Real Gone's 2015 collection
The Complete Columbia Christmas Recordings combines
Jim Nabors' two holiday albums for Columbia -- 1967's Jim Nabors' Christmas Album and 1972's Merry Christmas -- adding a couple of seasonal religious tunes from 1968's
The Lord's Prayer & Other Sacred Songs and 1971's How Great Thou Art for good measure (as it happens, these bonus cuts include two different versions of "Ave Maria." Of the two albums, the 1967 set is slightly stuffier -- there's a reliance on old-fashioned carols and the string arrangements are a bit stiff -- but 1971 conjures just a bit of the spirit of Hollywood holiday specials, its strings feeling slightly snazzy, not starchy. Still, there's no question that
Jim Nabors, with his well-rounded tenor and fastidious delivery, is very squarely in the middle of the road. His sensibility belongs in an era that was bypassed when these records were recorded, so this release functions as dual nostalgia: pining for pining for days of Christmas past. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine