Uh, no. No, it doesn't.

A CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR YOU (1963)

Around our house, it’s just not Christmas until we play the classic album A Christmas Gift for You. Technically, the album is credited to “Various Artists,” but we all know it is primarily the work of one of rock’s greatest, yet most troubled figures, Phil Spector.

When Spector began working on this album in 1963, there weren’t many rock-oriented Christmas songs, let alone an entire album.”Jingle Bell Rock” was a big hit in 1957 (and every Christmas thereafter). Brenda Lee recorded “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” a year later.  When Elvis recorded his album of Christmas songs, he stuck to traditional arrangements.

Spector, always a rebel, wanted to do something different. Take standard Christmas songs, but give them his patented “Wall of Sound,” rock & roll treatment.

The album debuted to so-so sales in 1963 and then promptly disappeared.

It wasn’t until Apple Records (in an effort spear-headed by John Lennon) re-issued the LP as Phil Spector’s Christmas Album in 1972 that it finally caught on. In 2003, it was named one of the 500 Greatest Rock Albums of All Time by Rolling Stone magazine and no less a rock luminary than Brian Wilson has said that it is his favorite album.

Many of the tracks are now a staple of every radio station’s holiday music. Spector’s arrangement of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” is the one Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band used on their recording (which has also become a Christmas classic). In fact, because of Springsteen, most artists who cover this song wind up using the Spector arrangement.

The album sole original tune is also its best track, “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)” written by Spector in collaboration with Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry. Darlene Love, long the anonymous voice behind most of the Crystals hits (although she never toured as part of that group) finally gets a solo singing credit. Thanks to Paul Schaffer, Darlene would sing this tune every year on The David Letterman Show to kick off their holiday season. Although it failed to chart as a single when first released, it has now become a holiday standard having been covered by artists like U2, Mariah Carey, Michael Bublé and many more.

The album also features the playing of some of rock’s most legendary session musicians including Hal Blaine, Leon Russell, Sonny Bono, Jack Nitzsche, and Nino Tempo.

Despite the troubles that have marred Spector’s reputation in the many decades since this album was recorded, A Christmas Gift for You did achieve the master producer’s goal, to contribute something new, yet lasting to the tradition of Christmas music.

You’ll hear many of these tracks throughout the month here at Boomtown America!

Track Listing/Artist:

1. “White Christmas” / Darlene Love
2. “Frosty the Snowman” / The Ronettes
3. “The Bells of St. Mary’s” / Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans
4. “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” / The Crystals
5. “Sleigh Ride” / The Ronettes
6. “Marshmallow World” / Darlene Love
7. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” / The Ronettes
8. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” / The Crystals
9. “Winter Wonderland” / Darlene Love
10. “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers” / The Crystals
11. “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home” / Darlene Love
12. “Here Comes Santa Claus” / Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans
13. “Silent Night” / Phil Spector and the Artists

During our working life, most of us change jobs. Many times. If you had a retirement account at a former employer that you lost track of, we may have good news.

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Steve Daines have sponsored a bi-partisan bill to create a searchable online “lost and found” for abandoned retirement accounts.

In the meantime, the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation operates a searchable database of pension accounts and expects to have 401(k) accounts added to it by 2018. The catch with the PBGC is the information is incomplete. It relies on companies voluntarily forwarding retirement account information to it. The Senate bill will create a comprehensive database.

Because of frequent use, overuse and misuse, more and more viruses are becoming resistant.

Here are some simple tips from medical professionals that can help keep antibiotics doing their job longer:

1. Wash your hands frequently – It’s still one of the most effective ways to cut down on the spread of viruses.
2. Don’t take someone else’s antibiotics – Your friends or family members may mean well, but specific viruses need different antibiotics. The type and amount of antibiotics to take is always best left to a physician.
3. Take your antibiotics as prescribed – Not taking them all can breed antibiotic resistance
4. Choose foods that are raised antibiotic-free – This is one area where overuse may be having a counterproductive effect.
5. Don’t assume you need an antibiotic – There are many viruses that really require other types of treatment.

To save heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer, check your home’s doors to the outside. A gap as small as one-eighth of an inch can let in as much outside air as a 2½-inch hole in your wall!

To correct this problem, check the threshold beneath the door. That threshold should have a removable cap. Underneath that are screws. Turning them counterclockwise will raise the threshold. To check if its high enough, place a dollar bill on the threshold and close the door. If the threshold is at the correct height, you should not be able to pull out the bill, but the door should still close and open easily.

2007: British police arrest Boy George on charges of imprisoning a young man in his home. George is later found guilty and sentenced to 15 months in jail.

Pam and Jerry North were a very happily married couple who kept tripping over dead bodies. Jerry was a publisher of mystery novels (natch) and his slightly off-kilter wife was usually the one who solved the cases they kept stumbling across.

Mr. & Mrs. North had a long, successful career in books, stage and the radio. Unfortunately, the TV version wasn’t all that successful, running only two seasons. But thanks to reruns, it is remembered by many Baby Boomers.

This very tongue-in-cheek detective series had its roots all the way back in the 1930’s when Richard Lockridge created the duo for a series of short stories in the New York Sun. When those proved popular, he teamed with his wife Frances to produce a Mr. & Mrs. North novel (1936). That touched off an entire series, 26 books in all, that continued until Francis passed away in 1963.

In 1941, Mr. & Mrs. North made their Broadway debut in a whodunit that ran for 163 performances at the Belasco Theater in the spring of 1941. The play then went out to Hollywood where it became a rare starring vehicle for Gracie Allen (without her husband and partner George Burns).

The radio version of Mr. & Mrs. North started in 1942 with Alice Frost and Joseph Curtin in the leads. The show proved very popular (lasting all the way until 1955) and when television came along, it was only natural that a television version would be launched.

Barbara Britton and Richard Denning were cast as Pam and Jerry North. Each week, someone would drop dead in their vicinity and Pam would somehow manage to find the killer before 30 minutes were up.

Despite the gruesome nature of some of these homicides, the tone of the show was surprisingly light-hearted with Pam often portrayed as the kind of “wacky wife” that Lucille Ball was making popular.

The show spent the 1953 TV season on CBS. Ratings were so-so. For 1954, the show moved to NBC, where ratings declined even further. In all, 58 black & white episodes were produced. It was enough to keep reruns in syndication in the early days of TV when local stations were desperate for programming to fill the non-network hours.

As the show long ago slipped into public domain (meaning anyone can sell copies of it), 53 of the 58 episodes are available in one DVD package or another.

The influence of Mr. & Mrs. North can also been seen in such latter-day husband and wife mysteries like Hart to Hart and McMillan and Wife.

The World Health Organization has news about coffee.

First, the bad news. There is evidence to suggest that drinking any hot beverages at or above 140 degrees Fahrenheit may increase the risk of esophageal cancer.

Now, the good news, as long as it's below 140 degrees, there doesn't appear to be any cancer risk from drinking coffee.

No doubt your dentist tells you to floss, but is there any research to back up that advice?

Surprisingly, no.

There has never been a study to test the benefits of flossing. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you should stop flossing. No research simply means, we have no scientific evidence one way or the other. The American Dental Association still recommends flossing as well as brushing twice daily to maintain healthy teeth and gums.

Blonde on Blonde – Bob Dylan

What if you had been able to tell your 13-year-old self that Bob Dylan would one day win the Nobel Prize for Literature? Would your English teacher have let you do your book report on Dylan’s latest album?

Maybe not. But there’s no question that Dylan was on an incredible hot streak in the mid-sixties, one that saw him release 3 albums that cemented his transition from folk to rock and put him at the very forefront of the contemporary music scene.

That trio of albums began with Bringing It All Back Home, continued with Highway 61 Revisited, and reached the pinnacle with the 1966 release of one of the first double albums in rock history, Blonde on Blonde.

While the album peaked at #9 on the Billboard album chart (not too shabby), it has since gone on to be recognized as one of the greatest rock albums of all time.

Dylan started to record this record with his backup band, then known as the Hawks, now known as the Band. But they were only able to crank out one track (“One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)”) that made it onto the final album.

So producer Bob Johnston suggested they take super session player Al Kooper, and Robbie Robertson of the Hawks and head to Nashville. It was there, using Robertson, Kooper, and an all-star line-up of Nashville’s finest session players, that Dylan finished the rest of the album.

According to Kooper the name of the album as well as most of the song titles were invented by Dylan on the spur of the moment when they were doing the final mix down.

In any event, the album yielded 2 more hit singles for Dylan, “Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35” and “I Want You,” while “Just Like a Woman” and “Visions of Johanna” are also regarded among the very best of Dylan’s compositions. The fact that side 4 was entirely taken up with just one song “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” was also a musical breakthrough for rock.

It was said that Blonde on Blonde influenced countless rock composers from Paul McCartney and John Lennon on down. If any Baby Boomer’s record collection had only one Dylan album and it wasn't Dylan’s Greatest Hits, it was more than likely Blonde on Blonde.

A half-century has not dimmed its brilliance in the slightest.