We have now come to Part II of what has become an important tradition here on charleysblog. When I say “tradition,” I’m loosely defining it as something that is being done for the first time this year.

Boney James, Boney’s Funky Christmas – Face it, with a name like “Boney,” you can’t help but be funky. In the hospital, days after Boney’s birth, people were looking at him in the nursery and saying, “Dang, that’s one funky baby.” Anyway, there’s some great jazz arrangements on this recording. While I like them all, I’ll just mention “Sleigh Ride” and “Christmas Time is Here.”

James Taylor, At Christmas – See here’s the thing – I’m a middle-aged white man. There’s some kind of rule that I have to listen to James Taylor occasionally. Not that he’s not talented, because he is. But… anyway, I like “Who Comes This Night” and “In the Bleak Mid-Winter.” You gotta love a Christmas song with the word “bleak” in it.

GRP Christmas Collection Volume II – This goes back a ways, to the year 1991. There’s some interesting stuff here, and some of it is actually interesting in a good way. Lately, I’ve been drawn to “Angels We Have Heard on High” recorded by Don Grusin.

Finally, this last recommendation hasn’t been recorded on a CD – at least not that I know of. It was a performance on the short-lived series “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” from a few years ago. This is a group of displaced jazz musicians from New Orleans, performing “O Holy Night.” If you jump through a few hoops, you can get download the video, and eventually get just the audio into I-tunes if you like it. Anyway, here’s the video…