 5" (1999) on Mambo Santa Mambo are frankly awful.

There's an asterisk, however, and it's called Home For Christmas. Released in 1992, it's a two-disc set packed with 40 tracks, but it doesn't really fit in here. First, it was marketed through TV advertising and sold directly to the public - not through traditional retailers - though it can now be found at Amazon, Discogs, and other resellers. Second, and more significantly, it is a far more mainstream, arguably pedestrian selection of holiday hits than almost anything in Rhino's catalog except maybe Christmas Classics. But, unlike that collection documenting popular rock and rhythm & blues songs, Home For Christmas includes a lot of easy listening favorites by folks like Perry Como, Bing Crosby, and Johnny Mathis - in other words, your parents' Christmas music.

That's Not All, Folks

Rhino was a reissue specialist, and from their earliest days, their compilations were how they really made their mark. Anyone can reissue an old album, but it took skill and charm to put together collections as singular as Natty & Nice or Jingle Bell Jam. But, Rhino released a lot of things by individual artists - some compilations, but most discrete albums. One of Rhino's first Christmas compact discs (released in 1987) was both, and it was a good one: the first-ever CD reissue of producer Phil Spector's legendary 1963 collection, A Christmas Gift For You. The same year, they reissued the Four Seasons' Christmas Album, originally released in 1962 as The Four Seasons' Greetings. The following year they gave us It's A Spike Jones Christmas, originally released in 1956 as Let's Sing A Song Of Christmas. And, in a harbinger of good things to come, in 1988 Rhino also compiled the first-ever retrospective of James Brown's voluminous Christmas music, Santa's Got A Brand New Bag.

Natty & Nice: A Reggae ChristmasRhino was also responsible for the first CD reissues of Merry Christmas From Jackie Wilson (1963) in 1991 and Christmas In The Stars: The Star Wars Christmas Album (1980) in 1996. In 1993, Rhino had a hand in releasing John Fahey's two landmark Christmas albums for Takoma Records on one compact disc, and in 1995, they compiled an EP of Emerson, Lake & Palmer's holiday-related tracks under the banner of its best-known song, I Believe In Father Christmas.

Though not terribly relevant to this discussion, Rhino also released a fair amount of original Christmas music over the years - not surprisingly, most of it by the stars of yesteryear. They got off to a halting start with Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (1989), an odd but endearing collection produced by Joe Ferry, and Christmas Harmony (1990) by female vocal jazz group Inner Voices. After a lengthy interlude - during which they released most of those great compilations - Rhino continued with new (or almost new) albums by RuPaul (1997), Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh (2000), 70's icons America and Carly Simon (2002), Manhattan Transfer (2006), Dionne Warwick and Keith Sweat (2007), Al Jarreau (2008), Frankie Valli (2016), and The Monkees (2018), plus the innumerable Christmas albums by horn rock band Chicago.

The Long Goodbye

The compact disc, of course, began a swift decline after music moved online in the 21st century. As I've implied, all these Rhino collections were very much a product of the CD era. Rhino usually licensed tracks from many disparate labels for use on specific compact discs - long before there was such a thing as iTunes or Spotify. So, sadly, none of Rhino's Christmas collections made the leap to the world of downloads or streaming. I wish I could say that there are equivalents in the virtual world but, mostly, there are not. That said, you can find most of the tracks online, but they may not be properly licensed or, worse, they might be taken from inferior sources. So, caveat emptor.

Santamental Journey: Pop Vocal Christmas ClassicsIn 1985, Rhino signed a distribution deal with Capitol Records, and that's when they released most of their quintessential Christmas CD collections - often leveraging the enormous vault of vintage recordings owned by Capitol's corporate parent, EMI. In 1992, Rhino signed a new deal with Atlantic Records which gave them easy access to a different treasure trove of classics. This led to such things as their 1994 reissue of the all-time great album Soul Christmas, originally released in 1968 by Atco Records, an Atlantic subsidiary, as well as deluxe reissues of classics by Emmylou Harris and Ray Charles. By 1998, Rhino was wholly owned by Atlantic's corporate parent, Time Warner.

Swingin' Christmas (2001) was Rhino's last great Christmas compilation. A few years later they dropped a lukewarm compilation of then-contemporary rhythm 'n' blues called The Soulful Sounds Of Christmas (2004), and that was the end of it. These days, Rhino is essentially the catalog division of Warner Music, which spun off from Time Warner in 2004 (and bought EMI in 2013). If they release any Christmas music at all, it's in their role as curator of the vast Warner archive. And, it's mostly on vinyl since - with rich poetic justice and deep irony - the LP came roaring back decades after the CD had supposedly killed it off. Rhino still does great stuff, but they don't do things like these legendary compact discs anymore.

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