1959- "Five Pound Box Of Money"

.....Although over fifty years old, this number could easily find an audience today. The B-side, I mean.

• 02:18 JINGLE BELLS CHA CHA CHA (Pearl Bailey)
• 02:35 b/w FIVE POUND BOX OF MONEY (J. Barker, P. Bailey)
• original source: 7" Roulette R-4206 (US) 1959
• and my source: (for the B-side) VACD HIPSTERS' HOLIDAY Rhino R2 70910 (US) 1989

.....Rhino Records compiled a number of excellent Christmas collections from the mid-1980's to the mid-1990's, often with different configurations on vinyl and CD. HIPSTERS' HOLIDAY was one of the best, with a cross-section of jazz acts from 1946-1966 and one horrible kitsch lounge act recorded less than a year before the compilation came out. Unlike many of their compilations, HIPSTERS' HOLIDAY provided detailed personnel and exact recording dates for most of the tracks. For jazz bands that could mean upwards of a dozen musicians on some performances. "FIVE POUND BOX OF MONEY" is one of the few for which there is "No session information available". Jazz isn't my strong suit and my resources are not nearly as extensive as Rhino's, but my guess is that their suggested date of release on the jewel case may be a typo. The year '1958' follows the songwriting credit, and that may be when the song was recorded or when the sheet music was copyrighted, but a discography of Roulette's singles maintained by Global Dog Productions places the single in 1959, as does an article in a music industry publication (Billboard, December 14th, 1959) announcing that several radio stations would be holding contests asking listeners to guess the dollar amount of a five pound box of mixed coins, specifically tying it to the release of the single. That said, the internet abounds with sites offering mp3's of the song identified (if by any date at all) as coming from 1958, which I guess tells us from where these tenth generation copies were ultimately stol-- uh, acquired. Both sides have actually resurfaced periodically in the CD age and I may dig around next year for "JINGLE BELLS CHA CHA CHA" and revisit this post or simply leave a link to any new post in the comment area.