A smaller Christmas, Day 12

Driving home from the post office just now, the guys on the morning radio show were wrapping up an interview about football.

Then they took a left turn and asked their guest this: Which TV actress was your crush while growing up?

The guest reached back into his memory bank — way back, apparently — and mentioned an actress from a show that aired in the late ’80s and went off the air in 1990.

Good God, I must be old. My TV actress crush was Suzanne Pleshette.

Another was Connie Stevens, who is one of the TV stars who sing on this Christmas record.

I have this record jacket, but not the record that’s supposed to be inside. I didn’t look closely enough when I picked it out of a dollar record bin a couple of years ago. This is “We Wish You A Merry Christmas: 15 Great Christmas Favorites Sung By Warner Bros. Stars,” from 1959. You can read about it here and here.

So I believe at this moment, I will embrace my older-than-dirtness, retreat to a more innocent time and drop a song that those of us of a certain age enjoyed when we were younger. It isn’t Christmas without this song, either. People still dig it.

“Snoopy’s Christmas,” the Royal Guardsmen, from “Snoopy and His Friends,” 1967. (The link is to a double CD also featuring “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron,” their debut album from 1966.) Also available digitally.

Merry Christmas, mein friends!

The Royal Guardsmen, who got started in Ocala, Florida, in the mid-’60s are still around, still recording and playing the occasional gig. Three of the original six members, that is. Lead singer Barry Winslow and drummer John Burdett appear to have some kind of beef with the group’s management, but support the current lineup and wish them well.

Your Christmas music requests in the comments, please.

Please visit our other blog, The Midnight Tracker, for more vintage vinyl, one side at a time.