And better! Gene Autry, you see, cut so many great Christmas sides for Columbia that neither package discussed above - either separately or in tandem - can be considered absolutely complete. This situation was happily remedied in 2004 by Varese Sarabande's simply-and-smartly-titled The Complete Columbia Christmas Recordings. Finally, every precious Christmas song this famous singing cowboy cut for Columbia Records is collected in one spot! While those previous compilations were excellent, they overlooked songs as essential as "Merry Texas Christmas, You All" and "Thirty-Two Feet - Eight Little Tails." One particularly rare cut was "He'll Be Coming Down The Chimney" previously only available on the not-very-hip 1954 collection, First Christmas Record for Children. Now, The Complete Columbia Christmas Recordings has them all, beautifully mastered, annotated, and packaged - perfect! This is quite literally the rosetta stone of modern Christmas music.

Two years later, Varese issued two more collections that compliment Complete Columbia Christmas nicely. The first, Year-Round Cowboy: Songs For The Whole Year, compiles nearly two dozen songs Autry recorded about other holidays or seasons - Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, the 4th of July, and even dreaded April 15 ("I Paid My Income Tax Today"). Then, Year-Round Cowboy throws in Gene's two greatest Christmas hits, "Here Comes Santa Claus" and "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer." More than a little wacky, but fun!

The second 2006 reissue, Gene Autry Sings Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Other Christmas Favorites, is altogether inessential given that every single cut (all 12 of them) was included on Complete Columbia Christmas Recordings. But, this later CD is historically significant in that it's a verbatim reissue of Autry's 1964 Columbia 12-inch LP - his first ever in that format. Remember, most of these songs were cut before the long-player took hold in the marketplace, and Columbia issued Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer mainly to compete with new (and inferior) versions Autry recorded for his own labels (Challenge, Champion, and Republic) in the late 1950's and early 1960's before retiring from recording in 1964. The cover of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, in fact, boldy proclaims "The Original."

The moral of our story is, be sure to hunt down one of the aforementioned, Columbia-derived Autry CD reissues - Complete Columbia Christmas Recordings, especially. Innumerable budget-oriented Autry Christmas collections are floating around, most of them skimpy, shoddy, and badly mastered. Most importantly, they are generally licensed from Autry's latter-day repertoire - not the superior Columbia masters.

In some ways, his later sides are perfectly serviceable. Gene Autry was notoriously professional, and songs like "Nine Little Reindeer" (cowritten with Johnny Marks, and Merle Travis) and the unbelievably goofy "Santa's Coming In A Whirlybird" are nothing if not charming. But, they lack the punch of his earlier Christmas records and are necessary only for Gene Autry fanatics and Christmas completists (guilty as charged). If you must (and I did), the post-Columbia recordings are well summarized on Varese's Here Comes Santa Claus (1999). [top of page]