A Swingin' Christmas - Harry Potter 6 Books

Track Listing

1. I'll Be Home For Christmas
2. Silver Bells
3. All I Want For Christmas Is You
4. My Favorite Things
5. Christmas Time Is Here
6. Winter Wonderland
7. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
8. Santa Claus is Coming to Town
9. I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm duet with Antonia
10. The Christmas Waltz
11. O Christmas Tree

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #525 in Music
• Released on: 2008-10-14
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
2008 album release Swingin' Christmas featuring the Count Basie Big Band. Bennett has 15 Grammy Awards along with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2001). 'Tony Bennett is among the most recognized human beings on the planet.' ~Vanity Fair. The album tracks are 'The Christmas Song', 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas', 'I'll Be Home for Christmas, 'Winter Wonderland', 'Santa Claus Is Coming to Town', 'Christmas Time is Here', 'My Favorite Things', 'The Christmas Waltz', 'Christmas Auld Lang Syne', 'Silver Bells' and 'Christmas Tree'.

Customer Reviews

Tony Bennett Christmas
Tony Bennett at his best sharing his talents with other musicians. A real treat!!

Feh...
I really admire Tony Bennett, and I love Count Basie; their albums together, though not the equal of Basie's work with Sinatra, are outstanding...but the engineering/production on this disc is very flat. It reduces the sound of the Basie band to a quasi-karaoke background (it sounds more like a trio than a band); there's no 'richness' in the playing. Since Bennett's voice is understandably thin at this point in his career, the result is a washed-out sound that sounds more like a demo than a finished product. The swinging work sounds better than the ballads, but there needed to be sweetening of both the bass and perhaps the judicious introduction of strings to give this some depth. I don't think this will get a lot of playtime at our house.

Reality Check
I wanted to really get excited over this release, since I really like jazz big bands doing holiday music - with or without singers. At 37 minutes and 6 seconds, this CD reminds me of an LP and is very short on music. The Basie band is "featured" on only 6 of the 11 tracks and is very subdued. As described on the "Making Of" DVD, Tony Bennett has his own tempo - and this is a tempo different from the normal Basie band tempo. This "Making Of" DVD also has the Basie band working with Bennett on "A Christmas Song" for a brief segment, but this chart is not on the CD for whatever reason. The Deluxe edition (apparently only available at Target) has a "Live in Concert" DVD add on in addition to the "Making Of" DVD that covers only 4 of the Basie charts with Bennett (genereously considering that "My Favorite Things" is a Christmas song).

I would really want to give any Basie & Bennett collaboration all the stars possible, but with the Basie band on a little more than half the songs, with the 37 minutes of music around half of a normal CD, and with the music coming across as half of what it is capable of being, 3 stars is quite generous.