Universal Music Enterprises
Release date: September 30, 2014

With the release of Peggy Lee: Christmas, Peggy is among such friends and musical collaborators as Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, who have their own volumes in the new Icon series of holiday music collections.

This is the first Peggy Lee CD release since Capitol Records became part of the greater Universal Music library, which includes among its many labels Decca Records, where Peggy recorded in the early 1950s. As such Peggy Lee: Christmas draws from both Peggy’s Capitol and Decca catalogs. It’s also the first Peggy Lee CD to include both sides of her 1953 Decca holiday single, Ring Those Christmas Bells and It’s Christmas Time Again.

Six tracks on the CD are taken from Christmas Carousel, Peggy’s much-admired 1960 album for Capitol: The Christmas Waltz, I Like a Sleighride (Jingle Bells), The Christmas Song, Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town and two songs written by Peggy: Christmas Carousel and Don’t Forget to Feed the Reindeer. The remaining three tracks were recorded for Capitol in 1965: Winter Wonderland, Happy Holiday and The Little Drummer Boy.

Tracks

1. Ring Those Christmas Bells (featuring Jud Conlon’s Rhythmaires)
2. Winter Wonderland
3. Happy Holiday
4. The Christmas Waltz
5. I Like a Sleighride (Jingle Bells)
6. The Little Drummer Boy
7. The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You)
8. Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town
9. Christmas Carousel
10. Don’t Forget to Feed the Reindeer
11. It’s Christmas Time Again (featuring Jud Conlon’s Rhythmaires)

Other available Christmas recordings

Peggy’s complete original 1960 Christmas album, Christmas Carousel, arranged and conducted by the great Billy May, is available as a download on iTunes, Amazon US and Amazon UK.

Other holiday CD compilations that are still available include Christmas with Peggy Lee, released in 2006, and Christmas from 2000.