1 CD with 20 page booklet, 27 tracks. Total playing time approx. 78 min.

Bear Family Records® went to the bottom of the shellac box for this Christmas collection.
No jingling bells, no ho-ho’s or weird reindeer voices.
Instead, swinging jazz at its best, rousing swing of the ’30s and ’40s, highly danceable, elegant but cool, performed by seasoned jazz musicians.
Featuring Glenn Miller, Paul Whiteman, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Barnet, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Putney Dandridge, Jimmy Ray, Stew Pletcher, Alvino Rey, Stuff Smith and many others.
Annotations for each song in the liner notes in the accompanying booklet.
Carefully compiled edition, remastered from the best possible sources.

Shellac instead of stardust: when Santa Claus takes off his boots and unpacks the gramophone after his work is done: Bear Family Records® delves deep into the shellac box!

No intrusive bells, chumming ho-ho’s or strangely distorted reindeer voices: Every year around the same time the displays of the department stores are bending with hastily and often suspiciously similar compiled ’swing’ samplers, since ”swing is coming back”.

Our journey through the depths of various shellac racks, however, brought to light quite a number of undiscovered treasures. Thus, we could stand up for the true ’Spirit of Swing’.

Thrilling music of the ’30s and ’40s, highly danceable, elegant but cool, performed by expert jazz musicians, at the time pressed onto a mélange of shellac, slate flour, soot and cotton flakes, to be played with a steel needle (or optionally cactus spikes for lower volume) at an unbelievable 78 RPM and …. extremely fragile.

’Windup’, by the way, refers to the suitable playback device with a crank; from today’s point of view, very sustainable and environmentally friendly!

Big names like Glenn Miller – with a very special Jingle Bells version, recorded live on Dec 24, 1941!!! – Paul Whiteman, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Barnet, Count Basie or Ella Fitzgerald as well as Putney Dandridge, Jimmy Ray, Stew Pletcher, Alvino Rey or Stuff Smith have expressed themselves in their own way on the subject of Christmas and be it that during Jingle Bells the horses run completely wild (Jingle Bells by Bill Harty, obviously vocalist Ella Logan is having fun).

Ranging from charming to irreverent, Bear Family Records® finally provides a great celebration for all fans of real swing music, as Las Vegas came much later. On ’Santa Swings The Windup’ there are several premieres on modern audio media.

For friends of high-quality vinyl, a solid selection of 14 tracks appears on long-playing record, pressed on red vinyl (BAF18074).