Cheap We Wish You a Merry Christmas (Music) (Ray & the Ray Conniff Singers Conniff) Price

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Customer Reviews of We Wish You a Merry Christmas

The Best Christmas Album I've Ever Heard!
Let's face it folks, Ray Conniff was one of the most talented bandleaders around. This marvelous album shows it. After several best selling albums, including his first Christmas album ("Christmas with Conniff"), Ray decided to record another Christmas album. The result - "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". The album opens with an upbeat "Jolly Old St. Nicholas" and then slowly makes its way into "The Little Drummer Boy". Then Conniff lets the great religious feeling fly with his next two songs in a medley of "O Holy Night/We Three Kings of Orient Are/Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly". The last song shows how the singers and Conniff feel at this time of year. After they decorate and light up the tree, they move into the beautiful "Ring Christmas Bells", one of the true highlights of this album and one of the few songs outside of a medley. Then we go onto the Cahn/Styne classic of "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!"/Count Your Blessings/We Wish You a Merry Christmas, another stirring medley. Of course we have "The Twelve Days of Christmas" in there. Now we've come to the last medley. The medley Conniff himself called "A masterpiece of performance by the singers" with "The First Noel/Hark! The Herald Angels Sing/O Come, All Ye Faithful/(and an encore of) We Wish You a Merry Christmas".

I said it before and I'll say it again, this is the best Christmas album I've ever heard!

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Prime Time Christmas Music
Some Christmas albums are good for the weeks leading up to Christmas, when you are in the holiday spirit decking out the Christmas tree or baking cookies. Then, there are those Christmas albums, such as this one, that are so special that you play them while opening up presents around the Christmas tree.

I grew up listening to this album every year at Christmas time. Back in the '80s, we misplaced our copy of it, and Christmas was just not the same to me without it. One day, a family member came home with Ray Conniff's "Christmas Caroling" (1984) on CD. Everyone was excited to have some Ray Conniff Christmas music again. It consisted of previously released material off of three different albums. It was a good album, but we were mildly disappointed with it compared to "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" (WWYMC)--which is a true classic. Finally, they released WWYMC on CD, and everyone was happy again! (Afterwards, we relocated our copy of WWYMC on vinyl.)

According to the Official Website of the Ray Conniff International Fan Club, WWYMC is Ray Conniff's most popular Christmas album, and it is RIAA Certified Gold and Platinum. It was originally released back in 1962.

This album is prime time Christmas music. It captures the spirit of the event with its beautiful singing. It has great dynamics and it contains a nice mixture of slow and fast songs. The instrumentation gives it a real charm, with its use of harp, sleigh bells, chimes and bells. The instrumentation is similar to the 1959 "Christmas with Conniff" album, except that this album contains medleys instead of individual songs. Once Conniff gets rolling on a medley, you don't want him to stop! In 1965, they replaced the harps with guitar for "Ray Conniff's Christmas Album" and his sound lost a touch of its charisma to me. I highly recommend this album.

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The best of the best!
This cd is a must-have for the holiday season. I remember, when I was young, that we had this on vinyl and during the holidays it was played all the time! A very nostalgic collection, brings back so many great memories of Christmas's past.