bouncing ball rudolph the red nosed reindeer sing along

Krasnow was a violinist whose book about children's music caught the eye of legendary Columbia Records producer Goddard Lieberson, who hired him in 1949 to revitalize that label’s kid-disk department. The genius behind the recording was Hecky Krasnow, whose life is recounted in Rudolph, Frosty, and Captain Kangaroo: The Musical Life of Hecky Krasnow (Santa Monica Press 408 pages $24.95), the new biography by Judy Gail Krasnow, his daughter.

I’ve have inflicted it not only on my own daughter but also the kids of others, and always with enthusiastic results.

I played that record to death, but replaced it a decade ago with another scratchy copy (it has yet to hit CD, and better copies of the LP sell for $60 to $80). But I lucked out, insofar as the record I most enjoyed was a '50s LP of Stanley Holloway singing “Gobbledegook Songs.” THE FINEST OF ALL children's records was one I grew up on, which shouldn't be surprising: Kids cultivate prejudices devoid of discrimination. I’ll come back to this topic, but first let me reprint the following book review, which ran about five years ago. But she did lay upon me a record that would prove a favorite, something that arrived in the mail one day and to which I clung like Croesus clutching gold. Probably not my mother, because I suspect she would have had little tolerance for the strident sound of speeded-up voices. I had no choice in the matter like so many kids’-world acquisitons, it was foisted upon me by a well-meaning relative. Yesterday I confessed to owning an “Alvin and the Chipmunks” record as a child.

Bouncing ball rudolph the red nosed reindeer sing along