Perry,

There are only three Christmas albums by Lawrence Welk that you need to be concerned with. The albums are Merry Christmas From Lawrence Welk (Coral Records - 1956), Jingle Bells (Coral Records - 1957), and Silent Night And 13 Other Best Loved Christmas Songs (Dot Records - 1961). In my Top Play, the two Coral LPs are in my 1st Tier (albums 1-125), and the Dot LP is in my 2nd Tier (albums 126-250).

The Coral albums have never been released in their entirety on CD; they have only been released in an abridged form with different artwork. The Dot album has never been released on CD at all, except on compilation CDs. The Coral albums were recorded in mono, and then later released in simulated (re-channeled) stereo -- but I don’t recommend them. The Dot album was recorded in true stereo.

Regarding the Coral LP Jingle Bells, it has a most unusual history. When it was first released in 1957 track #4 on Side 1 of the LP had a really nice 10-song instrumental medley that was comprised of Deck The Halls; Good King Wenceslas; The First Noel; God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen; O Come All Ye Faithful; Hark The Herald Angels Sing; It Came Upon A Midnight Clear; Joy To The World; O Little Town Of Bethlehem and Silent Night.

However, very shortly after its release, Coral Records (for reasons I have never been able to determine) replaced this instrumental medley with a 10-song choral medley that included O Come All Ye Faithful; Deck The Halls; Good King Wenceslas; God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen; The First Noel; Hark The Herald Angels Sing; It Came Upon A Midnight Clear; Joy To The World; O Little Town Of Bethlehem and Silent Night. And that is how the album remained for the duration of its time in print. However, the strange thing is that Coral never changed the song listing on the back of the album jacket. The only way you know which album you have is to look at the label on the record itself, which Coral did change to reflect the new choral medley.

As I said, I have no idea why Coral Records decided to make this change, especially because the original instrumental medley was so much better than the choral medley that replaced it. Since far fewer copies of the original LP were printed, it is much harder to find.

Regarding the Ranwood albums, stay away from both of them as the songs they contain are all re-recordings; so stick with the original Coral albums. As for the Reader's Digest compilation albums, they contain a combination of the re-recorded tracks from the Ranwood LPs and original tracks from the 1961 Dot LP. The reason for this is when Randy Wood and Lawrence Welk formed Ranwood Records in 1968 they acquired the rights to the Dot recordings. As for Coral recordings, despite what you may read on the web (including Wikipedia) they did not acquire the rights to the Coral library. The masters to those recordings still and always will rest in the hands of UMG (Universal Music Group).