Christmas in January : Stars from pop to Broadway to country have recorded holiday albums for LaserLight Records

Picture this: It’s Christmas in Nashville. A recording studio is decked with mistletoe and holly, a lovely tree stands in one corner, and Lynn Anderson and Donna Fargo are singing their hearts out in a collection of familiar carols. The spirit of the season is in the air.

But wait a minute. Doesn’t that calendar on the wall say January? Either somebody became eager for a quick passage to the next new year or something strange is going on.

“No, it was the right date,” said producer Ralph Jungheim recently, recalling the recording session he completed earlier this year. “Christmas, for me, can take place any time between mid-November to mid-February.”

The season for 1992 actually began in November, 1991, with several weeks in Nashville followed by a few more in January in Los Angeles. The result was four new Christmas albums for LaserLight Records that have begun to appear in stores.

“The ‘Christmas in Nashville’ date with Fargo, Anderson, Janie Fricke, Jean Shepard and Kitty Wells really had the right feeling,” Jungheim said. “In addition to all the other decorations, the vocal booth had a little creche in it, and there was a big wreath on the front door. It was the studio owner’s idea, and it set the tone for the whole recording.”

The other releases--”Merry Christmas from Pat Boone, Vikki Carr, Tony Orlando and Debbie Reynolds,” “Christmas at Boots’ Place” and “Joe Pass: Six String Santa”--also were produced between November and February. But there were no decorations in the studios where these albums were made.

That was no problem for Pat Boone. “It felt fine to me,” the veteran pop artist recalled recently. “Because I probably live that old, trite question, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if Christmas lasted all year?’ So often in my life I’ve recorded Christmas music at odd times--June, July, whenever. But to me, Christmas is just whenever you decide it’s Christmas. It’s a state of mind.”

Jungheim agreed. “It wasn’t exactly music by the numbers,” he said. “It’s never that for Christmas programs, but we just didn’t have a real Christmas setting.

“But we made the most of it. I’ve found from doing these recordings for a while now, that even if the setting isn’t very inspirational, people get inspired when they hear the playback. Once they hear what they were doing, and they like the way they sound, they really began to generate a little of that seasonal spirit.”

By the time the actual Christmas season rolls around, Jungheim is already working on next year’s product, and recollections of the earlier sessions begin to blur.

Mostly, he remembers moments that stood out amid the rush to meet a hectic release schedule calling for albums to be shipped in August.

“The ladies in Nashville were terrific--and each one was so different,” Jungheim said. “Janie Fricke’s sweet tone, and Donna Fargo’s real country sound. And Jean Shepard. There’s a voice! I’ll bet she could shatter a window with it. But we had the right microphone to bring out the real warmth that she has so much of.”

The “Merry Christmas from Pat Boone . . .” recording is almost a jazz date in disguise, with its thoughtful arrangements from Bob Florence.

“That one was fun to do,” Jungheim said. “Vikki Carr is such a wonderful singer that the band was completely turned on by what she was doing--and this was a collection of first-rate players, guys like Steve Huffstetter, Lanny Morgan and Tom Warrington.

“I had a few reservations about Pat Boone at first because of his squeaky-clean image. But he’s a delightful man, and you just can’t help liking him. He hadn’t sung for a month when he came in to do the first session, but he got his chops together and did a fine job on some unusual orchestrations. He’s a real trouper.

“And talk about pros,” continued Jungheim. “Debbie Reynolds came in, did maybe two takes for each song, and that was it. When she blew a line of the first take of ‘Let It Snow,’ she stopped the band and said, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry; I just got so emotional!’ I’d love to do an entire album with her--something like ‘Debbie Reynolds Sings Hollywood and Broadway,’ with songs from all the pictures and shows she’s been in.”

The instrumental recordings from Boots Randolph and Joe Pass were contrasting experiences for Jungheim.

“Boots couldn’t make it to Hollywood,” he recalled, “so we taped Tommy Newsome’s group playing the backup parts, then went to Nashville to add Boots’ lead. He told me, ‘Just treat me like I’m the singer,’ and that’s exactly what we did. It worked fine.”

The Pass album, on the other hand, took exactly one day to wrap.

“And it wasn’t because I was rushing him,” Jungheim said. “It was because he wanted to finish in time to beat the traffic home. But the guy is so good that he almost never makes mistakes.”

The LaserLight Christmas recordings, which will retail for $6.99 for a CD, are part of the expanding product line of a company that has quickly become one of the best-selling American budget labels. Its Christmas catalogue now includes everything from Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Nat “King” Cole recordings (from radio broadcasts), big band seasonal swing songs and the Von Trapp Family Singers to last year’s releases--produced by Jungheim--featuring Johnny Cash (“Country Christmas”) and a stellar lineup that showcased Diahann Carroll, Vic Damone, Jack Jones, Patti Page and Joe Williams (“All-Star Merry Christmas”).

“You’d might think LaserLight would be tempted to cut corners at these prices,” observed Boone. “But that’s just not the case, in terms of quality. There may not be banks of strings on the recordings, but the musicians, the arrangements and the production are all first rate. There seems to be a real determination to put out recordings we can all be proud of.”

Jungheim, a veteran of the advertising world who turned to full-time record production a decade ago, is delighted to have the opportunity to work with such impressive talent. In the last few years, Christmas albums, which had long been considered single-season items not worth the effort for major name performers, have become more commercially viable, opening the door for long-established artists who otherwise have had difficulty breaking through the youth-oriented lock on the music business.

LaserLight has been especially effective with its product because its distribution strategy is aimed not only at record retailers, but also at mass-marketing outlets such as supermarkets, drug chains, bookstores and mail-order houses.

“We’re trying to reach the audience that wouldn’t think of going into a record store and buying an album from somebody with purple hair,” Jungheim said.

Once again, this year, his Christmas season will stretch over several months.

“I’ve already finished my first album for Christmas, 1993,” Jungheim said. “It’s called ‘Christmas in Branson,’ and it features Moe Bandy, Roy Clark, Johnny Paycheck, Connie Smith and Faron Young. And I’ll be back in the studio in January doing a few more. But I look at it like this--it’s a great way to keep the Christmas spirit going for a good part of the year.”

LaserLight Albums

The LaserLight Christmas albums are generally available in such stores as Tower Records, The Wherehouse, Sam Goody’s, Wal-Mart, Price Club, Costco, Blockbuster Video and Target.

“Christmas in Nashville,” with Lynn Anderson, Donna Fargo, Janie Fricke, Jean Shepard, Kitty Wells. A collection that manages to maintain its country roots--notably so in the atmospheric readings of Fargo, Wells and Shepard--without losing the traditional spirit of Christmas.

“Merry Christmas From Pat Boone, Vikki Carr, Tony Orlando, Debbie Reynolds.” Bob Florence’s imaginative charts stimulate the best in each of these singers, with Boone’s “Silent Night” and Carr’s “It Must Have Been the Mistletoe” highlights of the program.

“Joe Pass: Six String Santa.” Pass can do no wrong on the guitar, regardless of repertoire. In addition to carols, he plays an elegant rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and the less-heard “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays.”

“Christmas at Boots’ Place,” featuring the Tommy Newsom Jazztet. A flat-out, good-time Christmas album, in which every track--from “Jingle Bells” to “Joy to the World”--swings in Randolph’s easy-going, Saturday-night-at-the-roadhouse style.

Jungheim’s previous Christmas recordings for LaserLight are also obtainable this season: “Johnny Cash Country Christmas” and “All-Star Merry Christmas.”