Holiday in My Head

Christmas Favorites By The Hollyridge Strings (1965)

I recently started listening to my vinyl albums on headphones again.

I’m not really sure why I took such a lengthy break from experiencing music in this manner, especially since it was my main mode of mental escape and spiritual recalibration during COVID lockdown and the last year or so of my marriage. But a few weeks back, the suddenly overwhelming desire to get lost in Pink Floyd’s Meddle at an hour way past my landlord’s bedtime inspired me to dig out my vintage 1970s Pioneer cans and plop down on the floor as if I were back in high school. Forty minutes or so later, I emerged from my immersive audio reverie thinking, “Yeah… I need to do that much more often.”

Of course, this being the holiday season, my stereo shelf is currently cluttered with Christmas LPs — and most of my favorites are monophonic, or were at least not exactly recorded with the intention of making the most of the stereo spectrum. In other words, not the sort of thing that would make you want to put on the headphones and travel deep into the mystic. But I suspected that if any Christmas album in my collection might deliver some sweet stereo goodness, it would be Christmas Favorites By The Hollyridge Strings. So I popped it on the turntable, donned the cans, and gave it a spin…

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I know, I know — neither the album’s title nor its rather generic cover art make it seem at all promising. When I fished my copy out of a dollar bin at a used record store in L.A. some 15 years ago, I figured it was just another unremarkable 1960s album of schmaltzy, strings-oriented holiday instrumentals cranked out for the Muzak market; but hey, I actually love 1960s Muzak, and the price was right. Still, I wasn’t at all prepared for just how wonderful this platter would be, or just how brilliant it would sound on headphones.

The “tell,” in retrospect, should have been the name on the cover, though at the time I had no idea who Stu Phillips was. Which is absurd and a bit sad, because in retrospect his work as a composer and arranger for film and television has been part of my life going all the way back to The Monkees’ TV show. Phillips’ many cinematic credits include such B-movie gems as Hells Angels on Wheels, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Macon County Line, and such childhood TV favorites as The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, Quincy, M.E. and Battlestar Galactica. In fact, the latter show earned him a Grammy nomination in 1979 for Best Soundtrack/Original Score, which was his second Grammy nom — the first coming 15 years earlier in the Best Instrumental Performance - Non Jazz category for The Beatles Song Book, a 1964 album by The Hollyridge Strings.

Among his many film and TV gigs, Phillips produced, arranged and conducted numerous Hollyridge Strings albums for Capitol Records. While these were squarely (no pun intended) aimed at the easy-listening market, they’re all a lot more clever and interesting to listen to than that categorization might imply. For one thing, these albums feature a rock n’ roll rhythm section (most likely including some of the Hollywood session musicians who would later be dubbed “The Wrecking Crew) as well as a full orchestra, giving the performances a bit more punch than your average easy-listening outing. For another, Phillips took full advantage of the massive echo chambers at Capitol Records’ Hollywood studios, and also experimented a bit with tape delay, in the process giving the performances a lush and airy sound whose intrinsic smoothness is counterbalanced by runaway harpsichords and plucky pizzicato violins that pop like champagne bubbles in your brain, especially when you’re listening on headphones.

My Pioneer SE-50s. God, I love these headphones.

Christmas Favorites contains 11 holiday tracks — well, my late-seventies copy only contains 10, because it was released at a time when Capitol was apparently trying to cut expenses by leaving tracks off of certain reissues — that are primarily drawn from Tin Pan Alley (“Winter Wonderland,” “White Christmas,” “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” etc.), though it also includes a cover of The Beach Boys’ “Little Saint Nick” and a Phillips original called “Santa’s Got a Brand New Bag”. But the whole thing is absolutely marvelous; listening to it on headphones the other night, I found myself transported back to the department store Christmas shopping experiences of my childhood (with sparkling images of Hudson’s in Detroit, Gimbels in Milwaukee, and Bullock’s Wilshire in L.A. dancing in my head) while simultaneously having my mind completely blown by the record’s almost proto-psychedelic sound design.

It’s not the easiest record to find these days — but if you’re a fan of 1960s easy-listening, Christmas music and the intersection thereof, Christmas Favorites by the Hollyridge Strings is well worth the search.

And speaking of Christmas music… I have a few special treats in store for you as we get closer to Christmas. But in the meantime, if you’re into that sorta thing, you might also enjoy the following Christmas music-themed Jagged Time Lapse post from this time last year…

Twelve Christmas Wishes (Plus Three!)

Catch you next week!

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