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I'll admit this record grows on me. I like Lou Ann Barton's Please Come Home for Christmas, because it's a good song and I like her voice.

Paul Ray's Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas was the best cut on the CD, possibly because the quality of the recording sounded somewhat better than what was achieved on other cuts.

This record, produced by CBS, got major label distribution and quite a bit of air play (it still does around these parts). It is a quality record. But I believe these artists, performing holiday material, could have (and should have) made a somewhat more adventurous album. A few cuts sounded like covers of the covers I hear on the Twine Time Christmas Pageant (which I listen to religiously every year!) However, this record does at least hint at the enormous talent still commercially--but not artistically--latent in Austin, Texas. My criticism is not meant to diminish what this wonderful record was and is, but to point out how great it might have been.

--Richard Banks
(Reviewed in 1998)

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Various Artists

An Austin Rhythm and Blues Christmas

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Track List