Madonna has one, Frank Sinatra must have half a dozen, and there`s even one from cowpoke Gene Autry.
Keep browsing, and you`ll find glittery entries from Crystal Gayle, a couple of chestnuts from Johnny Mathis, some arty contributions from Kiri Te Kanawa, and, of course, a few nostalgic keepsakes from Bing Crosby and Elvis. These are only a few of the artists whose Christmas recordings (mostly on compact disc) have overrun record-shop windows.
Though this is the time of year when we try to harbor warm thoughts of brotherhood and charity, as far as the record industry is concerned, it`s simply the last big push of the year, a final chance for the major labels to ring up ”millions of dollars in sales,” according to John Birge, sales director at CBS Records.
To that end, virtually every major and most of the minor companies have planned all year for this moment, a few days before the holidays, when music lovers will be looking for the sounds of Christmas (and, of course, Hanukah)
in the record bins.
What makes this year`s flood of holiday recordings remarkable is that just a few years ago the Christmas record business was assumed to be about as dead as the 78 rpm record.
”It is simply no longer profitable to release Christmas records,” said MCA executive Joan Bullard in a Tribune interview in 1982. ”There`s too much product on the shelves,” said Capitol Records executive Walter Lee. ”There just isn`t much room left for new Christmas product.”
By 1984, however, with the advent of the compact disc, the situation turned around in a hurry. Those labels shrewd enough to realize that the record-buying landscape had changed, or lucky enough to have stumbled into it, made a swift fortune.
”We frankly had no idea that our first Christmas record was going to go through the roof,” says Dick Musil, promotions director of American Gramaphone, the small, Omaha-based firm that has sold nearly 1 million copies (on CD, LP and tape) of ”Mannheim Steamroller Christmas.”
”We happened to hit the market at precisely the right moment, when record buyers were looking for something new. It further amazed us that each year after 1984, sales of `Mannheim Steamroller Christmas` kept on
snowballing, instead of tapering off, as they usually do with old records.”
It should come as no surprise, then, that the sequel album, ”Mannheim Steamroller Christmas II,” will be rolling off the presses well before Santa squeezes down the chimney next year.
Similarly, California-based Rhino Records, which also jumped into the holiday record business in 1984, reaped such success that its holiday catalogue has fattened to include nine offerings.
”We realized before a lot of other labels did that rock fans love Christmas music as much as anyone else, and they just weren`t being serviced,” says Rhino executive James Austin. ”So as soon as we came in with our first Christmas rock record in 1984 (`Rockin` Christmas-The `50s,`
featuring such holiday classics as Oscar McLollie`s `Dig That Crazy Santa Claus` and the Hepsters` `Christmas in Jail`), there was an audience there to buy it.”
This year, Rhino`s Christmas stocking is stuffed with ”Cool Yule-A Collection of Rockin` Stocking Stuffers,” such as James Brown`s ”Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto” and the Marquees` ”Santa Done Got Hip”.
It didn`t take long before word got around in the record industry that the accountants at American Gramaphone, Rhino and others had lately been enjoying remarkable holiday cheer. Sure enough, the other labels started to jump back into the business. But the inability of most record companies to meet the initial demand for compact discs, the prestige format for the new Christmas recordings, meant that only a meager supply of holiday CDs reached record stores by the Christmas of 1985 and `86.
Now the floodgate has opened.
”This is the first year that we hope to even come close to meeting the demand for this Christmas material,” says Alison Ames, vice-president of Deutsche Grammophon records, a top-line classical label whose holiday CD releases range from ”Arthur Fiedler`s White Christmas” to Herbert von Karajan`s ”New Year`s Eve Celebration.”
”The funny thing about the record business is that there`s no hard-and-fast way to anticipate consumer demand-you just make a ballpark guess and hope for the best. But considering the recent popularity of holiday CDs, you can hardly go wrong by producing too much. Plus, whatever you don`t sell this Christmas, you can always try again next year.”
Though no industry organization keeps figures on the volume of holiday business, and though individual labels are not eager to disclose exact sales figures, it`s clear from a scan of the record bins that the holiday trade is brisk. There are hundreds of Christmas recordings on the shelves this year, spanning nearly every musical style imaginable. Most of the record companies allow that the holiday trade makes up roughly 5 to 12 percent of the annual business, a significant portion when one considers that these recordings are on the shelves only from the day after Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve.
How these products travel from the recording studio to your living room is testament to the new sophistication of the Christmas business.
”We rig up sample cassettes featuring bits and pieces of several of our Christmas records, which we then ship to retailers, hoping they`ll play the tapes in their stores in endless loops,” says CBS` John Birge. ”The idea is to give the record store owner an easy way to hear what we have to offer each season, as well as giving us an easy way to get browsers to hear our product.”
A more surefire way to reach the consumer is by shrewdly picking which Christmas oldies to revive on compact disc.
”Every time Frank Sinatra scratches his eyebrow, it seems to make news,” says Birge, who has released Sinatra`s ”Christmas Dreaming” on CD and watched it become ”one of our biggest sellers this season.
”Sinatra generates news wherever he goes, and whenever his name pops up in the gossip columns, radio deejays seem to start spinning his records again, which gets listeners to rediscover what a great singer he is and buy his Christmas CD.
”If you put out a product by someone who generates as much publicity as Sinatra, you can`t really lose.”
For those consumers who are particularly reluctant to part with their hard-earned dollars, Pro Arte Records, an aggressive little classical label based in Minneapolis, recently came up with a new way to push the holiday sound: each Christmas compact disc comes with a free cassette tape of the same music.
”We figure Christmas is our one big chance to reach a wide audience that might never have heard of us,” says Pro Arte vice-president Steve Vining.
”Giving away the cassette is just another way to let consumers know we`re here. If they`re happy with the deal we give them at Christmas, maybe they`ll give us a look at other times of the year. It`s kind of an investment.”
None of which is to say that it`s necessarily easy to sell records at Christmas. On the contrary, holiday music poses several pesky problems, particularly the brevity of the selling season, the costs of shipping out the records in November and shipping them back to the warehouse in late December, and the virtual inability to guess which holiday records will do well, since almost none of them will spin off singles that test the market and promote the album.
Nevertheless, pity the company that dares bypass holiday buyers these days.
”A couple years ago, we tried to cut the Temptations` `Give Love at Christmas` album from the catalogue,” recalls Motown vice-president Bob Jones. ”You would not believe the flack we took for that from record stores- they knew people wanted this record and they could sell it.
”So we wised up and packaged it on compact disc along with the Temptations` `Christmas Card` (the double-bill is made possible by compact discs` extended playing time), and sold 100,000 right off the bat.
”We realized we were onto something hot, so we started doubling up all our other old Christmas LPs on CD (such as Diana Ross and the Supremes` `Merry Christmas` and Stevie Wonder`s `Someday at Christmas`).”
”Thanks to CDs, we`re salvaging holiday recordings that probably would have been deleted from the catalogue, and we`re reaching the yuppie crowd, which every record company wants.”
It`s little surprise, then, that when A&M Records decided to become involved in a charity recording for the benefit of the Special Olympics, they opted to go with a Christmas CD. Though ”A Very Special Christmas”-which includes songs recorded especially for the occasion by Madonna, Whitney Houston, John Cougar Mellencamp and others-was released less than two months ago, it has topped the 1 million mark in sales.
”No one expected it would do quite this well,” says A&M executive Michael Krumper. ”I guess we`ll be releasing this record for many Christmases to come.”
Christmas records have come a long way since 1942, when Bing Crosby released the single, ”White Christmas” (which has sold more than 30 million copies through the years). Since then, holiday recordings have had their ups and downs. In the late `50s, ” `Huey Smith and the Clowns` Christmas Album` caused such an adverse public reaction that Ace records had to pull it from the shelves,” says Rhino`s James Austin.
”At that time, Christmas music was considered sacred, and if a record strayed very far from `Little Drummer Boy,` a large segment of the public got mad.”
By the early `60s, however, ”The Beach Boys` Christmas Album” (with its hit single, ”Little St. Nick”) proved that society could continue to function despite the existence of Christmas rock. And Phil Spector`s ”A Christmas Gift to You” became a landmark in 1963.
And for the moment, at least, the prognosis for Christmas recordings seems as bright as the traditions they honor.
”In country music, fans today absolutely demand Christmas records from their favorite stars,” says Bruce Hinton, vice-president of MCA/Nashville, which has released holiday CDs by Reba McEntire, George Strait, the Oak Ridge Boys, Barbara Mandrell and enough additional stars to last a hundred Christmases.
”We`re expanding this business every year. As to how we`ll do this year, the jury is still out, because we won`t really have the figures until about February.
”But judging by the way record stores are ordering, I`d say it`s looking pretty sweet.”
