The secret to success: Never settle for being content

An all time favorite Christmas album

The quote in the heading is attributable online to Ray Coniff on a webpage dedicated to his music, 

 http://www.rayconniff.info/about-Ray-Conniff

This Conniff Christmas music is possibly my all time favorite and I am enjoying it this afternoon as I hem jeans and do other sewing related chores inside avoiding more time out in today's 9 degrees. I own this as a 33 1/3 album (very vintage stuff) and on a cassette (which is nearly worn out) as well as the newest a CD which my late closest  friend, Roberta found for me one Christmas because she knew of my fondness for Coniff music. Oh haw thrilled I was to get a CD of Conniff.  But the record album is also very special to me, my Grandma Rose bought it for me when she came to CA to help me in 1965-66.  She enjoyed the music too. She laughed that it was the first music she had bought since she did not remember when, maybe since their old record player became extinct.  I remember it like yesterday and I believe she is  still listening to it in the beyond as I am 48 years later.  1965 was in the time of the record stores where we could go in and pick up an album; there was one store near to where she grocery shopped with me in California; for an old Polish lady she was sneaky because I did not know what she was doing and later when we returned home she gave me the wonderful album with the biggest smile, so proud of herself for dodging and fooling me; it would be  the last Christmas gift she'd ever buy for me.  The music of our lives usually brings memories and I never listen to Conniff without remembering my Baba  and this album.      

Back of the CD shows Ray Conniff conducting.

I googled Conniff today and was pleased to learn that some Public Broadcasting Stations still feature his Christmas show, but today I wonder if he will be watched and enjoyed only amongst the likes of us vintagers...it makes me laugh, I would listen to Ray Conniff anything, much as  my late MIL did with Lawrence Welk, to our amusement. 

 Just a bit about him for those who are unfamiliar with this great musician.  The following is excerpted from Wikipedia and the Conniff webpage:  Joseph Raymond "Ray" Conniff, also known as "Jay Raye," (November 6, 1916 – October 12, 2002) was an American bandleader and arranger best known for his Ray Conniff Singers Singers during the 1960s.   After serving in the US Army in World War II, he joined the Artie Shaw big band and wrote many arrangements for him. Then Mitch Miller, Columbia Records,  hired him as their home arranger, working with several artists like  including Rosemary Clooney, Marty Robbins, Frankie Laine, Johnny Mathis, Guy Mitchell and Johnnie Ray. He wrote a top 10 arrangement for Don Cherry's "Band of Gold" in 1955, a single that sold more than a million copies. Among the hit singles he backed with his orchestra (and eventually with a male chorus) were "Yes Tonight Josephine" and "Just Walkin' in the Rain" by Johnnie Ray; "Chances Are" and "It's Not for Me to Say" by Johnny Mathis; "A White Sport Coat" and "The Hanging Tree" by Marty Robbins; "Moonlight Gambler" by Frankie Laine; "Up Above My Head," a duet by Frankie Laine and Johnnie Ray; and "Pet Me, Poppa" by Rosemary Clooney. He also backed up the albums Tony by Tony Bennett, Blue Swing by Eileen Rodgers, Swingin' for Two by Don Cherry, and half the tracks of The Big Beat by Johnnie Ray.  Now if those titles don't bring some memories to you, you must not be of my generation.  

In these early years he also produced similar-sounding records for Columbia's Epic label under the name of Jay Raye amongst them a backing album and singles with Somethin' Smith and the Redheads, an American male vocal group.

Between 1957 and 1968, Conniff had 28 albums in the American Top 40, the most famous one being Somewhere My Love (1966). He topped the album list in Britain in 1969 with His Orchestra, His Chorus, His Singers, His Sound, an album which was originally published to promote his European tour to Germany, Austria, Switzerland in 1969. He was the first American popular artist to record in Russia in 1974 when  he recorded Ray Conniff in Moscow with the help of a local choir. His later albums like Exclusivamente Latino, Amor Amor, and Latinisimo made him very popular in Latin-American countries.  In Brazil and Chile he was treated like a young pop superstar in the 1980s and 1990s when he was in his 70s and 80s.

If you have never heard Ray Conniff or have become nostalgic for the music after reading this, you can go to his webpage and listen to selections.