I solicited a few requests before this week's Christmas-themed Out the Other, and by far the most frequent response had to be "play something from A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector!" In fact, I'm pretty sure that if I polled my music-loving friends, the 1963 collection of tunes from Darlene Love, The Crystals, The Ronettes and Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans would come out on top of a list of everyone's favorite holiday albums.
A few things I didn't know about the album before perusing its wikipedia page:
(1) A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector was a relative failure at the time of its release, largely due to the fact that it was released on November 22, 1963, the date of JFK's assassination.
(2) The standout Darlene Love track "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" was originally intended for the Ronettes to record, but Ronnie Spector didn't bring enough emotion to the recording, so Love recorded it instead.
(3) Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys has cited this as his favorite album of all time.
"Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" is, in my opinion, unarguably the best song on A Christmas Gift, but it's the contributions from the Ronettes and the Crystals that make this so spectacular as a whole. "Sleigh Ride" will have you bouncing along to the "ring a ling a ling a ding dong ding" of the chorus, and I always come back to "Parade of the Wooden Soliders" - the Crystals pull of one of my favorite versions of the song.
The Crystals - "Parade of the Wooden Soldiers"
*bonus!* - Darlene Love - "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)"
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