"Jingle Bells" / "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," the Blues Magoos (Mercury)

This may be a bootleg; my copy has no label information and a cheesy 2-color cover. But the Magoos, early garage psychedelic pioneers with one hit to their credit, "We Ain't Got Nothing Yet," take a fairly original tack to the arrangement of "Jingle Bells," revisiting it in a minor-key 60s blues-rock style. "Santa" is a short blues shuffle, and there's a third tune on this 45, "Dante's Inferno," which is not holiday-oriented and is about what you'd expect. Martin Johns writes in to assure us that "The Blues Magoos 45 was issued by Mercury in 1967 (catalog #72762)." So while my copy is most likely a bootleg, the record was officially released, with just the two holiday tunes. UPDATE: the band's single hit's title above was corrected as requested by Ken Froeschner. My fault for letting my fingers do the thinking. Thanks to Skip Groff for a scan of the original label.