Jingle Cats and its follow-up Jingle Dogs are a series of Christmas novelty song albums from producer Mike Spalla. [1] A third series was released in 1997 titled Jingle Babies. Jingle Cats and Jingle Dogs were released as albums and videos. A 1998 video game of Jingle Cats was released in Japan.
The songs are created by Spalla who mixes actual animal sounds to match tones of the songs. [2] He started with a version of "Jingle Bells" that was released to radio stations a few years before the full album came out. [2] In all, it took more than 1,000 meows, screeches and growls to assemble 20 melodies. [2] [3]
Meowy Christmas was released on CD and cassette in 1993 to wide United States media coverage within its first week. The album reached number 86 on a Billboard chart and was sold out a week before Christmas. The following year, Meowy Christmas was placed on the Billboard top 10 catalog album chart. The second album, Here Comes Santa Claws, was released in 1994 with "3,000 brand new meows and new arrangements". [4] Here Comes Santa Claws starred Spalla's cats Sprocket, Twizzler, Binky, Cheese Puff, Clara, Cueball, Graymer, Max, and Petunia. Spalla played the accordion and the background music was from his dog, Klippy Kloppy. [5] Its success resulted in a national tour and live television appearances. A spin-off series starring Jingle Dogs was released on September 11, 1995, titled Christmas Unleashed. On October 23, 1995, a VHS was released that features the Jingle Cats singing and dancing. [4] Jingle Dogs received a VHS release in 1996 alongside a Jingle Cats VHS. [6] The Jingle Cats album Rhythm and Mews was released in 2002. [7] The Jingle Dogs CD Puppy Holidays was released in 2008. [8] In 2009, the album First Meowel was released on iTunes as well as the official website and starred the cats Messifur, Jumper, Ally, and Christmas Tree Face with dog noises in the background. [9] In 2008, Jingle Cats Christmas was released on DVD with songs from the Jingle Cats and the Jingle Dogs. [10]
A mail order catalog sold Jingle Cats t-shirts, buttons, and stickers. [1] Hallmark Cards signed a four-year contract to sell Jingle Cats singing cards in 2008 and over 125,000 cards sold within the first three months. The song "Jingle Cats Medley" played in the film Fred Claus . [10] A 1998 video game was released for Mac, Windows and the PlayStation in Japan titled Jingle Cats: A cat story of love and friendship: The Love Para Operation Volume (ジングルキャッツ 愛と友情のネコ物語 : ラブパラ大作戦の巻). [11] The player is given the task of taking care of the Jingle Cats by interacting with them in various ways, having to fill up a "love-o-meter" before time runs out. [12] Writing for The Believer, Blake Butler notes that "the object is to breed and care for cats, which begin to sing when they're done copulating". [13] The video game was not released internationally. [12]
In 1995, Here Comes Santa Claws won a Billie Award from Billboard for point-of-purchase category. [14] David Wharton of the Los Angeles Times said, "Yet for every person who listens to 'Jingle Cats' and hears only screeching, there are cat lovers who hear a symphony." [1]
After following up what Billboard called "excellent" Jingle Cats and Jingle Dogs albums, Spalla produced a Jingle Babies album for which Billboard described the series as having hit a "brick wall". [15] Ashley Naftule of Phoenix New Times reviewed Jingle Cats and said, "Don't be fooled by its kitschy name: A more accurate title for the project would be The Wretched Mewling Of The Damned." [16] Blake Butler wrote a review of the Jingle Babies release Rockabye Christmas in The Believer saying, "I imagine these boggled carols funneled loudly into malls, sending people running from the Gap and Sharper Image back to hide inside their homes, to wrap the roof with enough colored light to keep the dark out, fearing what other kind of man might slide down the chimney." [13]
Christmas music comprises a variety of genres of music regularly performed or heard around the Christmas season. Music associated with Christmas may be purely instrumental, or, in the case of carols, may employ lyrics about the nativity of Jesus Christ, traditions such as gift-giving and merrymaking, cultural figures such as Santa Claus, or other topics. Many songs simply have a winter or seasonal theme, or have been adopted into the canon for other reasons.
A Muppet Family Christmas is a Christmas musical television special starring Jim Henson's Muppets. It first aired on December 16, 1987, on the ABC television network in the United States. Its teleplay was conceived by longtime Muppet writer Jerry Juhl, and directed by Peter Harris and Eric Till. This television special was filmed at 9 Channel Nine Court in Toronto, Ontario. The special features various Muppets from The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, and Muppet Babies. It also stars Gerard Parkes as Doc from the North American wraparound segments of Fraggle Rock, and Henson as himself in a cameo appearance at the end. In the plot, the Muppets surprise Fozzie Bear's mother with a Christmas visit to her farmhouse, unaware of her planned getaway to Malibu.
Toni Wine is an American pop music songwriter, who wrote songs for such artists as The Mindbenders, Tony Orlando and Dawn ("Candida"), and Checkmates, Ltd. in the late 1960s and 1970s. Wine also sang the female vocals for the cartoon music group The Archies, most notably on their #1 hit song "Sugar, Sugar". She shared the lead vocals in the Archies' subsequent single, "Jingle Jangle" with Ron Dante using his falsetto voice. In addition, Wine was a backing vocalist on "It Hurts to Be in Love" and on Willie Nelson's "Always on My Mind."
Radio Disney Jams was a series of CD compilations of music that was featured on Radio Disney, a children's radio network.
A cat organ, also called cat piano, is a hypothetical musical instrument which consists of a line of cats fixed in place with their tails stretched out underneath a keyboard so that they cry out when a key is pressed. The cats would be arranged according to the natural tone of their voices.
American gospel singer Yolanda Adams has released 11 studio albums, 2 live albums and 6 compilation albums. Adams has been named as the "First Lady of Modern Gospel" by the media. With sales of nearly 10 million records worldwide, she was Billboard's Top Gospel Artist of the 2000s and has sold 4.5 million albums in the US since 1991. Five of her albums have reached number one on the US Billboard Top Gospel Albums chart. The Gospel Music Association inducted her into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. Mountain High... Valley Low remains her best-selling album in the US, being certified Platinum by RIAA, while her albums Believe and Verity Presents: The Best of Yolanda Adams both reached gold status respectively.
The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection is a Christmas-special extended play (EP) by the American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. The EP was first released as a Target exclusive on October 14, 2007, by Big Machine Records. It was released to other retailers on December 2, 2008 and was re-released to Target on October 6, 2009.
The Singing Dogs was a Danish musical recording project in the 1950s by recording engineer and ornithologist Carl Weismann and record producer Don Charles based around manipulated recordings of dogs barking.
The Andy Williams Christmas Album is the first Christmas holiday album released by singer Andy Williams and his twelfth studio album overall. It was issued by Columbia Records in 1963, the first of eight Christmas albums released by Williams. Though it was also the album that introduced Williams's perennial holiday classic "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year", Columbia instead released Williams's cover of "White Christmas" as the album's promotional single at the time.
"Oh Santa!" is a song by American singer and songwriter Mariah Carey from her second Christmas album and thirteenth studio album, Merry Christmas II You (2010). Carey wrote and produced the song in collaboration with Jermaine Dupri and Bryan-Michael Cox. It was released as the lead single from the album on October 1, 2010 by Island Def Jam Records. It is an up-tempo R&B song about Carey making a plea for Santa Claus to bring back her partner in time for the Christmas holidays. It received a positive response from music critics, with many praising its composition and style.
Glee: The Music, The Christmas Album is the fourth soundtrack album by the cast of the American musical television series Glee, produced by Ryan Murphy and Adam Anders. The album was released digitally on November 9, 2010, with physical copies available from November 16, 2010. It accompanies the second season episode "A Very Glee Christmas", which aired on December 7, 2010. Dante Di Loreto and Brad Falchuk serve as the album's executive producers. The album debuted at the top position of the Billboard Soundtracks chart, and peaked at number three on the Billboard 200. Songs from the album also landed on various different record charts across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
Linda Ellen November is an American singer who has sung tens of thousands of commercial jingles. She was the voice of the singing cat in the Meow Mix commercials, sang the jingle "Galaxy Glue" in the 1981 film The Incredible Shrinking Woman, the "Coke and a Smile" jingle in the classic Mean Joe Greene Super Bowl commercial, and has won many Clio Awards for her work on television and radio. Her voice can also be heard on many pop songs, as she was a regular backup singer for artists such as Frankie Valli, Burt Bacharach, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Neil Diamond. In the 1970s, she was one of the main singers in the disco group Wing and a Prayer Fife and Drum Corps, which charted with the Top 40 hit "Baby Face" in 1976. In the 1980s and 1990s she was a regular performer in Atlantic City at The Grand and Harrah's, with her husband, composer and arranger Artie Schroeck. As of 2011, she works as a piano accompanist in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Holly & Ivy is a 1994 Christmas album and 16th overall studio album by American singer Natalie Cole. Released on October 4, 1994, by Elektra, it is Cole's first album featuring Christmas music and serves as a follow-up to Take a Look (1993). Cole co-produced the album with American music producer Tommy LiPuma, with whom she had worked on Unforgettable... with Love (1991). Holly & Ivy consists of 12 tracks, including 11 covers of Christmas standards and carols and one original song written by Gerry Goffin and Michael Masser. Cole promoted the album as non-traditional in interviews and live performances.
12 Songs of Christmas is the twenty-second studio album and the first Christmas album by American blues singer Etta James. Private Music released the album in October 1998. Produced by John Snyder, the album includes standards arranged mostly by pianist Cedar Walton and solos by Walton, George Bohanon on trombone, and Red Holloway on tenor saxophone. Critical reception of the album was positive overall. Following its release, 12 Songs reached a peak position of number five on Billboard's Top Blues Albums chart.
The New Andy Williams Christmas Album is a live Christmas album by American pop singer Andy Williams that was digitally recorded live in concert at the Andy Williams Moon River Theatre in Branson, Missouri in 1993 and released by the LaserLight division of Delta Music Inc. in 1994. It includes performances of songs that he had previously recorded for his four solo holiday releases as well as a new spoken word track that briefly summarizes the life of Jesus Christ.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a soundtrack album to the 1964 Rankin/Bass television special of the same name. The original cast recordings from the TV special are supplemented with instrumental versions recorded by the Decca Concert Orchestra on the Compact Disc version. All songs used in the television special were written by Johnny Marks.
The Gift of Christmas is a 2007 Christmas album by country pop singer Juice Newton. It was originally released by OJM Records on November 14, 2007. The album was Newton's last collaboration with Otha Young, her professional partner of over 30 years. Young died of cancer in 2009.
You Make It Feel Like Christmas is the fourth studio album by American singer-songwriter Gwen Stefani. The album, which is Stefani's first full-length Christmas-themed album, was released on October 6, 2017, by Interscope Records. The record was executively produced by Stefani and Busbee, with additional production coming from Eric Valentine. The standard version of You Make It Feel Like Christmas contains twelve songs, featuring six original songs penned by Stefani, Busbee and Justin Tranter, and six cover versions of Christmas standards. While going on a nature walk near the Oklahoma ranch house belonging to boyfriend Blake Shelton, Stefani felt inspired to record a Christmas album and began writing what would later become "Christmas Eve". Recording sessions took place in the summer months of 2017; several of the tracks' titles leaked in August, leaving Stefani to confirm the project in September. The album's original songs make references to Stefani's newfound love and relationship with Shelton.
Billboard magazine only charted Christmas singles and albums along with the other popular non-holiday records until the 1958 holiday season when they published their first section that surveys only Christmas music.
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