[SACD-R][OF] Nat King Cole - The Christmas Song (Limited edition) - 1962/2015 (Jazz Vocal)

he Magic of Christmas is a 1960 album by Nat King Cole, arranged by Ralph Carmichael.

This was Cole’s only full album of Christmas songs, although he had recorded several holiday singles earlier in his career. One of these, 1946’s “The Christmas Song”, was re-recorded for the 1961 album The Nat King Cole Story, and in 1963 The Magic of Christmas was re-issued with that recording added to the track list in place of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”, and the album given new cover art and retitled The Christmas Song.

It is the best-selling Christmas album released in the 1960s, and was certified by the RIAA for shipments of 6 million copies in the US. The 1963 version reached #1 on Billboard’s Christmas Albums chart and remained for two weeks.
All Music Review

First issued in the early ’60s, this collection of musical Christmas cheer is packed full of the smoothly sung, sentimental favorites associated as much with Nat King Cole himself as with the season. The singer’s performance of “The Christmas Song” is an unforgettable classic reprised here twice, once in an updated version that includes a contemporary vocal from his daughter, Natalie, and also in Cole’s original 1946 recording. Other traditional religious favorites like “I Saw Three Ships” and “Away in a Manger” are also featured, in a setting that, with its well-arranged orchestral accompaniment, manages to sound both sophisticated and folksy.