Eddie Fisher emerged as a star in 1952, placing 14 songs in the singles charts, along with three albums in the LP lists. The third of those 10" long players was
Christmas with Eddie Fisher, the inevitable holiday collection that capped an amazing year. Like many holiday albums, it was a profit-taking venture in which the performer sings in his characteristic style some of the familiar carols of the season. The appeal is the singer himself, not the material or his approach to it. Backed as usual by
Hugo Winterhalter,
Fisher sang the songs -- five standards and three new tunes -- as if he were making yet another of his hit singles, using his resonant tenor to express the holiday sentiments. The new songs didn't sound like new standards and didn't last long, while the old ones didn't suffer much by
Fisher's singing them. There wasn't anything special about the album, unless you happened to be a
Fisher fan, and in the Christmas season of 1952, there were plenty of them. In later years, the album was not much heard, not only because
Fisher's recording career declined after the mid-'50s, but also because, made for the 1952 market, the eight-song album was too short when the 12" LP became the standard. But after the album fell out of copyright in Europe as of 2003, it became available to the labels that feast on public domain material, one of which is the Hallmark label (part of the Pickwick Group Limited), which has put out this unlicensed "original recording" (as it says on the CD cover). The mastering off an old vinyl copy is typically muffled, and there are still only the eight songs from the old 10" LP, for a running time of just 22 minutes. ~ William Ruhlmann