Aluminum Christmas Trees

Aluminum Christmas trees were a fad that lasted from 1955 to 1965. First appearing in department store windows, they quickly became a "must have" item for suburban housewives.

You couldn't use ordinary string lights with these trees. The sides of the "needles" of these trees were often like razor blades and could cut into the wire insulation, causing a dangerous electrical short. And since string lights come in green or white wires, it would be the equivalent of wearing a strapless gown with a bra that isn't.

You used a colour wheel, a spinning light was used which shined light in red, green, blue and gold onto the reflective tree. They only looked good in a very low light area.

 
The downfall of the aluminum Christmas tree came after A Charlie Brown Christmas Special, where Lucy tells Charlie Brown to buy an aluminum Christmas tree ("Maybe painted pink!") It became a symbol of the commercialization of Christmas and fell out of favour with the public.

However, they've been making a nostalgic comeback in recent years....

Drug Store Christmas Records For Kids

Never heard of The Caroleers? You're not alone. Their name isn't even mentioned on some of their own records! 

But if you were a kid of the '50s to '70s, you may have had a few of their records.

And they may have sold as many Christmas records between 1950-1975 as Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole and Burl Ives. 

Admittedly, there are no actual sales numbers of these records because the only places you could find them were in racks at drug stores or supermarkets. And the RIAA never calculated music sales outside mainstream retail record stores in those days. But from the sheer numbers of these records I encounter in thrift stores and on eBay, it was likely a few million. 

The Caroleers recorded childrens records for Peter Pan Records in the early '50s as The Peter Pan Caroleers. Peter Pan Records was a division of Synthetic Plastics Corporation (SPC). SPC was based in Newark, NJ and started out in the late '20s making other plastic products (buttons, board game and toy pieces, hair combs and whatever other minute miscellanea you could make out of PVC.)

SPC started Peter Pan Records in 1949. They initially made plastic 78 RPM records for children. They knew as the 33 1/3 RPM long playing and 45 RPM record was taking the nation by storm, there would be BIG business in children's records due to the sudden rise in hand-me-down 78 RPM phonographs from their parents who quickly adopted the slower speeds and multiple speed functions of the automatic record changers that were coming into vogue.

By the late '50s, they were making the then standard 45s. You may better remember the Peter Pan childrens 45s from your '60s/'70s childhood. They were the second biggest (behind Disney) producer of children's records in America.

 

Playhour Records (late '60s): Contrary to popular collector belief, it wasn't SPC, but Pickwick that made Playhour Records, following the SPC/Peter Pan formula perfectly. Playhour records were packaged in tote pack sets of 12 45s and sold for $3.  

SPC expanded in the adult market with their budget record labels. They often mixed in their Caroleers recordings for Peter Pan on their Christmas albums marketed for adults. (Under the Yuletide, Spin-O-Rama, Diplomat and Tinkerbell labels.) These albums are regular thrift store/eBay finds.

Where we have this nearly flawless Perry Como impersonator.....

 

...or this Tom T. Hall imitator....

At least, "The Caroleers" was their pseudonym. No one truly knows who they were, where they came from. Who was their leader, etc. Nothing. Session information and artistic liner notes do not exist. As with everything SPC ever produced..

The cold hard truth is "The Caroleers" were just a blanket name for a group of unknown session singers and musicians at SPC who were paid a flat fee for their services and recieved no royalties from their recordings. And this was perhaps the best selling group on a budget label ever.

And guess how much songwriters Jack Rollins and Steve Nelson got in royalties from The Caroleers' recording of their "Frosty The Snowman"? Just guess.....

In an apparent Gene Autry knockoff.....

Most of The Caroleers recordings were made in the 1950s and '60s at a time when music publishing was fraught with copyright loopholes galore, allowing for dozens of knockoff and "tribute" records (much like we see today.) SPC and other budget record labels got away with this by claiming their music was intended for children and thus for play inside homes, not over the radio or publicly. SPC did not service radio stations and most radio stations did not play their product. (Most.) So they actually claimed that they didn't have to owe songwriters royalties in spite of making millions in profit from their songs.

Today, the artists and songwriters are usually in on it too, as these knockoffs are actually a revenue stream, no matter how disingenuous.

     

However in the early '70s, songwriters were sick of all these cheap record labels whoring their music and collectively put an end to this racket and most budget labels ceased operation or went into other lines.

About this time however, SPC stopped pressing the old Caroleers records and hacked up something even more nefarious for Christmas in the '70s.

"The Peppermint Kandy Kids" anyone?....This record was narrated with Peter Fernandez doing utterly the very worst Jackie Vernon impersonation you will ever hear.

However even in the disco era, old habits died hard with SPC (by then known as Peter Pan Industries.) They even cashed in on the Disco Duck craze with "Irwin The Disco Duck"   

SPC went back to exclusively childrens records as Peter Pan and later, Power Records which incorporated an action comic book style format targeted to boys.

Christmas With Conniff - The Ray Conniff Singers (1959)

This album always brings visions of aluminum Christmas trees and this music blasting out of console stereos like these.

The Ray Conniff Singers were essentially the vocal relief between the Mantovani and 101 Strings instrumentals in the Name-That-Tune world of your typical "Beautiful Music" FM radio stations of the '60s and '70s. They were known for making "safe" covers of pop songs your parents could like.


This included disco.


They actually continued until the '80s.

 

The JP Patches and Stan Boreson Holiday Special

Growing up in Seattle, we had some of the very best in kids programs on local TV. KIRO-TV Ch. 7's J.P. Patches, KING-TV Ch. 5's Stan Boreson, KOMO-TV Ch. 4's Captain Puget and KTNT-TV (now KSTW) Ch.11's Brakeman Bill. In the '60s, all four programs competed against each other, but it was always a friendly rivalry.

While all groups of kids had their favourites, the perennial and longest running was J.P. Patches. After J.P. Patches' show ended in 1981, JP would host specials and pledge drives for public station KCTS-TV Ch. 9, featuring rare archived clips of his show. But he ALWAYS paid tribute to his competitors in every one - VERY classy.

This is a special which ran on The Seattle Channel (the local Seattle public access cable channel, made sometime in 2009/2010 I guess.) bringing together J.P. Patches and Stan Boreson and playing episodes of their classic Christmas shows.

Watch here:

http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=4040606&file=1

In "How Santa Got His Elves (More Or Less)" the King of The North was played by legendary KIRO-TV sportscaster Wayne Cody....

Enjoy!

"Same Old Lang Syne" Dan Fogelberg (1981)

I heard a Holiday radio classic early this morning, "Same Old Lang Syne" by the late Dan Fogelberg and it got me thinking.... 

Very pretty song for it's time, albeit a few of the lyrics are highly socially incorrect today.

Met my old lover in the grocery store
The snow was falling Christmas Eve
I stole behind her in the frozen foods
And I touched her on the sleeve....

First, that's a very dangerous way and place to approach women. Standing behind her in the frozen food aisle and touching her on her sleeve is just enough distance for her to turn around and upside you with a family size box of Banquet Salisbury Steak that'll leave a massive bruise on the side of your head well into the new year if she doesn't recognize your face at first.

She went to hug me and she spilled her purse
And we laughed until we cried....

Pay attention to the store intercom. If you hear Jessica Simpson's rendition of Jingle Bells being cut off and a grouchy cashier grumbling "Brandon...Clean up on Aisle 4.....Brandon, clean up on Aisle 4....", it's a good idea for both of you to stop laughing and pick up all the stuff she dropped.

We went to have ourselves a drink or two
But couldn't find an open bar 
We bought a six-pack at the liquor store
And we drank it in her car....

Maybe this is the only place on Earth where the grocery and liquor stores stay open longer than the bars on Christmas Eve. But in some states (In Washington State namely - especially on Christmas and New Year's Eve), the state patrol is out in full force with extra patrols looking for any mere sign of impaired driving. With a .08 legal breathalizer limit, one 12oz. can of Budweiser (if your old lover just drank it very recently) is enough to do her in. 

A six pack could get her up to a year in the slammer. Or at least two years of probation misery and a suspended license.

Any open container found in her car - even if she's perfectly sober and it's been under her seat and emptied long ago is enough to get her a healthy fine in WA. Even if she's parked out of the way and a cop finds her and asks to do a vehicle search (like what's your old lover gonna say to them? No?), she will get her vehicle searched anyway, like it or not. And if they find an empty, she's still gonna get hit with a big fine. And a mandatory field sobriety test.

Which means the only car you and your old lover will have to drink your beer in is a rusted out old piece of vehicular homicide on blocks surrounded by weeds in her backyard. And since the man she married was an architect. Who are not only wealthy, but very finicky about appearances. I don't think he'd be down with that kind of landscaping anyway. To say nothing of his wife messing around with an old boyfriend like that on Christmas Eve.

How's that for romantic reunions?

So your cheap choices on where to drink a six pack with your old lover when all the open bars have been closed on Christmas Eve (usually by 6:00 PM) are limited. This can actually be a blessing in disguise. 

Because most cheap motels here are usually open 24/7. Some motel units offer kitchenettes with refrigerators for your old lover to keep the frozen food she just bought at a safe temperature. And last I checked, you and your old lover can STILL drink beer in those. At least.

SUPER cheese points if the unit hasn't been redecorated since 1973 and includes a Magic Fingers king size bed. 

 

I once actually plunked $5 in quarters into one of these.

If you don't mind very basic cable TV, the crackheads next door and the potential of a nasty bedbug infestation these days, cheap motels really aren't so bad.

Just pay cash or make sure your old lover doesn't have a hitched credit card with the architect husband who kept her warm and safe and dry. 

But if she said she saw you at the record store and that you must be doing well (probably meaning you weren't trying to fop off your Clay Aiken CDs for the beer money), that too shouldn't be a problem.

Dan really should have written an updated Washington State version of this song. Yeah, it probably would have had at least ten or more extra verses (depending on the strength of the beer.)

Just an observation.....