A raucous, good-hearted Christmas

Reviewed December 2008

Any collection that features both B.B. King and Ray Charles can't go too far wrong, and if Putumayo's holiday release for 2008 has quite a few tracks by bands and artists you've never heard of, well, there's still B.B. singing "Christmas Celebration" and Charles doing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Ramsey Lewis and late Charles Brown are also represented here. And even if you've not heard of Randy Greer, Riff Ruffin or Topsy Chapman, their contributions are rock-solid and swinging.

The groove here definitely leans toward the blues side of the jazz-blues spectrum, even delving into a bit of R&B. It's a bit raucous at times, but in a good-hearted New Orleans kind of way.

Review by Jim Trageser. Jim is a writer and editor living in Escondido, Calif., and was a contributor to the "Grove Press Guide to Blues on CD" (1993) and "The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Blues" (2005).