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Indeed, it’s that time of year when you get out your favourite Christmas tunes that get you in a festive mood, but Strut have done the hard work for you here with a Christmas groove of “original stone cold soul and rare groove from Christmas past”.

For music fans, Christmas holidays are a tricky time of year as you want to avoid the obvious seasonal fare that gets done to death whilst still find something that’s more than callous commercial exploitation. As mentioned last week’s review of Zevolution - ZE Records Re-Edited, ZE’s own A Christmas Record is one of my favourites whilst at the other extreme, another one is the rather obvious Ras Records Presents: A Reggae Christmas. So it’s great to be able to say that I can now add this new CD to this rather short list as In The Christmas Groove strikes just the right balance between tinsel and turkey.

Put together by James Maycock (of Mojo magazine), there’s an extensive booklet including original sleeve artwork and sleeve notes from the “golden era” of ’60s and ’70s soul music. It would seem that there were loads of acts that aimed to follow in the footsteps of the Motown who regularly got their roster of artists to do something special at Christmas (that you can now regularly find in box CD sets at your local supermarket in a budget package) and Maycock has done a job that even Mr. Finewine would approve of for some festively spirited rare 45 B-sides.

So whilst we all know James Brown was another who liked to put funk into festive, who knows about the Soul Saints Orchestra’s ‘Santa’s Got A Bag Of Soul’ that’s an obvious tribute to the Godfather himself?

And these are truly 14 rare tracks from the vaults with oddities like J.D. McDonald’s ‘Boogaloo Santa Claus’ that goes a bit ‘Monster Mash’, UK-based session band Zebra slip in some spiritual gospel before kicking of Godspell-prog rock style (was there ever the full musical?) and then there’s the kids of Harlem Children’s Chorus’ with some ghetto love of ‘Black Christmas’
On the turkey front, ‘Angel’s Christmas’ will make you cringe and although I’d say jingle bells and funk and not the best of friends, but if you’ve got to have them, ‘Let’s Get It Together This Christmas’, ‘Funky Funky Christmas’ and ‘Get Down For Xmas’ are as good as you’re going to find.

And then, once Christmas is over, its straight into the difficult New Year period and Jimmy Jules gets into the soul of ‘The New Year’ whilst the CD ends on the best version of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ you’re going to hear this side of any Jools Holland nonsense (mainly because it mostly doesn’t sound like ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at all).

Arguably the best track is by the best known artist on the album, the blues master Jimmy Reed on the opener ‘Christmas Present Blues’ but I’d be amazed if there’s any other Christmas comp around that’s got a little belter like the Funk Machine’s ‘Soul Santa’ on it. As Strut’s press explains, Frank Sinatra and Jim Reeves can take a holiday this year as Santa says, “This is the sh*t I want in my sleigh!” Groove on people, merry yuletide to one and all.

P.S. nice cover inspiration from James Brown’s In The Jungle Groove; Get Up!

Reviewed: Various - In The Christmas Groove (Strut) Cat. No: STRUT052CD Release date: 30th November 2009
Tracklisting:
1. Jimmy Reed - Christmas Present Blues
2. Electric Jungle - Funky Funky Christmas
3. Funk Machine - Soul Santa
4. Milly & Silly - Getting’ Down For Xmas
5. The Harlem Children’s Chorus - Black Christmas
6. Wild Honey - Angel’s Christmas
7. Johnny Acey with Esquires Ltd - Christmas Keeps On Coming
8. Captain Elmo McKenzie & The Roosters - Home On Christmas Day
9. Soul Saints Orchestra - Santa’s Got A Bag Of Soul
10. J.D. McDonald - Boogaloo Santa Claus
11. Zebra - Christmas Morning
12. Harvey Averne Band - Let’s Get It Together This Christmas
13. Jimmy Jules - The New Year
14. The Black On White Affair - Auld Lang Syne

Links:
www.strut-records.com
www.inthechristmasgroove.com
WFMU Downtown Soulville with Mr. Fine Wine www.wfmu.org