Article successfully added.

Rod McKuen New Carols For Christmas (CD, Expanded Edition)

Listen to sample now:
 
0:00
0:00
Please inform me as soon as the product is available again.
Please enter the digits and letters in the following text field.

$19.18 *

* incl. VAT / plus shipping costsDepending on the country of delivery, the VAT at checkout may vary.

Item is temporarily out of stock.
Approx. delivery time: up to 3 weeks. (as far as available at the supplier - can be faster, but sometimes unfortunately not)

  • CDRGM0817
  • 0.1
(Real Gone Music) 16 tracks with color booklet. Originally released in 1971 on Rod McKuen’s... more

Rod McKuen: New Carols For Christmas (CD, Expanded Edition)

(Real Gone Music) 16 tracks with color booklet.

Originally released in 1971 on Rod McKuen’s own Stanyan label, and available on CD for only a brief time in the mid-‘90s, New Carols of Christmas—The Rod McKuen Christmas Album offers the poet/singer/songwriter’s trademark blend of spoken word and song, with songwriting assistance from Rod’s long-time artistic partner Anita Kerr on three of the tracks (The New Christy Minstrels’ Art Podell and electronic music pioneer Mort Garson are his other collaborators).

Recorded save for one track on December 6, 1970 at Chappel Studios in London, and featuring members of The Westminster Symphony Orchestra, New Carols offers such highlights as “Bethlehem B.C.,” which begins with a spoken word interlude followed by a really beautiful instrumental passage; “So My Sheep May Safely Graze,”which tells the story of the birth of the Good Shepherd; and the upbeat, uplifting “Here He Comes Again.”

We’ve enlisted Rod’s biographer Barry Alfonso to write the liner notes, and added some photos to the original gatefold album art. Celebrate the season this year with the late, great Rod McKuen!


Article properties: Rod McKuen: New Carols For Christmas (CD, Expanded Edition)

  • Interpret: Rod McKuen

  • Album titlle: New Carols For Christmas (CD, Expanded Edition)

  • Genre Pop

  • Label Real Gone Music

  • Artikelart CD

  • EAN: 0848064008170

  • weight in Kg 0.1
McKuen, Rod - New Carols For Christmas (CD, Expanded Edition) CD 1
01 The Carols of Christmas Rod McKuen
02 So My Sheep May Safely Graze Rod McKuen
03 Thank You for Christmas Rod McKuen
04 And to Each Season (A Fugue for Pachelbel’s Canon in G) Rod McKuen
05 Here He Comes Again Rod McKuen
06 The Snows of Amsterdam Rod McKuen
07 Spend This Holiday with Me Rod McKuen
08 The Day After Christmas Rod McKuen
09 When Winter Comes Rod McKuen
10 So Long, Stay Well Rod McKuen
11 Simple Gifts Rod McKuen
12 As We Traveled Through Vermont Rod McKuen
13 Bethlehem, BC Rod McKuen
14 A Hand to Hold at Christmas Rod McKuen
15 Who Knows Where We’re Going Rod McKuen
16 Baby, It’s Cold Outside (& Petula Clark) Rod McKuen
Rod McKuen Rod is our pioneer spirit. He writes and sings like no one else and his... more
"Rod McKuen"

Rod McKuen

Rod is our pioneer spirit. He writes and sings like no one else and his influence shows in the work of all of today’s best young songwriters.

Johnny Cash

 His birth certificate says that his father was a 27-year-old refrigerator salesman, named 'Mack' McKuen – or, the clerk's writing being less than legible, McKune. His mother, Clarice, who seems not to have known much about 'Mack,' adopted the first spelling and named her son Rodney Marvin McKuen.

"I was born in Oakland, California, at the Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers on April 29, 1933."  Rod writes in 'Finding My Father.' "The doctor…delivered me for $5. My father had left my mother before I was born." The opening passage of the book also included this memorable McKuen line; "Having been born a bastard gave me an advantage over all those people who spend their entire lives becoming one."

Clarice had been working as a taxi dancer in Oakland when she met Mack, Rod supposes. "Until my mother married," he writes, "she supported herself by working at a variety of odd jobs – waitress, barmaid, telephone operator, and clerk." He didn't think he really wanted for anything, though times were occasionally tough. She did marry, when Rod was quite young, and stepfather Bill Hooper worked mainly as a 'cat skinner,' levelling roads for the Works Projects Administration. Rod's earliest memories include moving around Nevada with Bill's work -- Winnemucca, Caliente, Pioche, Sparks, and Alamo, where the family would stay on Bill's parents' small farm.

Rod doesn't remember his stepfather as a kind man, but does look back at a particularly significant holiday. "We must have had a little money, because my father told me that I could have my choice – a sled or a blackboard for Christmas. I chose the blackboard because even then I wanted to write and draw pictures, and anyway most of the other kids had sleds I could borrow. My father called me a sissy, but when Christmas came, sure enough, I got my blackboard."

The family continued moving, to Washington state and back to Las Vegas, with the pre-teen Rod several times attempting to run away from home, always returning. At eleven, he made his longest trip yet, moving on his own to the Nevada towns of Ely and Elko, where he first worked as a milk boy – carrying pails of milk between the barn and kitchen of a farm, where he was paid seventy-five cents a week, plus room and board. "It was while tending cows that I began to write. First on scraps of paper, little more than words or thoughts that I couldn't make sense of or understand until I got them out of my head and on paper This led to me keeping a journal."

After a couple of years on the ranch, Rod was tracked down by the authorities and institutionalized at the Nevada School of Industry, which he now characterizes as "a reform school without walls." After three years, he was released – and used skills he'd learned on the ranch in Elko to become a rodeo cowboy.

Two broken legs after a horse fell on him ended McKuen's rodeo career, though he went on to something seemingly as dangerous – moving back to the Pacific Northwest to work as a lumberjack. "Of all the jobs in a lumber camp that I liked," he writes, "I think belting up, shimmying up the trunk to top trees, then bumping, edging, thunking downward to the ground again was best. It was fun, too, to get out on the river and dance a logjam free – two, three men yelling warnings back and forth at each other, trying to be heard over the river's roar."

Not yet sixteen, Rod moved back to California, joining his Aunt Ruth in Oakland; Before long, Clarice – who had left Bill back in North Las Vegas – arrived, with Rod's younger half-brother, Billy, in tow.

Rod landed a job with radio station KROW-AM in Oakland in the early 1950s. On the air since 1920, independently-owned KROW was the training ground for future television hosts Art Linkletter, Jack Clark, and 'This Is Your Life' creator Ralph Edwards. McKuen struck up friendships with fellow disc jockey 'Big Don' Barksdale – earlier he had been a highly-regarded pro basketball player – and a young woman who was writing advertising copy in the station's office, Phyllis Diller. "They played middle-of-the-road pop," Diller explains. "Rod had an hour and a half prime time show on Saturday nights, where he chose the music and wrote a new script every week. An hour and a half is a lot of music, and he had to write an hour and a half's worth of new material every week. NBC made an attempt to copy his show, using a person who had come out of KROW…it didn't work, because Rod was writing out of his soul and his heart." McKuen says he'd play pick-up basketball with Barksdale, who coached him for another job at the station: recreating basketball games on Saturday afternoons from descriptions that would come in on the wire services teletype.

In 1953, Rod volunteered for the Army "to get my military service over with." After spending 16 weeks in basic training at Fort Ord, near Monterey, the young recruit was transferred to Public Information School at Ft. Slocum, New York. He worked as a public information specialist in Tokyo (singing on The Ginza at night), then was transferred to Korea, where he "brought aid and information to the villagers." Discharged in 1957, he returned to California, where his old friend, Phyllis Diller, got him a job working at the Purple Onion. She was on her way to becoming one of the country's pre-eminent comics, but it was Rod's first paid engagement as an entertainer.

"I used to do gigs in San Francisco before I went in the Army," McKuen says, "reading poetry, where they passed the hat at coffee houses and late-night bars. We'd kept up a friendship; she was funny, and nice, and – I believe – having some problems with her marriage at the time."

"I had started my performing career in 1955," Diller adds. "The Purple Onion was a very well-run discovery club. It was such a kick – while I was working at the Purple Onion, others who were playing there were the Smothers Brothers, the Kingston Trio, [future 'Laugh-In' star] Alan Sues, and Maya Angelou. And they had so much faith in me, that I was able to tell them, 'You've got to hire Rod McKuen.' They said, 'He does poetry?' I said 'Trust me'. He did very well there."

"This was the bill," continues Rod. "The budget for entertainment was $200 for the week. Phyllis got $100. Maya Angelou was a calypso singer and I replaced Randy Sparks as low man on the bill. Also on the bill were Ketty Frierson – who became Ketty Lester – and the comedian Milt Kamen"

Los Angeles-based newspaper society columnist and socialite Cobina Wright Sr. came into the club one night, and invited McKuen to Hollywood. "She had friends who were opening the Windemere Hotel in Santa Monica, and I got a job painting the hotel." A week later, he was on the southbound bus. "Life as a protégé of Cobina's consisted mainly of singing at parties," he remembers. "But I was singing and living comfortably off unemployment."

 Rod McKuen If You Go Away (RCA) (7-CD)
Read more at: https://www.bear-family.com/mckuen-rod-if-you-go-away-rca-7-cd.html
Copyright © Bear Family Records

Review 0
Read, write and discuss reviews... more
Customer evaluation for "New Carols For Christmas (CD, Expanded Edition)"
Write an evaluation
Evaluations will be activated after verification.

The fields marked with * are required.

Weitere Artikel von Rod McKuen
If You Go Away (RCA) (7-CD Deluxe Box Set)
Rod McKuen: If You Go Away (RCA) (7-CD Deluxe Box Set) Art-Nr.: BCD16122

Ready to ship today, delivery time** appr. 1-3 workdays

$396.04 *
Beatsville (LP, Colored Vinyl)
Rod McKuen: Beatsville (LP, Colored Vinyl) Art-Nr.: LPMH8003

Ready to ship today, delivery time** appr. 1-3 workdays

$30.50 *
New Ballads (CD)
Rod McKuen: New Ballads (CD) Art-Nr.: CDRGM0959

only 1x still available
Ready to ship today, delivery time** appr. 1-3 workdays

$15.79 *
A Boy Named Charlie Brown
Rod McKuen: A Boy Named Charlie Brown Art-Nr.: CDVAR67228

Item has to be restocked

$18.05 *
Reflections - The Greatest Songs Of Rod McKuen
Rod McKuen: Reflections - The Greatest Songs Of Rod McKuen Art-Nr.: CDVAR67362

Item has to be restocked

$18.05 *
International Christmas II (2-CD)
Various: International Christmas II (2-CD) Art-Nr.: CD107638

Ready to ship today, delivery time** appr. 1-3 workdays

$9.00 $16.92
White Christmas
Bing Crosby: White Christmas Art-Nr.: CD118226

Item has to be restocked

$9.00 $14.66
Christmas With Mantovani
Mantovani & His Orchestra: Christmas With Mantovani Art-Nr.: CD15150

the very last 1 available
Ready to ship today, delivery time** appr. 1-3 workdays

$9.00 $16.92
Merry Christmas (CD)
Diana Ross & The Supremes: Merry Christmas (CD) Art-Nr.: CD352032

Ready to ship today, delivery time** appr. 1-3 workdays

$5.60 $16.92
The Real...Christmas (3-CD)
Various: The Real...Christmas (3-CD) Art-Nr.: CD413482

Item has to be restocked

$11.26 $16.92
Greatest Hits Of Rod McKuen - Expanded Edition (CD)
Rod McKuen: Greatest Hits Of Rod McKuen - Expanded Edition... Art-Nr.: CDRGM0958

This article is deleted and can no longer be ordered!

$18.05
New Ballads (CD)
Rod McKuen: New Ballads (CD) Art-Nr.: CDRGM0959

only 1x still available
Ready to ship today, delivery time** appr. 1-3 workdays

$15.79
The Complete Christmas Albums (2-CD)
Andre Kostelanetz And His Orchestra: The Complete Christmas Albums (2-CD) Art-Nr.: CDRGM0812

This article is deleted and can no longer be ordered!

$28.24
Music Of Christmas - Expanded Edition (CD)
Percy Faith & His Orchestra: Music Of Christmas - Expanded Edition (CD) Art-Nr.: CDRGM0645

only 1x still available
Ready to ship today, delivery time** appr. 1-3 workdays

$19.18
A Boy Named Charlie Brown
Rod McKuen: A Boy Named Charlie Brown Art-Nr.: CDVAR67228

Item has to be restocked

$18.05
Tracklist
McKuen, Rod - New Carols For Christmas (CD, Expanded Edition) CD 1
01 The Carols of Christmas
02 So My Sheep May Safely Graze
03 Thank You for Christmas
04 And to Each Season (A Fugue for Pachelbel’s Canon in G)
05 Here He Comes Again
06 The Snows of Amsterdam
07 Spend This Holiday with Me
08 The Day After Christmas
09 When Winter Comes
10 So Long, Stay Well
11 Simple Gifts
12 As We Traveled Through Vermont
13 Bethlehem, BC
14 A Hand to Hold at Christmas
15 Who Knows Where We’re Going
16 Baby, It’s Cold Outside (& Petula Clark)