Welcome to an Audio Salvage Project Holiday Extra. This episode is sponsored by “Laryngitis”. Yes, Laryngitis. It’s the gift that keeps librarians happy. Pick some up today! And remember – Silence Is Golden!
Today we have some holiday music that I’ve either remixed or entirely reworked by adding new stereo backing tracks entirely. Now, I did these purely for my own listening pleasure and I started them around Christmas 3 years ago, and have been adding to them every year.
So which is it, I hear you asking? Remixed or entirely reworked?
It’s about 30% remixed, while the rest of the tracks have been reworked entirely with new backing tracks.
This project started just to challenge myself… Just to see if I could do it, but, like everything else, it just sort of evolved from there. Bing Crosby recorded many holiday songs starting in the late 30’s and spanned his entire career until his death in 1977. The problem with the collections of his songs has never been about performance quality… it’s about the sonics of the media used to record it. Some were direct to disc recordings made on 78rpm discs… Some were from radio broadcasts recorded off the air onto discs… some were taken from early movies like “Holiday Inn” (Those masters are absolutely shot!) and some later masters, of course, were multi-tracks. The quality varied widely and we had more mono masters than stereo in the vaults, so I decided to focus on those.
My wife prompts me to let everyone hear everything I do… because she mistakenly thinks I don’t do anything that sucks. I do, trust me. But these are actually pretty good. So… here you go.
- The Twelve Days Of Christmas
- I’ll Be Home For Christmas
- Here Comes Santa Claus
- Happy Holidays/Holiday Inn
- Marshmallow World
- Sleigh Ride
- Silver Bells
- Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town
- It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
- The Christmas Song
- White Christmas
- Mele Kalikimaka
- Little Drummer Boy/Peace On Earth
Downloads to follow.