1. White Christmas
2. Under The Mistletoe
3. Blue Christmas
4. Sun Valley
5. It's Christmas
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Sugar Ray Pat Reyford was one of the true pioneers of the original Swing Revival in the UK, performing throughout the eighties with assorted rockabilly and swing outfits, fronting his own bands like the Flying Fortress, The Zephrys of Swing, and, of course, the Hotshots. He also played and sang with The Big Six, one of Britain's best known bands playing in the style of Bill Hayley. And Sugar Ray is still performing today, with bands ranging from The Jazz Dynamos to the Zoltans to the Goodfellas. Pay him a visit at his MySpace site and find out what he's been up to.
On this Hotshots holiday outing, we get a nice taste of the early Swing movement--much closer to its Glen Miller roots and early fifties radio pop than to the Bill Hayley stylings of the Big Six or the raucous ruckus raised by the nineties' American neo-swing leaders. "Under The Mistletoe", in particular, sounds like a holiday radio jingle from the era where commercials were often longer than the songs between them. It's a neat little throwback as is the entire record, previously available on iTunes UK but not on this side of the Atlantic. This download version even includes a bonus track, "Sun Valley", which was not included on the original vinyl EP (should you be lucky enough to have that already).