Spirit of Christmas, Les Fradkin (RRO)

This felt so familiar on first listening that I assumed it was mostly covers, but no, seven tunes are by Les and Loretta Fradkin and two more are co-written with Les by Raven Kane and Diana Haig. The three covers are the Roy Wood and John Lennon classics plus the rarely covered "Ding Dong" by George Harrison. What's really familiar is the 70s pop-rock pomp, a Spectoresque wall of sound channeled through Jeff Lynne's mixing board. I had the feeling that Les was a one-man band kind of guy, and it turns out I was right, but what I didn't know was that he had a long pedigree in the business, working with everyone from Edison Lighthouse to the Godz (yes, the ESP Disk Godz), and a long stint in "Beatlemania" as George to boot. By the way, Edison Lighthouse was part of a continuum of late 60s-early 70s top 40 hits done by Flying Machine, Brotherhood of Man and White Plains. And you could easily justify this disc based on the nice job he does on the aforementioned songs, but his originals like "Say You Love Me For Christmas," "Christmas Sleeps Tonight," "Hello Christmas (Goodbye Year)," "Jangle Bells" and the lightly Caribbean-flavored "Christmas Vacation" argue for you to grab a copy via a click on the album art.