Single Time: Linda Lawrence "Have a Happy Ho! Ho! Ho!"

I haven't shared out many Christmas singles here at Merry & Bright! in the past, mainly because they are very hard to find.  It's a duel with patience to root through stacks of 45s, most of which seem to be in terrible condition (did people use them to scrub kitchen floors or something?), in order to find a Christmas gem.  There are a good many Peter Pan or similar labels to be found with Christmas songs, but they don't interest me much.  However, in the past year I did stumble on a couple interesting singles of the yuletune variety, so I'll start my sharing season with one of them.

First up is "Have a Happy Ho! Ho! Ho!", backed by "The Christmas Lady" by one Linda Lawrence.  As with many obscure Christmas singles, there is basically no verifiable information about Linda Lawrence on the internet.  A Linda Lawrence was apparently married to Donovan (you know, the folk singer), but I'm guessing it's not the same.  About all I can tell you is:

• the songs are credited to J. Lawrence, published by Johnny Lawrence Music (dad, maybe?)
• The label, Serena Records, has a P.O. Box address on the label, in Mobile, AL
• The record is SR-105-A-X (and the flip side is ...B-X)
• "Have a Happy Ho! Ho! Ho!" is subtitled "The Happy Polka"

And that's it.

"Have a Happy Ho! Ho! Ho!" is a brief 1:54 (1:51 in my ripped version).  It's claim to fame is that it was included on Andy Cirzan's 2005 "Off in the Christmas Cosmos" comp, as reported by friend CaptOT many moons ago at A Christmas Yuleblog.  

The B side is "The Christmas Lady", coming at 2:30.  Let's just say that there is a lot going on in this song.  It's an aural cornucopia, that's fer sure.  I think that it could be a case study for sound mixing for any prospective audio engineers out there. 

Enjoy "Have a Happy Ho! Ho! Ho!" and "The Christmas Lady", and welcome to the 2018 sharing season!

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