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.

Local TV Horror Hosts – most of us had ‘em.

In New York and northern Jersey, it was Zacherley (aka John Zacherle). In L.A., it was Vampira. Milwaukee had Dr. Cadaverino and Tampa had Dr. Paul Bearer. They were the “creatures” who brought us monster movies, good and bad, usually on the weekend and ideally late at night.

For Halloween, here’s a look at some of the men and women who brought us Monster-Horror-Shock-Chiller-Nightmare-Theater!

It was an era when local stations actually did quite a bit of their own programming because the networks weren’t sending out shows around the clock. The hosts also gave the station an advantage. If they were showing a really bad movie, we didn’t care. We’d tune in anyway just to see what the host was up to.

See if your favorite is here:

Dr. Cadaverino (Milwaukee) / Dr. Shock & Bubble (Philadelphia) / Tarantula Ghoul (Portland)

Morgus the Magnificent (New Orleans) / Moona Lisa (San Diego) / Svengoolie (Chicago)

Crematia Mortem (Kansas City) / Dr. Paul Bearer (Tampa) / Sir Cecil Creep (Nashville)

Vampira (L.A.) / The Count (Seattle) / Karlos Barloff (Washington, D.C.)

Jonathan (Roanoke) / Count Graves Ghastly (Cleveland) / Sivad (Memphis)

The Vegas Vampire (Las Vegas) / Selwin (Indianapolis) / The Ghoul (Cleveland)

GORGON (1964)

We were born too late to experience the great Universal horror films in first run theaters. Instead, we watched them on our local TV station’s “Shock-Horror-Monster-Chiller-Nightmare Theater.” You remember. Those late night weekend shows where the TV weather guy dressed up as a vampire or mad scientist and showed all those great Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi movies that had scared our parents.

In fact, those old black & white monster movies created such a sensation on TV that British movie studio, Hammer Films, made a tidy sum remaking endless variations of “Frankenstein,” “Dracula” and “The Mummy” so we’d have some color horror to see at the drive-in ourselves.

But one of their films featured a totally original monster and is still tremendous fun to watch today, The Gorgon from 1964.

One of the first things that makes this movie fun is the chance to see Christopher Lee play the good guy! He’s Professor Karl Meister, investigating some very strange murders in 1910 in the kind of comic opera German village at the center of every great monster movie.

Peter Cushing gets top billing as Dr. Namaroff, but trust us – this is Lee’s film!

You’ve got victims turning to stone. Sadly, very little of the famous “Hammer cleavage” that kept young boys interested in between the mayhem. And a film that trades on ancient Greek mythology rather than middle European superstitions.

There’s also a refreshing mystery angle to the plot as the title character assumes normal human form during the day, so we’re not sure which of the cast members will be sporting a head full of snakes by the end of the film.

This Halloween, check this one out. It’s from an era when “getting stoned” meant something else altogether!

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.