Merry Christmas with Sammy Kaye

Sammy Kaye charted hit records from the 1930s right into the early '60s, and kept working decades beyond that, but the period in which he was most prominent — and the greatest vexation to jazz aficionados, who felt he demeaned big bands as one of the sweetest of the "sweet" bandleaders — was the '40s, for Kaye continued to thrive even as the audience for big-band jazz gradually fell away. That's the period covered on this, probably the best single Sammy Kaye collection on the market. There are 21 songs, every one of them a chart hit, dating from March of 1941 through August of 1950, all but one of them from the RCA Victor-BMG library (only "Harbor Lights," from 1950, is from Columbia). His first hit, "Swing and Sway," which he recorded for Vocalion, isn't here, but that doesn't mean there's much lacking — the songs ("Daddy," "Penny Serenade," "Sooner or Later," "I'm a Big Girl Now," "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah," etc.) are among his most familiar and enduring hits, all but two of the 21 having made the Top Ten, and represent his style very well, even the Kaye-announced intro to "I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen." A lot of this stuff is pretty sentimental ("The Old Lamp-Lighter," etc.), but the melodies and singing are so lush (especially Billy Williams' singing) that it's hard to hate this stuff, even if you sort of wish the band would swing a bit, if only to live up to half of Kaye's signature tune. The sound is superb, the remastering having cleaned up virtually any harshness or noise on the 50-year-old masters and brought out details and a warmth that's often lacking in masters from this era. The vocalists represented here — all in excellent form as pop singers — are Don Cornell, Betty Barclay, Billy Williams, Nancy Norman, and future religious cult leader Tony Alamo (on "Harbor Lights" and "The Four Winds and the Seven Seas").