Please Come Home for Christmas

2008 reissue of the 1961 release of Please Come Home For Christmas by Charles Brown featuring Bill Doggett with 16 holiday tunes. Brown’s approach was too mellow to survive the transition to rock’s harsher rhythms, and he faded from the national limelight. His Please Come Home for Christmas, a hit on King Records remained seasonally popular. During the 1960s – 1980s, he occasionally recorded and this continued until the 1980s, when Bonnie Raitt helped usher in a Charles Brown comeback tour.Charles Brown’s Please Come Home for Christmas is by far the lesser known of his two holiday recordings (the better known is Cool Christmas Blues). Please Come Home predates Cool Christmas and offers a sweet, blues-drenched step back in time to when R&B had not yet crossed over to the mainstream. Brown and his capable band turn on the holiday lights with a bevy of songs showcasing his smoky, lonely-avenue vocals, smart jazzlike phrasing, and minimal-but-tasty blues keyboard work. The effects are intoxicating, if only slightly interrupted by Bill Doggett’s big organ interpretations of various classics. Still, it’s hard to resist an album that features the original title track, plus such gems as “Christmas in Heaven, “Christmas Blues,” and “Merry Christmas Baby.” A rich set no music fan should be without. Highly recommended. –Martin Keller