While I was at our indie record store the other day, I checked out the Christmas records. There wasn’t much there.
At the other end of the store, they had the Record Store Day releases left over from Black Friday. I found this.
There’s something to get you in the Christmas spirit. I rarely buy 45s, but you gotta love that colored vinyl.
It’s another step in a quest started perhaps 25 years ago. This was one of about a dozen mostly Christmas songs taped off the radio late one night. I’ve been collecting those songs ever since. Here’s that story.
Four years ago, I recreated that program in a series of four blog posts. The last entry included this cut.
“This Christmas,” Donny Hathaway, Atco 7-inch 532757-7, a limited edition reissued in 2012. The original was released in 1970.
This is the single edit that runs about 3 minutes. I have another version, from the great “Soul Christmas” CD, with an outro that runs about 30 seconds longer. An even longer version, running almost 4 minutes, is available digitally.
This was written by Hathaway and Nadine McKinner. It was recorded at Atlantic Studios in New York in November 1970 and released as Atco single 6799 on Nov. 30, 1970.
All that said, two questions remain. Should I play the flip side? Do I really want to hear Cee Lo Green’s cover?
Your wise counsel (and Christmas music requests) in the comments, please.
Please visit our other blog, The Midnight Tracker, for more vintage vinyl, one side at a time.
