Merry Christmas, hip cats!

This used to be the place where you could find all kinds of Christmas music come this time of year. If you’re disappointed that it no longer is, well, sorry/not sorry. It just isn’t my cup of tea anymore.

That said, here’s a fun little story about a Christmas record. This one.

Seeing the cool cover, I dug it out of a dollar bin at one of my favorite record stores several years ago. But I didn’t look at it closely, and when I got it home, I found there was another Christmas record inside. That record did not have 13 great Christmas favorites sung by Warner Bros. stars.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago. While digging through the crates at a record show, I found this record again. This time, it has the right record inside. My friend Scott says it’s mine for half-price, which is fine.

Tonight, as Christmas draws near, enjoy what all the cool TV watchers enjoyed at Christmas 1959. Warner Bros. had hauled the stars of some its TV productions into a recording studio and cut “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” for its year-old record label.

So, that guy at the top, at the top of the tree? That’s Edd Byrnes. In 1959, he was just about the hottest thing on TV. He played Kookie, a real cool cat, on “77 Sunset Strip,” a detective show set in Los Angeles. His Christmas song is “Yulesville,” a mashup of jazz and noir and Christmas and hipster jive patter.

That said, “Yulesville” is really the only the thing that veers into novelty on this record.

Long forgotten is “Bourbon Street Beat,” a detective show set in New Orleans that lasted just one season. One of its supporting players, Eddie Cole, is featured here with a swinging take on “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.” Cole has the chops. His younger brother? Jazz singer Nat King Cole.

If I tell you Robert Conrad also sings “White Christmas” on this record, you might think of anything from “The Wild Wild West” to “Baa Baa Black Sheep” to those old Eveready battery commercials, then you might smirk and scoff. But Conrad, who in 1959 was one of the stars of “Hawaiian Eye,” a detective show set in Honolulu, does a nice job. He also was a singer before turning fully to acting.

The guy sitting next to him is Poncie Ponce, a Hawaiian actor who played a cab driver on the show. He parlayed his role in the popular show into a modest music career in the early ’60s. His song on this record? “Mele Kalikimaka,” of course.

Long before he was the fifth Bond, James Bond, even before he was the first Bret Maverick, Roger Moore starred in “The Alaskans,” a forgotten Western that lasted only one season. Thus, he’s featured here. Moore gives an elegant reading of “Once In Royal David’s City.”

A Christmas Yuleblog, which went dark four Christmases ago, wrote lovingly about this record in 2008. It also features Warner Bros. actors Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Connie Stevens, Peter Brown, Ray Danton, Dorothy Provine, Clint Walker and Ty Hardin.

“We Wish You A Merry Christmas,” from 1959, is long out of print.

Looking for more Christmas music? Search our posts from previous Decembers. Much of that music is still up.