Cameo Parkway Holiday Hits, various artists (Real Gone Music)

This one's for the old folks out there, a collection of early to mid-1960s Christmas records from the Cameo Parkway family of labels, collected for re-release in 2011. It's also more for the folks who like Christmas music in all styles, since half the album is straight-up orchestral instrumental pop versions of famous songs and carols by the Rudolph Statler Orchestra and the International Pop Orchestra. Two versions of "Auld Lang Syne" are banjo-led instrumentals, by bluegrass band Bob Johnson and the Lonesome Travelers and pianist Beethoven Ben. And the "Twelve Days of Christmas" get a Mexico-via-the-Copacabana version by the Mexicani Marimba Band. Here's what remains. Both sides of a 1961 Bobby Rydell/Chubby Checker duet single, a cover of "Jingle Bell Rock" backed with "Jingle Bell Imitations," the latter featuring the two doing impressions of Elvis Presley, Bobby Darin, Fats Domino, Frank Fontaine, and the Chipmunks (!) singing "Jingle Bells." Then there's both sides of a 1957 single by the Cameos, "Merry Christmas" and "New Years Eve," a pair of doo-wop classics and the only non-60s performances on the album. Speaking of the end of the year, we also have a doo-wop ballad by The Jaynells from 1963, "I'll Stay Home (New Year's Eve)." "White Christmas (3 O'Clock Westher Report)" by Bobby the Poet is a 1967 novelty record with an impression of Bob Dylan singing the popular Christmas tune, also featuring a Bobby Kennedy imitator adding commentary and topped off with a reading of the weather report, in the fashion of Simon & Garfunkel's "7 O'Clock News/Silent Night." Yeah, there's a lot going on there. Toni Stante gives a girl-group arrangement to a 1965 performance of "Donde Esta Santa Claus." And finally, Bob Seger & the Last Heard, from 1966, give us the Mistletunes classic "Sock It To Me Santa." A spotty collection if you're a rock specialist, but this one's for the archivists among us.